Faculty members say the University of Arizona received fewer applications from prospective students after setting a new, hard application deadline of Nov. 1 for early acceptance, which could lead to a loss of tuition revenue. They also say changes to the admissions process haven’t been made clear within the UA, nor to the public, and that the revised system puts non-traditional students at a disadvantage.
Previously, under a rolling admissions model, UA colleges reviewed applications as they received them instead of all at once after one hard deadline. This year, the UA evaluated the applications that came in by the early Nov. 1 deadline and gave out early acceptance decisions by Jan. 15. It then went on as planned to review later applications, for decisions to be made in late March. This is known as regular decision.
The UA received about 25,000 applications by the Nov. 1 deadline, when, according to faculty members and a university employee with close knowledge of admissions, the goal for that initial deadline was 40,000 and many more were hoped for. Enrollments of incoming freshmen in some colleges are low, faculty members said.
UA President Suresh Garimella told the Faculty Senate that the application number had risen to 35,000-37,000 by early March, but faculty said it appears a smaller percentage of students are accepting UA’s admission offer and enrolling than in past years, particularly in some colleges.
UA Chair of the Faculty Leila Hudson told the Arizona Daily Star there is anxiety about UA’s intention to have smaller class sizes and its switch to new admissions processes, which she says weren’t well communicated to its partners in high schools and community colleges.
She said the UA might miss its mark for the incoming fall class, leading to a loss of tuition income, which is the university’s main source of operational funding.
“And it’s very difficult for colleges to plan and predict operations in the coming academic and fiscal year with that uncertainty on top of, you know, the generalized national landscape of uncertainty,” Hudson said, referring to federal funding challenges for research as well as for students’ financial aid.
Students walk along the University of Arizona Mall during a hot afternoon. The UA plans for an incoming freshman class size of 7,000 to 8,000 this fall, and won’t be going back to its previous 9,500 range ever, the provost says.
Karina Salazar, a UA assistant professor in the Center for the Study of Higher Education, told the Star that empirical research has “thoroughly substantiated” that students applying under hard, early deadlines such as Nov. 1 are more likely to be white, affluent students with high test scores, high grade-point averages, and college-educated parents. Early admissions models are better suited for families that have “substantial experience with and resources for navigating the college process,” she said.
Research shows that early admission models don’t align with the timelines of first-generation college students, low-income students, students of color, and rural students, Salazar said. Students who don’t have as much experience with and need help navigating the college application process make their decisions later in their senior year of high school, since it’s often a life-changing decision requiring research, campus visits and comparison of financial aid offers, she said.
Higher average GPA
Garimella told the Faculty Senate at a March 2 meeting that the average GPA of students coming in is 3.6, higher than in years past.
“I just want to remind you that we’re focused on recruiting graduates and not just numbers,” Garimella told UA faculty senators.
UA Provost Patricia Prelock separately explained that goal, saying students who are admitted should have the necessary preparation, opportunity and support to graduate.
“For us, it is unconscionable to have a student leave college with significant debt and no degree to show for it,” Prelock wrote in an op-ed column for the Star about the admissions changes.
At the March Faculty Senate meeting, Prelock acknowledged the anxiety people were feeling, since the admission of students also affects the university’s finances and the planning of academic curriculums.
A pedestrian walks through the Student Success District and the main library at the University of Arizona.
She said there are reports across the nation that most public universities were seeing large drops in the numbers of applicants, particularly in the Rocky Mountain states.
“More students are choosing not to go to college, and many more are choosing to go to community colleges first. That’s why our community college effort is so important,” Prelock said. “But we do have a strong pool of applicants as the president said; we get applications every single day.”
“Once we start (giving out) financial aid packages, we’ll see an increase in admissions,” she added.
19% accepted to UA go on to enroll
In addition to the number of applications, a university’s yield rate is also considered important — the percentage of admitted students who actually choose to enroll. Prelock said UA’s typical yield rate has been about 19% and its goal is to reach an average of about 23% to 25%.
Carol Brochin, an associate professor in UA’s College of Education, asked Prelock about the yield rate at the March meeting. She said the College of Education had admitted 555 students at that point, of which only 39 students chose to enroll, which felt “particularly low.”
“It seems like some colleges are as low as even 7% (in yield rate) and others are considerably higher,” Brochin said. The College of Education needs 70% of admitted students to enroll by May 1 in order to get a class size comparable to last year’s, Brochin said.
She asked Prelock to provide information on why certain students were being accepted, and others weren’t, the rubric for making these decisions, and the percentage of students across colleges who had accepted UA’s offer of admission.
Prelock said UA’s acceptance rate is at 82%, and that the UA now has a “holistic approach” that goes beyond GPAs when looking at student applications. However, she said the university doesn’t share these rubrics because it’s a “confidential blind process” to make sure it’s fair.
Gary Rhoades, a professor in UA’s Center for the Study of Higher Education, later told the Star, “The deans are also frustrated because they can’t get answers to, for example, what is the rubric, how is it that you’re rejecting people who we know in the past would’ve been accepted.”
Kristina Wong Davis, vice president for enrollment management and dean of admissions, told faculty senators the UA was admitting students who met the Arizona Board of Regents’ admission requirements for the university — students with a 3.0 GPA or those in the top 25% of their class — and those who can be successful. She said the UA denied admission to very few students relative to the size of the application pool.
Secretary of the Faculty Katie Zeiders asked Prelock if the administration was expecting a first-year undergraduate class size of 5,000-6,000 or aiming higher at 7,500 or even 9,500, as UA had previously. Prelock said they were looking for a class size in the 7,000-8,000 range, but that UA won’t be going back to the 9,500 range ever.
UA’s enrollment last fall of 7,500 first-year students was a 19% decline from the previous year. Among those students, 62.5% were Arizona residents and 37.5% were out-of-state students. Prelock said at the time that the UA intentionally changed its enrollment strategy to have smaller, “right-sized” classes, give more access to Arizona students and those who need financial aid, and cut back on merit-based scholarships for out-of-state students.
Disadvantage to non-traditional students?
At the same time, faculty are also lamenting changes UA made to its New Start program. The 50-year-old summer program is designed for qualified, lower-income and first-generation Latina/Latino students. It has now been made invitation-only.
Rhoades, the higher education professor, said the changes crush the dreams of many who hoped to become students.
“As a ‘land-grant’ university ... we have a responsibility to serve the state (and tribal nations) by affording access to capable, first gen Arizona applicants of all backgrounds,” Rhoades wrote in an op-ed on admissions in the Tucson Sentinel. “The New Start program has demonstrated success in facilitating students’ graduation. With over 12,000 alumni, it is beloved in the community.”
Prelock said she hopes the ”holistic review,” in which UA is considering student applicants’ experiences, achievements and aspirations as well as GPAs, helps to identify students who might have been overlooked before.
“It also reflects our recognition that students from rural and underserved communities may not always have access to the same academic opportunities as those from better-resourced districts and private schools. Comprehensive review allows us to evaluate all students’ potential fully,” Prelock wrote in her op-ed for the Star.
Prospective students and parents walk past one of the wildcat sculptures on the University of Arizona Mall during a guided tour of the campus in late March.
Prelock declined to be interviewed by the Star, but in her op-ed said UA’s core admission requirements haven’t changed and Arizona students who meet the standards established by the Arizona Board of Regents are still being admitted.
What’s changed now is how the UA evaluates all applications, including those that fall just outside of ABOR’s requirements, Prelock said, adding the goal is to support all Arizona students.
Salazar, of the Center for the Study of Higher Education, said the holistic review of applications is usually a standard model for more selective institutions that receive an overwhelming number of applications and is not as common or standard in primarily public, ”open-access institutions” such as UA that aren’t as selective.
Rhoades said academically successful Arizonans, even with 3.7 GPAs, are being told in early action decisions that UA’s main campus isn’t accepting them. These applicants are being told to go to UA Global or consider study abroad options in some cases, or to wait for regular decisions, which were to come at the end of March, Rhoades wrote.
This process is designed to increase the institution’s percentage of mostly “high-scoring, wealthy, affluent” out-of-state students and some in-state students, he told the Star. The UA really wants students who are “national merit scholars, (who) come from families with considerable resources and household income,” and after that is when they come to back to in-state students to recruit them, Rhoades contends.
In her op-ed, Prelock spoke about UA’s outreach team in different Arizona counties, which includes professionals working directly with schools, counselors and families to help students through the application process, and said these are producing results. She said the UA has seen an increase in student enrollment from 14 out of Arizona’s 15 counties, including Pima and Maricopa counties.
Prelock also talked about alternative pathways for students to get to the UA, saying the school works closely with Pima Community College to help hundreds of students each year transfer to the UA, and that options to enroll in Arizona Online and the University of Arizona Global Campus also exist.
Salazar, however, said empirical research on admissions suggests UA’s changed admissions process would disadvantage rural Arizona students.
These sorts of policies are more beneficial for the universities that adopt them than they are for students, Salazar said, adding that they allow the institution to identify enthusiastic students who are keen to attend, and this increases the percentage of admitted students who choose to enroll.
“Yield is a really important metric for institutions in terms of their selectivity, in terms of their prestige,” she said. With students applying through early action, the university is getting a higher proportion of students who are less likely to need financial aid, will pay full tuition, and have higher test scores and academic achievement, Salazar said.
If the university intends to keep these accelerated timelines in place, it needs to do a much better and more intentional job of ensuring there are structural support systems in place for students, Salazar said. Better recruitment practices and individualized and personalized support for students are some things that can be done, she said.
Graduation rates, prestige
Christopher Hsieh, a college and career counselor at Catalina Foothills High School, told the Star in early March that the UA was still automatically accepting students with a core GPA of 3.0. Hsieh said the core GPA is what all in-state Arizona schools look at.
The holistic review is “really more about bringing in the type of students who will graduate in four years, who will invest in their infrastructure and their resources,” Hsieh said. “I think the U of A’s graduation rate is really poor [its four-year graduation rate is 55%].
"And so, I think in order to retain and build enrollment and to have the type of prestigious university they are hoping to create, I think that starts with attracting the right type of students.”
The core GPA is “your four years of math, four years of English, three years of science, two years of social studies, two years of a foreign language and one year of a fine art or CTE (Career and Technical Education) class,” he said.
A cumulative GPA, on the other hand, includes a lot of the students’ electives, physical education classes, art classes, business classes, Hsieh said. Depending on how students do in the non-core classes, their core GPA could be higher or lower than the cumulative GPA, he said, but the latter is probably higher.
This year, 247 or 52% of seniors from Catalina Foothills High School applied to the UA by the Nov. 1 early action deadline, out of which 217 or 88% were accepted on Jan. 15. Among those who didn’t get in during early action, five students were denied seats at the UA and the rest were moved to regular decision. Ten more students were then accepted in regular decision.
UA spokesperson Mitch Zak declined to answer questions from the Star about the reason UA changed its admission process from rolling admissions to early action deadline, the latest number of applications the UA had received, and the admissions rubric the UA was using to accept or decline students.
“Our focus is on every admitted student being prepared to thrive, graduate and build a meaningful future. We are also strengthening pathways to the university from community and tribal colleges to support Arizona students who would benefit from those programs,” Zak said in a written statement. “We encourage prospective students to apply soon so their applications can be carefully considered and, if admitted, they can commit by May 1 to join the fall 2026 first-year cohort.”
