IU to raise admissions standards

Interim IU-Bloomington Chancellor Ken Gros Louis outlined a plan to raise academic standards at the Bloomington Faculty Council meeting Tuesday.\n"The goal is to enhance the quality of the incoming freshman class while also maintaining access and diversity," Gros Louis said at the meeting.\nThe changes in standards will not be immediate.\n"Some of this really has to be spread over several years, because the expectations have to be known when you're a freshman in high school," Gros Louis said. \nHe added that the plan will be implemented mainly in the office of admissions, and will affect incoming freshmen.\nThere are now specific benchmarks for SAT scores and high school class ranks. Gros Louis said admissions officers will increase the top-25th percentile of SAT scores to between 1020 and 1050, and increase the 75th-percentile to between 1220 and 1260, excluding the new writing section. This year, students in the 75th-percentile of SAT scores averaged a score of 1230.\nGros Louis said it will be a challenge to raise the average SAT scores of incoming freshmen, given that the average SAT score for the state of Indiana was only 1012 for the 2004-2005 school year.\nThe raise in academic standards is coupled with an aggressive new recruiting strategy.\nGros Louis said the admissions office has already hired a full-time admissions employee "whose sole responsibility is to communicate with Indiana high school guidance counselors."\nThere is also a newly formed Bloomington marketing committee, whose job is to market the IUB campus separately from the rest of the University in order to attract higher profile applicants.\n"The focus will be on the quality, the strengths and the unique advantages of attending the Bloomington campus," Gros Louis said.\nAs a result of the campaign, the admissions office hopes to increase the number of students in the top 25 percent of their high school classes to 70 percent of incoming freshmen. About 66 percent of this year's freshmen were in the top 25 percent of their high school classes.\nGros Louis said he would also like the University to increase the number of underrepresented minority students from about 10.2 percent to 14 to 15 percent.\nThe University will also pursue more aggressive recruitment of international students, and, for the first time ever, will have a full-time employee dedicated to recruiting students from other countries.\n"We've not done that ever before," Gros Louis said, "but it seems the only way to ensure we maintain getting international students"