This has been the year of weddings for me. My son got married in November down in Florida, and we will be attending four weddings in the next 3 months. I even had to go buy an additional suit so I would not be seen wearing the same outfit four times. One key for any wedding is planning things down to the smallest detail. My son’s wedding was a small one down in the Florida panhandle, and we rented a house to fit everyone invited to the wedding. The size of the house drove many things, from how many people could attend the wedding, how much food to buy, how many chairs/tables to rent, parking at the house, etc. The one central theme for everything was to make sure that everyone had a great time. This meant everyone had their own room, there was enough food and drink for everyone, there were enough parking spaces, the common areas could fit everyone, and so on. When one couple said they could not attend, that freed up space for another couple to join us. But one key to the event was that we could not go over the guest limit. We only had a certain number of rooms/beds in the house, and we did not want to make people sleep on couches or floors. There was a limited amount of space for the dinner afterwards (both in table space and chairs), and parking was limited as well. In addition, the rental company had a limit on the number of people who could stay at the house, and it was firm. Luckily, my son and daughter-in-law were great planners, and had everything ready for an amazing event.
So what does this have to do with admissions? UGA wants to make sure all of our students have a great time while they are enrolled at UGA. For entering first-year students, this means you have a space to live on campus, you are able to sign up for classes you need, graduate from UGA in four years, and that you have access to all the great opportunities UGA provides, from football tickets to seat space in the dining hall, among other things. But at the same time, we are limited in space for freshmen, with the maximum number we can enroll set at 6,200 students. As such, UGA Admissions needs to be very careful in our admissions offers, as it is difficult to predict where a student will choose to attend college. In college admissions-speak, we refer to how many students enroll out of the number of students who are admitted as “yield”, and with large numbers of admitted and enrolling students at UGA, even a small shift in percentages can have a big impact. Last fall, a large midwestern university was surprised by the larger than expected number of freshman who said yes to enrolling there (so a jump in yield), and were over-enrolled by 1,600 freshman when the plan was to actually be down by 300 students. Admissions offices do their best to predict who will enroll using data from prior years, but it is never a perfect science. Any number of factors can impact this, from admissions decisions at other colleges, FAFSA issues, athletic success, scholarships, etc. In order to make sure that UGA does not overenroll our first-Year class, we need to plan for a higher than expected yield.
So what does this mean for this year? Since we are trying to be very careful to not over-enroll the class, we expect there is a very good chance that we will need to go to the Wait List this year. The Wait List allows us to make sure we are able to get the class to the 6,200 number, but not go over. In the larger picture, I would rather admit a student off the Wait List than tell them we are over-extended and there is no space for them to live on campus, eat on campus or sign up for the classes they need. How many students will we admit off the Wait List? I have no idea, as that depends on how many people deposit by May 1, but it could (and that is a big could) be upwards of several hundred students, especially in-state students, as this is the group with the most potential to over our estimate numbers. Again, whether it is attending a wedding or being a part of our first-year class, I want everyone to have a wonderful experience and not face any issues with limited space or opportunities. We will have a larger Wait List than in prior years to ensure we are able to make our class of 6,200 students, and it will be imperative that if you are offered the Wait List, that you let us know if you want to stay on it.
Just so you know, the wedding was wonderful, the house was great, and I even got the honor of officiating the ceremony (the original officiant was hospitalized, just another example of unexpected challenges that pop up). And I hope that by the start of Fall term in August, we will have an amazing class of 6,200 first-year students excited to be at UGA and ready to take on the Fall semester.
Go Dawgs!
PS – Those are the real rings from the wedding.