Transfer student enrollment at Geneseo has decreased overall for the past five years as a result of smaller New York high school graduation rates and reduction of the GAP program.
The enrollment of transfer students has lowered 32 percent from 2012-2017, 380 transfer students in 2012 and 258 transfer students in 2017, according to the Geneseo Fact Book.
In 2012, there were 1,173 transfer applications, with 60 percent accepted and 46 percent of accepted registered. In 2017, there were 1,198 transfer student applications, with 56 percent accepted and 39 percent of accepted registered, according to the Geneseo Fact Book.
Director of Admissions Kim Harvey attributed the decrease in transfer students to Geneseo to the broader trends state-wide.
“Based on census data in New York State, there is a large dip in high school graduates in the classes of 2015-2018,” Harvey said. “It is not that there are fewer students graduating, but rather that there are just generally less students.”
New York Public School enrollment has been on the decline, according to the New York State Education Department. When public school began for the 2018-2019 school year, pupil enrollment was at its lowest level in nearly 30 years.
“With fewer students, your four-year schools are recruiting and grabbing all of those students to meet their enrollment goals,” Harvey said. “Thus, there are fewer students that are attending two-year schools. Traditionally, when we think of transfers, we think of students that come from two-year schools and come to four-year schools.”
Of the 258 transfer students in 2017, 167 came from SUNY two-year institutions, according to the Geneseo Fact Book. Harvey spoke more about the way that Geneseo approaches admissions for transfer students.
“Since we have had such large volumes of freshmen applicants, we maintain a waitlist,” Harvey said. “For students who were not chosen off the waitlist, they could be deferred admission for a semester, or a year through our Guaranteed Admission Program. When you look at previous historical data of the college, that is where you find the large number of transfer students are those who come from the GAP program.”
“[The GAP program is for] those students that may not meet all of our prevailing standards,” according to the Geneseo website. To receive guaranteed admission, students must attend another college in the interim and achieve a GPA of at least a 3.0.
“We do still offer deferred admission to applicants,” Harvey said. “Our enrollment goals have continued to increase. As we aim to meet our enrollment goals, there tend to be fewer on our waitlist to offer GAP to students.”
The GAP program had 335 applicants for the spring semester in 2012 and had 17 applicants for the spring semester in 2017, according to Harvey. Currently, there are 27 applicants for the spring semester of 2019, according to BLANK.
Vice President for Enrollment Management Meaghan Arena explained how enrollment goals of the college have shifted with fewer and fewer high school students.
“We don’t have the GAP program as much anymore,” Arena said. “There are fewer students, so we are mainly admitting those freshmen applicants we would like to admit in the fall. There are fewer transfer students because of this.”
“The college is not looking to grow,” Arena said. “We still move along the personalized approach that emphasizes faculty and student interactions. Providing a high-quality education is also very important to us, and I don’t think you can do that with classrooms that are overloaded with students. We want to keep the classes small to promote those goals, but at the same time, we do have fewer and fewer high school graduates, so there are a lot of factors in the mix.”
The institutions with the largest number of transfer students to Geneseo in 2017 were Monroe Community College, Finger Lakes Community College, Genesee Community College, Corning Community College and SUNY Buffalo, according to the Geneseo Fact Book.
“We aim to meet our total enrollment goals, and we have been successful the last few years in meeting our numbers with our first-time students,” Harvey said. “Certainly, we are still welcome and transfer-friendly, but we have been able to balance out the total enrollment number and meet our enrollment goals.”