The pool of 6,126 applicants is the second largest in the College's history, falling short of last year's total by approximately 100 students. Several of the applications remain unprocessed, meaning that the total will climb to about 6,135, according to Parker.
This year's pool is remarkable for several reasons apart from its large size. Academically, it is one of the strongest groups ever: its mean SAT scores are 691 Verbal and 689 Math. The average ACT score is 30.
It is also the most racially diverse group in the history of the College. The pool is augmented by 298 African-Americans, 348 Latinos, 606 Asian-Americans, 359 students of mixed heritage and 17 Native Americans. 741 citizens of foreign countries are also applying to Amherst.
Any diligent reader of the Committee on Academic Priorities' (CAP) report and the recent BusinessWeek article about the College will realize that such diversity is hardly an accident. President Anthony Marx has sworn to bolster Amherst's minority ranks, a promise that is already manifesting itself in applicant pools. "We've always actively recruited [a diverse student body] by sending information through the mail, visiting high schools, hosting diversity open houses," said Parker. "What's happened is that our recruiting has become more sophisticated. Advanced information technology has allowed us to study and reach applicants better."
Furthermore, Parker predicts that the trend toward ethnic variety is bound to continue. "The applicant pool is going to become even more diverse racially," he said. "It's a function of the [changing] demographics of the United States: the word 'minority' doesn't even apply in California anymore, for example. We're going to become more diverse socio-economically also. Word will get out that the financial aid program here is among the best in the country. Even though we're already better than most colleges, the number of low-income kids is going to increase."
The strengthening of the College's financial aid resources, Parker claims, will be underwritten by a large-scale fund-raising campaign that has already instigated a 19 percent leap in the College's endowment over the last year. A large proportion of these funds may go to one of the CAP report's most intriguing, and expensive, proposals: extending the College's promise of need-blind aid for U.S. citizens to foreign students as well. Ratifying the suggestion would undoubtedly lead to an astronomical growth of international applicants, as per the CAP report's recommendation.
Another interesting-some would say alarming-trend is that, while the applicant pool has become more balanced racially, its proportions by gender have skewed dramatically. 55 percent of this year's applicant group are women, the highest ever. This ratio is reflective of a national movement toward predominantly female applicants, according to a recent article in the online magazine Salon. The prospects of an unbalanced campus are troubling to Parker. "We're one of the few small liberal arts colleges that have managed to remain at about 50-50 [men and women]," he said. "We're in a wonderful position because we've never had to take gender into account [in the past], and we've just naturally wound up with an even split. But we could wind up 58% women in the near future. There are many liberal arts colleges whose names you would recognize who are practicing affirmative action for men right now."
Yet another challenge for the Office of Admission is determining exactly how many students need to be accepted in order to fill the class of 2010-this year the target class size is 428. The College has already accepted 120 early decision deposits, leaving 308 slots still available. Last year, approximately 35 percent of admits matriculated at the College. This year Parker anticipates accepting between 975 and 1025 applicants, meaning the ideal matriculation rate will be about 30 percent.
The Office of Admission uses a complex statistical model to calculate the appropriate number of acceptances, in which a matriculation rate is predicted for each group of applicants. For example, legacies, who constitute about 10 percent of each class, tend to matriculate at a higher rate than other applicants; the model takes that into account. A wide range of other factors, such as the number of students who go abroad each semester, are also factored in. Although the model has performed very accurately in the past, even a small deviation from 30 percent to 35 percent could potentially represent what Parker refers to as a "nightmare scenario" of over-enrollment. "We'd much rather wind up with too few students than too many," Parker said. "Ideally we would come in 20 to 25 students short and then go to the waitlist. There are always going to be some amazingly talented kids on the waitlist, kids who we look at and say, 'How could we not have let them in in the first place?'"