New OUS policy grants automatic admission

The Oregon State Board of Higher Education recently approved an automatic admissions policy that will guarantee high-achieving students admission to at least one Oregon University System institution.

Qualifications for automatic admission are a 3.4 GPA or above and proficient SAT, ACT or OAKS (Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) test scores. The policy will affect students applying to begin college in the 2012–13 academic school year.

“It’s a route for students who might say, ‘why should I do well in high school?'” Di Saunders, OUS director of communications, said.

“Hopefully it will be an incentive [for] students to stick to the grindstone and take more AP classes.”

OUS K–16 Alignment Technologies Program Manager Lisa Mentz found that one in eight students rejected by OUS with GPAs of 3.4 and above were 10 testing points away from meeting automatic admissions requirements.  

Saunders and OUS Assistant Vice Chancellor Joe Holliday said that the new policy will reap a net gain.

“We hope that the financial impact would be positive, in that we would have more students—especially high-achieving students—staying in Oregon,” Holliday said. “It’s an increase in revenue.”

Saunders emphasized that the policy is not related to financial aid, and that students who are granted admission under the policy face the same financial aid application that other students use.

“It’s not opening the floodgates,” Saunders said.

Mentz is heading up implementation of automatic admissions. Holliday estimated that 20 percent of her job is now devoted to the new policy.

“We’re in the early stages,” Mentz said.

She predicted that the startup costs of the policy will be minimal. She and an advisory group composed of representatives from each OUS campus are working to reword the common admissions application so that the essay questions address automatic admissions applicants and students using the common application alike. This way, separate applications for automatic admissions students—and greater implementation costs—are avoided.

“We’re using existing infrastructure,” Mentz said. 

According to Mentz, the advisory group had its first conference call recently.

The Board is still looking to appoint a PSU representative to the group.

Students accepted into OUS under the automatic admissions policy will be assigned to at least one Oregon campus.

Holliday didn’t foresee increased enrollment resulting from the new policy.

“We actually believe this policy will help us to distribute student enrollment to campuses where there is capacity,” he said.

Referring to the different capacities of large schools like Oregon State and the University of Oregon versus smaller campuses—Western Oregon and Southern Oregon, for example—Mentz said that current admission trends will probably continue.

“The ‘bigs’ tend to push students out; the ‘regionals’ tend to accept students,” she said.

Savunders agreed.

“I don’t see the new policy as being an automatic increase of enrollment,” she said.

Orianna O’Neill, a junior at Metropolitan Learning Center in Portland, said she was already planning on applying to schools in the Oregon network.

“I think it’s a great idea,” she said of the policy. “As someone who focuses on schoolwork a lot…it’d be really nice to have academics work with us some more.” ?