Enrollment is second largest

Aside from being deemed the smartest IU has ever seen, the class of 2011 is also the largest. \nThis year’s record number of freshmen only helped contribute to IU-Bloomington’s record enrollment, a total of 38,990 students, which is a 1.9 percent increase from last year. This is the second largest University enrollment on record.\nRoger Thompson, the vice provost for enrollment, attributed this increased number of students to a greater amount of applications, which were up 18 percent from last year’s 24,169 hopefuls, he said.\nOut of the 28,528 applicants this year, about 70 percent were offered admittance. The competition for admission has increased, Thompson said, since last year approximately 80 percent of the students who applied were admitted.\nEven with the record number of 7,208 freshmen, IU officials have seen few problems with on-campus housing, Thompson said. \n“Last year there were problems with fitting everybody into the dorms,” he said. “They talked about making sure it was better for the next year and planned ahead.”\nThis planning ahead included offering less double rooms as singles, said Cedric Harris, the Teter Quad manager, a dorm that housed about 40 to 50 students in floor lounges for weeks last year.\n“We want upperclassmen to come back to the residence halls,” he said. “We try to offer double rooms as singles. Only problem is, with the large freshman classes, there isn’t enough room to offer a lot of those.”\nThompson credits a lot of the successful tactics this year to all of the professionals on campus who helped cope with the record numbers. Thompson also applauds IU’s academic advisors for finding enough course availability to correspond to the demand from the many students.\nNext year, however, Thompson hopes to cut down the size of the incoming freshman class, which would require admission standards to strengthen. \n“More students came than planned,” Thompson said. “And that’s not a bad thing, but you can only plan for so many.”