But applicants to UNC-Chapel Hill will not have to wait much longer for their envelopes. The UNC-CH Office of Undergraduate Admissions last week sent out the acceptance and denial letters for the class of 2006.
Stephen Farmer, associate director of undergraduate admissions, said the office was more selective this year because there were more applicants than last year.
Farmer said 748 more students applied this year, bringing the total number of applicants to 17,454. But the office admitted 502 fewer students, which Farmer said is "significantly lower than last year."
Farmer said that because the office aimed for a freshman class of 3,500 for the 2002-03 academic year, only 5,839 applicants were admitted. He said this figure is mainly a response to last year's over-enrollment. The office aimed for 3,500 students in the class of 2005, but 3,687 enrolled.
Farmer said there is no concrete way to determine how many students to admit to meet the admissions goal. "Predicting the number of students who'll say yes to you is a tricky thing," Farmer said. "It's an art, not a science."
Farmer said the office aimed for 3,500 students again this year because it was a number in line with earlier projections. "The University enrollment is more or less negotiated with the office of the (UNC-system) president," Farmer said.
The University usually determines enrollment goals for a particular class a few years in advance. Farmer said enrollment goals are established when the University does its biennial budget.
But the number of students projected to enroll for a given class are not etched in stone. "The projections may be fine-tuned once you get closer to the year you're talking about," Farmer said.
Because of grim budget projections, UNC-system officials began looking this year at tuition to fund future enrollment growth. Last month, the UNC-system Board of Governors passed a systemwide tuition increase of 8 percent for in-state students and 12 percent for out-of-state students to support enrollment growth.