Two weeks ago, only about 360 students had committed to DePauw's incoming freshman class of 2015. But a week has passed since the May 1 deadline, the dust has settled, all deposits have been accounted for, and the class currently sits at 610 students.
Even though the number of freshman entering in the fall is smaller than the four classes that precede it, it is very comparable to the class of 2014 in terms of qualifications: the median GPA for both is 3.61, median ACT for both is 28, and SAT scores were only slightly higher at 1210 compared to last year's 1200.
Vice President of Admissions and Financial Aid Dan Meyer said that this class matched expectations and precedent, but he was especially excited because this class didn't break the financial aid budget.
"This was the first time in at least a decade where we have actually established what our financial aid budget is and lived within that aid budget," Meyer said. "And that made it trickier."
Meyer said that this year in particular the admissions office had a much smaller amount of money to give to students. This meant that financial aid and scholarships were given with more careful consideration to genuine need and merit. In the past, potential students would ask the admissions office to match other financial aid offers or ask for more before committing, but Meyer said that this year, admissions reps were told to "sell the package," or to sell the DePauw experience rather than try to "buy" students with extra aid.
And this, Meyer thinks, led families to delay committing to DePauw; over 40% of the incoming students committed within eight days of the deadline. Still, Meyer said he is happy with the character of the incoming of those committed.
"This class is a little smaller than last year, slightly better academically, they're more balanced and they're within budget," Meyer said.
When Meyer said "better academically," he was reffering to the 10 point increase in 2015's median SAT scores. He said that although this is a small increase, it is an increase nonetheless and means that the academic standard is moving in the right direction, and the admissions office always is proud of a positive change compared to a negative change. The change stands out little in comparison to median SAT and ACT scores of the past 10 incoming classes, which are all close to identical.
This small positive change in academics comes despite a small, 1% increase in the acceptance rate, from 56.22% last year to 57.15% this year.
The largest statistical change this year comes as a surprise to the admissions office itself, and breaks a trend that extends past the most recent ten incoming classes; the male to female ratio is exactly 50% male and 50% female.
"I don't think, going back and looking at the records for the last 20 years, and I don't think that we've ever had a 50-50 split," Meyer said. In the past ten years the ratio was closest in 2003 with 47% males and 53% females, and farthest in 2008 with 43% males and 57% females. Last year, the ratio of accepted students was 44% male and 56% female.
"Our athletic coaches really did a really good job on recruitment and in particular with the male students," Meyer said. "This year we had a few more males coming in."
Another dramatic positive change came this year in students committing to the School of Music; 51 students committed this year, as compared to 38 in 2010. This year's incoming class also has the highest number of instrumentalists in history, 22. As with this year, in the past 10 years vocalists are the majority of the class.
Music students tend to be "very costly," Meyer said, and this is one place that the admissions office went over their planned budget because larger state schools offer large performance based scholarships. "We do believe that it is vital for DePauw to have a vibrant school of Music, so we wanted to have a competitive offer on the table," he said.
Meyer also admitted to being lucky, especially with international students. A full $0.5 million dollars was cut from financial aid for international students, from $1.5 million last year; despite this there was only a 0.6% drop of international students within the make up of the whole class. 66 international students, 10.82% of the 2015 class committed, as compared to 11.40% of the 2014 class.
"The big difference is, more of these students have the ability to pay a higher percentage of the bill," Meyer said. "But the negative side of that is that they are kind of concentrated in three countries: China, India and Vietnam. And, as we move forward we'll extend some more aid to international students to get more diversity [in country]."
Over the summer, the admissions office will re-look at every file of every student that was accepted to find closer detail, "like the student who has travelled to 5 different continents, or the student who climbed Mt. Kilamanjaro," Meyer said.
Overall, Meyer said that the admissions office is excited that they committed a class that stands up to expectations with a lower budget.
"I think that we as an office learned that the strength of the educational experience of DePauw has in the marketplace," Meyer said, "and we had never really experimented with that before."