Applications surge to flagship universities

The University of Florida makes a promise to its applicants: All essays they submit will be read at least twice.

Every year, that becomes more challenging. About 35,000 prospective students applied to the state’s flagship school in Gainesville during the fall 2017 admission cycle. That was up more than half compared with fall 2006.

To get through so many files takes discipline. “Right now, it is all hands on deck,” Rick Bryant, director of admissions operations for the university, said this month. His goal is to release decisions by Feb. 9 for those who applied by the Nov. 15 deadline. His mantra: “OK, everybody, let’s make sure we stay focused. Stay on pace.”

Prominent public universities nationwide are swamped every year with more and more applications, making the job of admissions teams more difficult. A Washington Post analysis of the latest available federal admissions data found more than 1.3 million applications for freshman admission were filed to the 50 state flagships for fall 2016.

That was up 79 percent compared with 10 years earlier.

There is no sign the trend is abating. More than 89,000 students have applied this year to attend school at the University of California‘s Berkeley campus in fall 2018 as freshmen. A staggering 113,409 applied to the California flagship’s sister campus in Los Angeles. When the Los Angeles Times asked UCLA’s enrollment chief, Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, how she would make it through the admissions review season, Copeland-Morgan answered: “Joyfully.”

How universities screen all those applicants varies from state to state. At the universities of Florida, Maryland, Virginia and others, the process is known as “holistic review.” That means they take into consideration transcripts, test scores, recommendations, essays and other information to glean a full picture of the personal and academic qualifications of each student.