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Jerry Lucido's job keeps getting harder every year, not that he's complaining.
He'd be worried if it wasn't. That may make little sense for most jobs, but for
the past four years Lucido has headed the University's admissions office.
It's a job that Lucido believes cannot be made easy if you're doing everything
you can to do it right.
Each year, he and his admissions officers must sift through thousands of
applications, each filled with SAT scores and GPA averages and high school
transcripts.
The first task of the office is to help generate interest in the University
among the most gifted, the most promising, the most prepared students in the
state, the country and the world.
And they have. From 1996 to 2000, the number of annual applications increased
from 15,789 to 17,571, an increase of 11 percent.
During the same period, the number of freshmen enrolling each year increased
from 3,276 to 3,420, a climb of only 4 percent.
More and more, admissions officers are forced to tell good students no. And
that is never easy.
From 1996 to 2000, the average score of the Scholastic Achievement Test for
incoming freshmen rose from 1,250 to 1,287; during the same period, the number
of National Merit Scholars rose from 33 to 137.
In 2000, nearly 10 percent of the incoming freshmen were high school
valedictorians or salutatorians, and 36 percent ranked among the top 10
students in their high schools.
Each year, the pool of worthy candidates keeps getting deeper, broader and
richer in its diversity.
And each year, that's good for the University, because it can afford to be
increasingly selective.
And that's why Lucido does everything he can to make his job harder. As any
farmer knows, it's no easy task trying to separate cream from cream.
Dual - and dueling - responsibilities
As he does every year, Lucido will appear before the University Board of
Trustees later this month with a thick packet of charts and numbers that will
paint a picture of the freshman students who arrived on campus last month.
Among the things he will be able to tell them is that between 3,600 and 3,650
freshmen came to Chapel Hill. Together, they represent the largest entering
class in Carolina history.
And for a third consecutive year, Lucido will be able to tell trustees that the
incoming class is the best prepared in the University's history.
Of course, the simplest thing he could do would be to raise the average SAT
scores of an incoming class, Lucido said. But doing so would turn the art of
evaluating people into a mathematical equation, and in the process, turn this
institution into a place few people would recognize as Carolina.
Lucido said he and his colleagues, along with all the faculty and staff members
who work to help recruit a class, have two responsibilities that they must
constantly juggle.
The first responsibility is to be fair to each student who wants to come here.
The second, overarching responsibility is to bring in a class that in its size
and composition reflects the University's complex - and changing -- blend of
institutional characteristics and priorities.
"We've moved beyond the idea of admission decisions based solely on predicting
academic success," Lucido said. "We're to the point where academic success is
an expectation. We are at the point now where we have to try to decide who is
the best served by coming here and who can best contribute."
For close to half century, for instance, Carolina has strived to increase the
racial mix of its student body. Even as affirmative action programs across the
country have come under attack, Carolina has remained firm in its conviction
that race is a factor among many that should be considered to allow the
University to craft an optimal or ideal class, Lucido said.
One of the trends that Lucido points to is that average SAT scores for incoming
African-American students continue to rise even as their numbers on campus
continue to grow.
"To me, it's part of making sure as we train North Carolina's leaders,
everybody has a chance to participate in that training, particularly those who
have been historically excluded from it," Lucido said. "I will argue forcefully
that race in the United States still matters. If we wish to have a society in
which people who are different from each other can understand and respect their
differences, we ought to have an educational environment that reflects those
differences."
An expanding mission
All of this, Lucido said, is a long way of saying that there is no such thing
as a "Carolina prototype."
"There is somewhat of a prototype emerging in our discussions and that is
someone who is very academically prepared who has a number of what I will call
personal qualities that comport well with the mission and goals and
opportunities of the University," Lucido said.
Intellectual curiosity. Being open to new ideas and cultures. Being
community-minded and engaged. They are among the qualities that are valued
highly.
"In shorthand, we look for students who have the potential to benefit from
Carolina based on their personal characteristics and their preparations, and we
look for students who have the potential to contribute to Carolina by virtue of
those same things."
And increasingly, the admissions office is looking for and finding students
from outside of North Carolina who have that potential. And that idea is taking
time for many within the state to get accustomed to.
Carolina, as the first and once the only university in the state, carried the
historic mission of educating the sons of North Carolina. The state
constitution codified the notion that the goal of the University would be to
make access to higher education possible for anyone who sought it.
Now, of course, Carolina is part of a 16-member university system. And now, the
state operates a system of 58 community colleges that reaches every corner of
the state. These colleges not only offer an array of vocational education, they
serve as a stepping stone to a four-year college as well, Lucido said.
As these opportunities for students have grown, Carolina has evolved into one
of the premier public universities in the country. What that means, Lucido
said, is that fewer and fewer students who come here will be first-generation
college students. And more and more of the students who seek to come here will
be from outside the state.
Evidence of this trend can be found in the rising number of outside students
who apply to Carolina. On average, about 7,000 students from within the state
apply to Carolina, compared to about 10,000 from without.
But the UNC system has an 18 percent cap on out-of-state students for each
member institution, a cap that forces Carolina to turn away most of these
out-of-state students, regardless of their qualifications.
Lucido thinks the 18 percent limit fences out students who would add to the
strength and diversity of incoming classes.
"We don't want to do anything to discourage the heartfelt and deeply felt
connection that the citizens of the state feel toward Chapel Hill," Lucido
said.
At the same time, expanding the geographic breadth of the University's student
population would further enrich the educational experience for all, just as
having a diverse range of in-state students has done, Lucido said. So
attracting and accepting a growing number of the best and brightest from beyond
the state's borders would make for an even stronger campus.
Each of the 7,000 in-state students who applies competes for 2,870 available
slots, which means that about four out of 10 who apply are admitted. In
contrast, the 10,000 students from out of state who apply compete for about 630
openings, which means about 94 out of every 100 applicants are turned away.
More than a numbers game
As the competition intensifies to get into the best universities, students have
become increasingly savvy in packaging themselves to appear on paper to be what
those schools are looking for.
The challenge is to cut through the neat packaging to the real person, and to
make sure that a student is right for Carolina.
Increasing weight is now given to essays that prospective students write, along
with recommendations from teachers and guidance counselors and interviews with
prospective students.
"In our reviews, we ask teachers, `Would our faculty want to teach this
student? Help us answer this question.'"
SAT scores are designed to measure reasoning ability. They do it well. But
that's all they do, and the admissions office's responsibilities run deeper
than that.
Carolina seeks students who are not only capable of learning, but compelled to
learn. And a high school teacher who has had a student in his or her class
knows better than anyone if a student possesses that spark of curiosity to go
along with his or her brainpower.
Students know that getting straight As in an easy high school curriculum will
not be enough to pass muster here and that is why more and more high school
students are taking Advanced Placement (AP) courses, which are classes they can
take for college credit. From 1996 to 2000, the number of Advance Placement
exams submitted to Carolina rose from 5,764 to 8,524.
This trend has triggered a continuing debate among admission officers about how
to weigh the curriculum a student has chosen. Should a student be judged solely
by how demanding the curriculum is as measured by the number of AP classes
taken in math and science? Or should a high school curriculum be judged more on
its breadth?
If it came down to a choice between a student in one curriculum or the other,
which one would get in? There's no easy answer, Lucido said. "To build a class
we need each of them. A good class is not just a big conglomeration of
well-rounded individuals. The most exciting class is one that is well-rounded
because it has individuals with a great diversity of talents and achievements
and culture and attitudes of mind."
These students are the sons and daughters of achievement-oriented baby boomers.
These parents track national rankings and know which universities are deemed to
be "the right schools."
And that's part of the problem. Consumer Reports may be able to judge the
relative qualities of refrigerators or cars, but colleges are different.
To be right for each other, a college and a student have to fit.
Not all students are right for Carolina.
But that is not the same as saying that all students who are rejected were not
right.
Each year, more and more students are turned away who were right for
Carolina.
As Lucido sees it, admissions can never be reduced to a numbers game.
In the end, it's not about the numbers.
It's always about people.
Behind the facts on each application there is a face, and some family's hopes
and dreams hanging in the balance.
"The hardest part is saying no to students who really want to be here," Lucido
said. "It's a gut wrenching experience. Every year we talk to families who are
disappointed. `Where did my son fall short?' It's very, very hard coming up
with an answer.
"We simply agree with them about how great their kid is and tell them we just
don't have room. It's very, very hard."
And the University cannot afford to have it any other way.
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