For high school seniors looking to attend Kennesaw State University in fall 2018, it’s going to be harder to get in.
Meeting the minimum requirements will no longer guarantee a spot at the university.
This is a change that comes with KSU's new competitive admissions process for freshmen and transfer freshmen, announced this summer.
In this new process, some anxious students will receive their college decision early, some a little later. Others will be denied, and, for the first time at KSU, a few might be placed on the dreaded wait list.
Students applying to KSU for fall 2018 can choose to apply through a non-binding, early action application or through a regular decision application, a process used by most competitive universities in the state.
KSU President Sam Olens said this decision was made with students in mind.
Olens, who took over as chief in November, said the university’s previous admissions process did not take into account the intended major of the student. Because of that, KSU did not always have sufficient professors to teach the types of classes the incoming students would need.
Credit: HANDOUT
Credit: HANDOUT
In fact, Olens said he had received numerous emails from students saying they were unable to take classes required for their graduations.
“The university should never be the cause of delay of graduation,” he said.
For students who are denied admission, or those who are wait-listed and not accepted, Olens said the university will work to link them with two of its feeder schools, Chattahoochee Technical College and Georgia Highlands College.
The president said KSU will encourage those students to transfer later in their collegiate career, just as they have done with students who were denied previously.
KSU is joining the ranks of state colleges such as the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech, which by the early 2000s, had already been turning away more students meeting minimum requirements because of competition. And the competition has gotten stiffer each year.
KSU — the third largest public university in the state behind Georgia State University and UGA — has grown by nearly 15,000 students in the past decade, according to university data. Its total enrollment in 2016 was about 35,000 students.
This is not the first initiative on the part of the university to adjust to its increasing student body. In April, Olens said the university planned to hire at least 25 additional professors to meet its growing demands
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