Tomorrow is the acceptance deadline for most colleges in the United States, including RPI. As many current students know, many applicants send their responses to schools right up until April 30, and the admissions department here at Rensselaer is bracing for the upcoming influx of mail. But this has not stopped them from beginning to calculate the statistics for the Class of 2007, and these preliminary numbers show a great deal of promise across the board.
“For all intents and purposes, our goal is to enroll the best students from all over the world,” said Teresa Duffy, the dean of enrollment management, “and these numbers reflect that. We’ve been on an upward trajectory since 1995, and we’re seeing a continuation of that.”
For example, the average SAT score of the incoming class has risen 31 points above the Class of 2006’s. Nine hundred and fifty received the Rensselaer Medal, an award first given in 1916 that honors high school students who have distinguished themselves in math and science. Medalists made up 20 percent of the applicant pool.
Another one of the office of admission’s goals is the admittance of a larger class than the past two years. The Rensselaer Plan calls for a steady-state undergraduate population of 5,000 students and with a senior class of approximately 1,300 leaving, the Institute needs to admit more students than the 1,200 in the Class of 2006 to maintain this goal.
“We tried to downsize this year’s freshman and sophomore classes to keep enrollment at around 5,000,” said Duffy, “and we will need to admit a few more to keep a reasonable demand on the school’s facilities.”
One sign that this goal will be fulfilled was the record number of students who attended Accepted Students Day. In all, 2,200 attended, filling the Armory floor as well as two balconies.
Early analysis indicates that the number of students from outside the Northeast have also gone up, and the number of women and minority students who are enrolling has also increased. “Those figures are above where they were last year at this time,” Duffy said.
The admitted Class of 2007 includes representatives from 47 states, and 203 international students who hail from 37 countries. As usual, the class has its quirks, such as two students who can play the bagpipes, one who attended a master cello class in Bulgaria, Internet entrepreneurs, and one student who invented a special mouse that allows quadriplegic people to use computers.
In an effort to further educate the accepted students about RPI, every one was sent a CD with a Macromedia Flash presentation on the school entitled “Why Choose Rensselaer (in 00:03:22 or less).” The high-paced movie was put together of interviews with current students on why they chose RPI and their experiences here.
