Ball State breaks record for pool of student applicants with 17,749

• For the next academic year, Ball State has received the largest number of applicants in its history: 17,749 students.
• Students accepted for the 2014-15 academic year have higher ACT and SAT scores as well as higher GPAs than those at this time last year, said Tom Taylor, vice president for Enrollment, Marketing and Communications.
• President Jo Ann Gora said Ball State has been increasing standards for admission for about seven years.

Ball State’s pool of applicants for the 2014-15 academic year so far is not only larger than previous years, but also smarter.

As of publication, 17,749 students have applied — the largest number in the university’s history, said Tom Taylor, vice president for Enrollment, Marketing and Communications.

He said the previous record was set in 2010 with more than 17,000 when Indiana required every university to allow free applications for one week to encourage more people to apply for college. Taylor said most of the students who applied were just those who decided to apply to more colleges, simply because it was free.

“We feel really good that we exceeded that without a ton of artificial bump of free applications,” he said. “It’s been a really positive trend in terms of applications and interest in the institution.”

Taylor said he expects about 200 more applicants before the start of the Fall Semester. Of the current applications, 66.4 percent of students are Indiana residents.

So far, accepted students’ ACT and SAT scores and GPAs are higher than they were last year at this time, said Taylor. The average ACT score of students accepted is 24, one point higher than last year’s. The SAT score is 33 points higher at 1,662, and the average GPA is 3.52, 0.05 higher than last year’s numbers.

President Jo Ann Gora said the university has been raising admission standards for about the last seven years.

“I believe that we will see a very academically strong class for this 2014,” Gora said in an interview with the Daily News on March 26. “The most important thing for me is to continue to raise the profile of our students because that will lead to the ever increasing strength of the university.”

Taylor said more people with higher scores are becoming interested in the university because of the university’s increasingly positive image.

“I think we’re on a good projector,” he said. “We continue to get a lot of positive attention. People have a great deal of respect for the kind of education we offer.”

Gora said she is “delighted” with the outlook of the future Ball State freshmen.

“A university’s reputation is really based on the quality of its students, the quality of its faculty and the quality of its alumni,” she said. “When you bring in strong students and you provide them with excellent mentoring, you produce strong graduates and the institutions reputation can only advance with that kind of formula.”

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