Dramatically more Illinois high school seniors and slightly more international students applied to Northwestern this year while the number of regular decision applications remained fairly steady, an administrator said.
With both early and regular admission applications tallied, 14,243 students have asked to attend NU, up from 13,884 last year. Applications from Illinois increased about 14 percent, and those from international students rose 3.5 percent.
Associate Provost for University Enrollment Rebecca Dixon wrote in an e-mail late Friday that the increase in international students came despite the cancellation of several overseas recruiting trips because of traveling concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Applications from international students have increased at all Big Ten schools this year, said Ravi Shankar, director of NU’s International Office. NU’s graduate school applications from other countries tripled this year, he said.
“In light of Sept. 11, you would think students would be concerned in terms of their safety,” he said. “It might be because students perceived there might not be a safety issue, (or) they might have applied before Sept. 11.”
The additional 30 international applications are due mostly to NU’s “growing reputation” abroad, Dixon said.
“The more students who apply from a region and attend here, the more people hear about us and apply,” she wrote. “NU’s overseas students help recruit and many eagerly spread ‘the word.'”
Weinberg freshman Celine Chang, who is from Hong Kong, said her only concern after Sept. 11 was being able to find a flight. Seven students applied to NU from her graduating class of about 200, and Chang said she expects that number to remain steady because of the stream of students who attend summer programs at NU and the high-ranking of the Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
“The graduate school’s more well known within Asia,” Chang said. “(Business) is a really popular choice from Asia.”
The Middle Atlantic and New England saw small declines in the number of applicants, with New England decreasing by only nine applications, Dixon wrote. All other regions of the country saw increases in the number of students submitting applications, she wrote. The largest increase was from Illinois, she wrote.
“To have that big an increase in Illinois suggests declines in other regions,” Dixon wrote. “Given the increase of 359 applications – almost equal to the Illinois increase – those declines are small and spread throughout the other regions.”
The application figures arrived after a 16 percent jump this year in early decision applications. NU received a record 16,634 applications in 1997, the year after NU’s football team went to the Rose Bowl.
The quality of students applying is almost identical to that of last year, Dixon said.
Informal word-of-mouth recruiting between students also worked for schools in the United States. Piedmont High School in Piedmont, Calif., saw its applications to NU increase to more than two dozen, said Mary Geong, a volunteer at the school’s college counseling center. About a dozen Piedmont students decided last year to attend NU, she said.
NU’s early decision acceptance rate remained at about 50 percent for fall applications. This, along with NU’s improved retention rate in recent years, likely will result in a smaller acceptance rate for those students who applied regular decision, she wrote.
But Dixon wrote the reduced acceptance rate would have “little effect” on NU’s ranking in U.S News and World Report because the admissions rate is just one factor in the rankings.
“A college’s rank order also is influenced by the overall score other colleges get, so there is no way to predict the rank order,” she wrote.
