Clock ticks for CSU incomers

By: Kristin Furtado

Posted: 1/23/08

Incoming freshmen interested in applying to San Jose State University for Fall 2008 will need to do it quickly. In response to Gov. Schwarzenegger's decision to cut $313 million from the California State University system budget, CSU Chancellor Charles Reed pushed up the application deadline for fall 2008 from early summer to Feb. 1.

The deadline is set to limit the number of students admitted for fall, said CSU spokesman Paul Browning. It has been extended to March 1 for seven under-enrolled campuses, he said. SJSU's deadline is Feb. 1.

Under the governor's proposed budget, the CSU system will be unable to accommodate next year's enrollment growth of about 10,000 students, Browning said.

In a system that's already under-funded, the cuts to the CSU could adversely affect the state's economy in years to come, said Browning, who also said CSUs generate about 90,000 students into the work force each year.

"It hurts the students and the California work force in the long run," he said.

Traditionally, freshmen SJSU applicants had until June 15 to turn in their paperwork, but due to the high volume of applications already received, SJSU had already planned to move the application deadline to Feb. 15, before the CSU issued the Feb. 1 directive, said Colleen Brown, interim associate vice president of enrollment and academic services.

Local high schools and community colleges were notified about the earlier application deadline, she said. SJSU also moved up the deadline for transfer students to April 1, a decision not required by the CSU.

"It was very new information," said Dea Nelson, publications coordinator for enrollment and academic services, of the CSU directive. Although the push to move up the deadline was largely expected, she said, some information within the chancellor's message was not - namely new restrictions on lower-division transfer students. Nelson said that in the past, students were able to transfer from a community college to a CSU at any time, even if they had not completed their general education coursework.

"We used to be able to admit lower-division transfers. It's very restrictive now. We cannot do that," she said.

Only those students who achieve junior standing or have at least 60 transferable semester units are eligible for admission into the CSU system. Brown said exceptions include transfer students within the nursing or engineering programs.

"We have been pushing 60 units for quite a while," said Nancy Gressley, director of San Jose City Community College's transfer center and an articulation officer who has been trying hard to get the word out to students through fliers and e-mails.

The 60-unit requirement is already consistent with San Jose City's guidelines for transfer students, she said.

"That negative can be a very strong positive for us," Gressley said.

Although she recognizes that the community colleges may have to take in the additional 10,000 students who won't be admitted this fall into CSUs, she doesn't believe it will cause a problem when spread across the 109 community colleges throughout California.

"We'll be able to absorb them," she said.

Josette Huckle, a San Jose City College student who applied to SJSU before the Nov. 30 priority deadline, said she was unaware of the CSU directive's new criteria for transfer students.

"There's always some people who come up and they're like, 'Hi, is it too late to transfer?'" said Huckle, who works behind San Jose City's counseling and advisement desk. Huckle said she knew a lot of students who wanted to transfer from San Jose City to SJSU.

"Community college students tend to wait until the last minute to do things," said Gressley, who also said she hopes to break students out of that pattern.

The restrictions follow the record-high enrollment of 32,000 at SJSU last fall. San Jose State spokeswoman Pat Lopes Harris said enrollment has been gradually rising as the children of baby boomers, or the "baby boomlets," graduate high school and enter college.

Although there is concern about not being able to accept all students who are qualified, Nelson said "there is no plan to limit access for those students at all."

"Our intent is we're going to enroll about the same number of students that we did last year," said Nelson, adding that she does not anticipate a significant impact on next fall's enrollment.

Predicting actual numbers for next fall, Brown said, will be difficult to forecast until after SJSU's May 1 "intent to enroll" deadline, when numbers are "whittled down."

But the university does not want to exceed 32,000 students, Harris said.

For Willow Glen High School's college and career center technician, Louise Gill, the majority of students who apply to CSUs do so by the Nov. 30 "priority deadline." She said there are "very, very few" students who apply after this deadline and knew only five students who have yet to apply to their prospective colleges.

Gill said that in order to ensure most students apply on time she "does not advertise" the fact that open enrollment extends beyond the Nov. 30 deadline.

"We know that the students who ultimately enroll at San Jose State traditionally apply long before these two deadlines, and so we feel pretty confident that the ones who are really going to be here with us in the fall of '08 have made their application," Nelson said, adding that the majority of the applications for next fall have already been received. SJSU typically receives only a "trickle" of applications in the spring.

"Pay attention to these deadlines because it's really going to be first come, first serve," Brown said.