A curious thing happened at UC Merced this year. Freshman applications to this reliable safety school of the University of California — which typically creep up by about 1,500 every year — surged by 16,000, a startling increase that UC reported a couple of weeks ago. That’s a 45% rise in applications for next fall, compared with the usual climb of about 5 percentage points in a single year. Short of magic, how did it happen?
Scott Hagg, UC Merced’s vice chancellor of enrollment management, who arrived on campus last summer, called the increase exciting... He and his team made an array of changes in the fall, most of which had nothing to do with this year’s applications. Except for one: An 11th-hour move on Dec. 19 — involving a direct invitation to a key group of students — made all the difference...
“We sent out a communication to students who had applied to other UC campuses — but not to Merced,” Hagg said. “So the invitation was to put in a late application.” For free. Hagg waived the $80 that UC normally charges to apply to each campus. Some 18,000 students took the bait... The enrollment team made the same offer to transfer students and generated 1,200 new applications, he said. The result? About 5,000 students have already applied to transfer to UC Merced next fall, compared with 4,000 for all of last year...
But the campus may need a new kind of magic for the early interest to translate into actual enrollment... Of the 29,000 high school students who were accepted to UC Merced for fall 2024, just under 2,100 chose to enroll, about 7%.
Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/uc-merced-applications-surge-explained-20180577.php.
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