The Rice Thresher, Vol. 96, No. 16, Ed. 1 Friday, January 16, 2009 Page: 4 of 20
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4 NEWS
the Rice Thresher
Friday, January 16,2009
O APPLICATIONS
FROM PAGE 1
increase in the same category.
Vice President for Enrollment
Chris Munoz attributed the signifi-
cant spike in foreign national appli-
cants from the People's Republic of
China to extensive exposure of the
university and Leebron and his wife
Ping Sun in the PRC.
Last summer, Rice played host
to a number of PRC university pres-
idents who visited to learn more
about U.S. educational systems.
"That was an agreement that was
made between the Chinese Ministry
of Education and Rice which really
was engineered by President David
Leebron," Munoz said.
Leebron was also one of 11 univer-
sity presidents from around the world
invited by the Chinese Ministry of Ed-
ucation to the opening ceremony of
the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
"The president and his wife Ping
have been traveling all throughout
Asia, but focusing upon the PRC,"
Munoz said. "That kind of relation-
ship-building and connections are
important ways to gain more name
recognition, and certainly the pres-
ident has done a good job."
Despite the economic downturn,
Rice remains one of the best values
in education and thus one of the top
choices of highly qualified applicants.
In the 2009 rankings released
earlier this month, Kiplinger's Per-
sonal Finance magazine and Princ-
eton Review's "Best Value Colleges
for 2009" both ranked Rice as the
fourth best value of private schools.
Last year, Princeton Review ranked
Rice as #1 in best value among pri-
vate schools in its 2008 edition of
"America's Best-Value Colleges."
Kiplinger's used metrics of aca-
demic quality and affordability in
ranking colleges, with academic
quality accounting for two-thirds
of the total score. The Princeton
Review based its rankings on more
than 30 factors in the three areas of
academics, cost of attendance and
financial aid.
"The early signs suggest that
low-income students in the end
have not been discouraged, that
they are applying," Munoz said.
"Rice has historically been known
to attract lower and middle income
students, and while I think that's
changed somewhat as our tuition
has gone up, one metric you can
look at is the number of students re-
ceiving Pell Grants, and for that we
are among the top. We're way up in
African-American [applicants] and
we're way up in underrepresented
minority [applicants] in general.
We're going to have a very diverse
socioeconomic profile of students,
as we have in the past."
In order to encourage low-in-
come students to apply to Rice in
current hard economic times, the
university expanded its financial
aid policy while retaining its policy
of need-blind admission last De-
cember. Rice extended its no-loan
policy to students who qualify for
need-based aid from families with
annual incomes of $80,000 or less.
"We have a very defined ap-
proach to administering and award-
ing financial aid," Munoz said.
ED applicants must sign a bind-
ing agreement to attend the univer-
sity if admitted, an agreement ac-
knowledged by not only the student
but also his or her parents and the
guidance counselor.
Munoz said ED applications are
due Nov. 1. Applying early may give
accepted applicants peace of mind
by mid-December, which is when
accepted students are notified.
"The reason why students might
apply under the Early Decision is
that they have clearly decided that
Rice University is the university for
them," Munoz said. "So the benefit
for students applying under ED is
that they are notified by Dec.15 and
they now know that where they're
going to go to a university, so that
now they can focus on other con-
cerns and interests as they complete
their senior year of high school."
Regular Decision applicants
submit their applications by Jan. 2
and receive their admission results
by the end of March.
Despite waiting longer for their
decisions to come back, RD appli-
cants have the benefit of having
all of the important information
needed to make the best decision in
terms of financial aid by May 1, the
deadline to submit a deposit to Rice
and to indicate matriculation.
Munoz cited the challenge in
making admissions decisions when
most applicants are similarly aca-
demically qualified.
"The truth is that the difference
between the students we admit and
the students we ask to be on our
waitlist — if we use academic quali-
fying standards, in general you could
not tell any difference," Munoz said.
"So those are the hard conditions.
If you don't fit that, then you have
no chance of being admitted. If you
didn't have enough of the tools to
meet the high quality education, it'd
be awfully difficult for you."
However, Munoz said academic
qualifications were not the only cri-
teria Rice looks for in a student.
"What other qualities would
they bring?" Munoz said. "Do the
students have experience? Have
they participated in co-curricular
activities that would speak to lead
ership? Have they been involved
in some way that enhances the
experience of where they've been?
Have they contributed to make their
school, club or community better?
It's not just academics. Although
academics is absolute, it's more
than academics."
In an attempt to predict the
number of applications this year,
the Admission Office used a num-
ber of tools and data, including as-
sessment of demonstrated interest
expressed by students, to anticipate
a sizable increase in the number of
applications this year.
"The size of the pool of appli-
cants was going to be up signifi-
cantly," Munoz said. "But what be-
came very concerning was that at
one point we were down 24 percent
in applications. The deadline of
Jan. 2 came and just the day before
there was a rush of applications.
We ended up not just being even
but being up significantly, which
correlated with our projections and
predictions early on. We simply
were not seeing the behavior of a
large applicant pool."
However, Munoz pointed espe-
cially to the hard economic times
in trying to predict the number of
students applying to Pice.
"I also was concerned by the
fact that we were down signifi-
cantly in the number of financial
aid forms," Munoz said. "We were
very concerned because it looked
to us as though the economy was
influencing students not to apply —
the studeni'3 capacity to meet the
cost in light of the environment if
they're worried if Mom or Dad go-
ing to keep their job, all those kind
of things, I am so pleased that we
are up."
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Chun, Lily & Farmer, Dylan. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 96, No. 16, Ed. 1 Friday, January 16, 2009, newspaper, January 16, 2009; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth443051/m1/4/?q=Lamar+University: accessed June 6, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.