Current undergraduate admissions numbers indicate that the University is achieving its goal of attracting more low-income students. University Dean of Admissions John Blackburn said in June that he hopes to see about a 10-percent increase in low-income students in the Class of 2012. Current numbers indicate a 5-percent increase in low-income students, or those students whose families generally make less than $40,000 annually.
"We're at 189 [low-income students], and that will grow," Blackburn said in mid June, adding that he is hopeful that by the end of the summer, about 200 low-income students will be packing their bags and preparing to move into dorms.
Blackburn said the University received 982 complete applications from low-income students. Of those students, 331 were admitted, and 189 have committed to come to the University so far, Blackburn said. Last year, 951 applied, 304 were accepted and 180 committed. Blackburn explained that as of mid-June last summer, only 165 to 167 of the 180 low-income students who matriculated at the University had committed.
The increase in low-income students is only one unique aspect of the incoming first-year class. More notable, perhaps, is that the Class of 2012 is the first admitted to the University without the option of applying early.
The University announced in September 2006 that it would terminate its early decision program for 2007 in an effort to equalize admissions opportunities for low-income students to the University.
Blackburn said that while some expressed disappointment in the admission change, the overall response exceeded expectations.
"The response rate was very high, higher than we predicted," he said. "It's almost as if we had early decision built into it."
Blackburn said there "are always going to be students who want to be here, whether it's early decision or regular," adding that the increase in low-income students, both in the applicant pool and matriculating class, is the "the positive news" emerging from the change to the admissions process.
"Fortunately we do have a slightly larger group of low-income students," Blackburn said. "We just have to keep spreading the word to people who come from backgrounds where they can't even afford a $250 check to hold a place [at a school]. We have a lot of work to do."
The effort to attract low-income students is an ongoing one, Blackburn said, and one component of that effort is the University's participation in admissions tours with Harvard and Princeton. Harvard terminated its early decision in September 2006, followed by Princeton and, less than two weeks later, the University.
Admissions officials from the three schools traveled around the country together last year and underscored the affordability of their undergraduate programs. Yvonne Hubbard, director of Student Financial Services, described the effort, which will take place again this fall according to Blackburn, as mutually beneficial.
"One point of discussion [on the tour] was 'Don't write us off, don't write this off as your dream school because you don't think you're going to get enough money to come here,'" Hubbard said. "It helped us because we were in the company of amazing schools, and it helped [Princeton and Harvard]."
Hubbard also highlighted the fact that the change was made to appeal to and attract low income students, noting that the now-defunct early decision program never yielded a high number of low-income students.
"We have never seen a large number of low-income students come in through early decision," Hubbard said. "We hoped to see continued growth of low-income students coming in because we weren't taking a third of our class upfront in early decision."
According to Hubbard, during the last round of early admissions at the University, only one low-income student was accepted.
President John T. Casteen III, though, noted that there is no quota or particular number administrators hope to attain when it comes to low-income students.
"I doubt that anyone has thought about an ideal proportion," Casteen wrote in an e-mail. "AccessUVA is the [Board of Visitors'] program to deal with the fact that at UVA as at most or all other top-tier universities the number of students from working-class or blue-collar families shrank dramatically during the 1990s. The rough proportion of such students in VA's high schools is 30-35%, or was when I looked at the data 5 years ago. By a rough rule of thumb, something like that proportion in a state university's student body probably equates to parity. But that is neither a floor nor a ceiling nor an ideal � simply [a] guess as to how the student body might look if the playing field were neutral as to family wealth."
Attracting low-income students is a move that benefits all University students, Casteen stated.
It "makes learning more effective for everyone," Casteen wrote. "It opens access to ideas and perspectives that lift us out of whatever limits or confines all of us have known in our prior lives. Dr. Porsche's Rule is right: Competition improves the breed. He was talking about race cars. But humankind too benefits when people run their lives on the level playing field."
Yet as beneficial as this program may be, it may prove more elusive for some schools � an ever-worsening U.S. economy has thrown a wrench into many colleges' efforts to attract low-income students. While some students may become dependent on financial aid offers to attend college, Blackburn noted, other potential students may grow too discouraged and fail to seek out top-ranked schools.
"We worry that because of the tough economic times, people will say they can't even think about college," Blackburn said. "That's going to happen in some families. That's a real worry. But we're trying to reach out, and we do a lot of that, so we want it to be as personal and face-to-face as we can make it."
Hubbard said she expects about 26 to 27 percent of the first-year class to receive financial aid. About 25 to 26 percent of the current undergraduate student body receives financial aid, Hubbard said, explaining that the increase in financial aid disbursement for the incoming class might reflect increasingly widespread economic woes.
"We see we've attracted more students on aid, and that may be because of the economy," Hubbard said. "We have many families who filed requests for reconsideration."
In fact, Hubbard said, there has been about a 10-percent increase in the number of families requesting reconsideration, which, she explained, has happened because families' incomes as of 2008 were markedly different than in 2007.
Final admissions and financial aid numbers, however, will not be available until the fall when registration is complete. The profile of the first-year class will change as international, low-income and other students finalize plans this summer, and so will the distribution of financial aid, Hubbard noted.
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