Prospective students have until Dec. 15, an additional month, to apply to the University and receive full consideration for freshmen scholarships and admission to the Honors College.
The Office of Student Aid and Scholarship and the Honors College moved the priority deadline of applications for fall 2006 back a month in order to accommodate students affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, officials said.
Prospective students can still apply after Dec. 15 but will not receive consideration for all scholarships.
Officials say the decision is not a response to low application numbers, though the University has received 348 fewer applications this year compared with this time last year, but officials also said the University has admitted 189 more students as of Nov. 10 this year compared to last year.
Christine Day, associate director of student aid and scholarship, said the decision was made to accommodate students affected by the hurricanes and not because of application numbers.
“The right thing to do was to push our priority date back,” Day said, “so they can be fully considered for scholarships.”
Nancy Clark, dean of the Honor’s College, said the college decided to push the deadline back with the Office of Student Aid because they wanted to give hurricane-affected students longer to “normalize” their lives.
Day said students who already applied will be notified at the same time as last year if they qualified for a scholarship and said the office will continue to notify students as they receive applications.
Clark said students will be notified later regarding acceptance into the Honors College because of the deadline change.
Clark said the Honors College has received about 200 more applications so far this year than the same time last year.
Karen Denby, assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs, said there is no exact way to determine why the University application numbers are lower and the acceptance numbers are higher.
Denby said a reason for higher acceptance numbers could be because the University has refined the system that transfers student transcripts electronically from high schools to the University. The new system processes applications quicker and shortens the delay between application and acceptance.
Denby said it is too early to look too closely at the application and acceptance numbers and compare them to last year, but she said the same standards are being used from last year.