Artwork courtesy of staff artist Melodie Lapot
Montezuma Mesa is in the midst of a drastic change. San Diego State is overhauling its reputation as a perpetual spring break school, a mere mainstay on the Playboy Magazine party radar and a basketball-crazed campus. SDSU is challenging many Ivy League schools with a paltry acceptance rate near 10 percent, and the academic standing of its incoming students only continues to bloom. Being an Aztec has a new meaning in the eyes of the public and every student — whether past, present or future — stands to benefit.
Last fall, SDSU received nearly 60,000 undergraduate applications for the fall semester. Counting both transfers and incoming freshman, only 6,174 undergraduate students were admitted, which puts the acceptance rate at just more than 10 percent. Moreover, the GPA and SAT scores for the incoming class, 3.78 and 1148 respectively, are the highest in SDSU history. The class starting in Fall 2009 had an average incoming GPA of 3.47, and an SAT score of 1039.
Scores are continuing to increase, which is inevitably making admission into SDSU a more highly valued achievement. This upward trend is a direct consequence of receiving more and more applications for fewer available spots, which only bolsters the competition. The result? A radical improvement among SDSU’s future pools of applicants.
There’s a stark reality with these statistics. Ivy League schools such as Cornell, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania all reported higher acceptance rates than SDSU last year. Even notable public universities had higher acceptance rates than SDSU — University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (29.9 percent), UT-Austin (45.9 percent), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (54.62 percent) and the University of Iowa (78 percent).
Acceptance rates alone do not measure the prestige of a university, but they are indicative of the type of students who are seeking an education there. This plays directly into the public’s perception of the value a degree from a particular university.
These acceptance statistics are directly related to larger systemic factors. Prevailing economic conditions, the cost of pursuing higher education, budget cuts, overall increases in educational scores and the number of applicants for these schools are all elements of the bigger picture.
At SDSU specifically, the incoming student body is much different than in recent history. The quality of education among incoming students is clearly improving. This fact alone will inevitably result in an improvement of the educational value of a degree from SDSU, which thereby enhances the value of every Aztec’s education.
SDSU President Stephen L. Weber has watched this perception change, and said, “I think this is a great university and I don’t think it was perceived to be as good as it is, and in recent years, thanks to a lot of people working very hard, we’ve begun to get the recognition it deserves and that is very gratifying.”
Many of these admissions limitations are a result of California’s budgetary cuts to the California StateUniversity system, which will likely slash an additional $500 million this year.
There may, however, be a small silver lining in the massive budget cuts: Heightened competition means only the most deserving students, as decided by an established admissions criterion, will be admitted to pursue a degree. Then, as these graduates impact the post-college world, they will reinforce this overriding perception of what it means to be an Aztec. A mutual dependence exists — the education validates the student, and the student reflects the educational offering of the school. As the quality of incoming students improves, naturally these other values do as well.
SDSU has long been perceived as a party haven, a perception supported by drug busts, “undie” runs and a hungover student body after weekends of ceaseless parties. But change is happening. As the incoming classes improve, so does SDSU as a whole. In last year’s All-University Convocation Weber said, “The reputation of and respect for San Diego State has grown.”
Aztecs, the days of the lazy SDSU student are dead. With the budget crisis and the evolving admissions standards of this university, we have inherited the responsibility to meet heightened expectations. Each incoming class adds prestige to our degrees, but we must take it upon ourselves to improve the worth of our diplomas from within. It’s time to trash old habits and make being an Aztec something to take pride in.
—Brody Burns is seeking a master’s in business administration.
—The views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Daily Aztec.
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While I applaud the improving quality of the entering SDSU class, I think that this article grossly overstates the meaning of SDSU’s low acceptance rate. The number of students applying to a college like SDSU has zero relationship to the quality of a typical Ivy League applicant. I think it is absolutely ludicrous to mention SDSU in the same sentence as elite institutions like Cornell, Brown, or Penn. The caliber of students applying to and attending an Ivy League school is In another universe compared to SDSU.
Let me be clear, NO ONE would ever think SDSU should ever be spoken of in the same sentence as the aforementioned elite universities. Doing so reduces the credibility of the article to a laughable level. I understand one taking pride in one’s school, but I don’t think the word prestige (as in top tier college perspective) is one that I would apply to SDSU just
yet. If SDSU ever has average admitted students with ACT scores above 32 and SAT
scores above 2200, I will gladly give SDSU license to be mentioned in the same sentence as Dartmouth, and Penn.
The above article about SDSU reminds me of something. I have found that a number of people in So. California have an continuous overblown view of the reputation of the colleges that exist in the region. To be blunt, outside of the west coast, the only undergraduate programs that are viewed as having a “prestige” or “elite” status are Stanford, Pomona, and Caltech. When you talk to anyone who has a kid that can get into a top school and the ability to afford to pay anything for it, even UCLA and Berkeley are not considered to be in the elite group of schools for obtaining a bachelors degree. As you can see USC does not even make the cut.
I personally know parents of kids in “elite” colleges and other top end business people that
share the above view. The west coast college scene is dominated by big public universities. As a public college educated parent of two kids that attended very prestigious private colleges, I can tell you the quality and student experience between a public and private
college is amazingly different. You have to remember the reputation of UCLA, UCSD, and Berkeley is based more on their distinguished faculty and graduate programs, not the greatness of their undergraduate experience. Additionally, there are over 27 colleges (by the way all private, mostly, liberal arts schools) on a per undergraduate student basis that place more students on a percentage basis in top end graduate programs than Berkeley or UCLA.
One final note, I think the overblown view of the quality of most California public colleges is the result of too many people in this state being pushed through colleges who are simply not high quality college capable students. When you have 23 Cal St. schools and 8 UC undergraduate UCs, that need to be filled with California high school students who perform lower than 2/3 of the students across America, you will always have a distorted overblown view of California’s higher education system.
Come back to Planet Earth Foothill Rancher, you sound like a total mental case. Brody, the average GPA for incoming freshman at SDSU in 2009 was 3.74.
While I agree that SDSU shouldn’t be compared to “elite” schools you mention, you sound like you have something shoved WAY too far up where the sun don’t shine! I bet you have 40 stickers from your kids private universities on your car so you can feel validated. I also like how you sat there for 40 mins thinking about how you could further your snobbery and knock California’s school system. At least people are trying to be educated, but maybe they should just stop all together because they “under perform 2/3 of the students across America”, hell maybe we should all stop. Society would probably be a great place if we discouraged everyone from trying to get an education.
For the fall of 2010, SDSU received 61,898 applications from incoming freshmen and transfer students and accepted 16,672 students. Of the accepted students, 5,687 (34.1%) enrolled.
According to this article, nearly 60,000 applications were received for the Fall of 2011 and only 6,174 students were accepted. If this is indeed true, there was a 63% or 10,498 student decrease in admitted students from the previous year. To take it a step further, if the enrollment yield remains consistent with the fall of 2010, SDSU expects to enroll only 2,105 students. That is a 3,582 student decrease from the Fall of 2010.
I know there is a budget crisis in California, but I do not know how SDSU continues to operate with such a drastic drop in enrollment. The numbers in the article do not make sense.
As I suspected, the author of the article used the number of enrollment slots, rather than the number of admitted students, in his acceptance rate calculation.
According to the SDSU webpage, SDSU received nearly 60,000 undergraduate applications for approximately 6,174 undergraduate “enrollment slots” for fall 2011.
http://newscenter.sdsu.edu/sdsu_newscenter/news.aspx?s=72846
Channel 8 lists the acceptance numbers for the fall of 2011.
The school accepted 14,480 high school seniors and 2,748 transfers, said spokeswoman Gina Jacobs. SDSU expects to enroll 3,657 freshmen and 2,517 undergraduate transfer students, Jacobs said.
http://www.cbs8.com/story/14258884/sdsu-announces-13k-applicants-accepted-for-fall-semester?clienttype=printable
So the acceptance rate is 28.7% NOT slightly more than 10% as mentioned in the article.
This guy has the gall to write this while he is pursuing an MBA, the most worthless of the overpriced degrees. Good luck paying those loans back with your scarlet letter of an SDSU degree, hah.