By PATRICK MAROUN

STAFF WRITER

Every April, at the Spring Preview event for accepted students, Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the University, stands in front of thousands of accepted students and their families and exclaims, “Congratulations! You are the most talented class that Fordham has ever had.”  Every year he says the same exact thing and not once has he lied.

This is a testament to the great work that is being done here at Fordham.  We have a great community of students, faculty and alumni whose accomplishments and impact on the city of New York are becoming better known.

For the past 22 application cycles, Fordham’s applicant pool has grown.  Each year sees a larger pile of applications than the last and the largest the school has ever had.

Are these surging numbers indicative of students’ greater interest in Fordham or are they merely part of the greater national trend? Since the proliferation of the Common Application, students have experienced an easier application process than they had in the past. Because they only have to fill out all of their personal information once no matter how many schools they apply to, students are more willing to apply to more than just a handful of schools. I only applied to five schools, a number that I felt was actually reasonable, but many of my classmates applied to as many as 15.

Is it possible that students are not only applying to more schools, but also “reaching” for more schools that they might not be qualified to attend?

I asked Director of Undergraduate Admission, Patricia Peek, to weigh in on Fordham’s place within the larger trend of college application.

“This is our 22nd consecutive year of application increases,” Peeks said. “This increase has not only been in volume; our applications represent a more geographically (all 50 states and over 100 countries) and ethnically diverse pool (over 40 percent of applicants are from multicultural backgrounds).”

Peek noted that the credentials of Fordham’s applicant pool have risen as wel..

“The applicant pool has also gained in its overall academic quality as measured by both testing (mean SAT of 1213) and high school performance (mean GPA 3.52).  The growth in the pool has allowed us to become increasingly more selective with an acceptance rate that for the last several years has been below 50 percent,” Peek said.

I was not around five or 10 years ago, but I do know that there are only about 50 schools in the country that accept less than 50 percent of their applicant pool. This means that Fordham is not only attracting the attention of talented students, but also attracting a lot of students in general.

Peek went on to discuss Fordham’s shifting recruitment strategy.

“For the last two decades, Fordham has made a concerted and strategic effort to recruit a more national and international applicant pool,” Peek said. “Given demographic shifts, with a decreasing number of potential college bound students in the Northeast to a growing population in the West and Southwest, it has been important that we seek growth in those areas,” Peek said.

When I made my college decision, almost none of my classmates had ever even heard of Fordham.  I got a lot of responses like, “where in Florida?” Despite this, Fordham’s national recognition is ever growing and the University’s constant efforts for improvement should not go unnoticed.

When I give tours every week, almost a third of the buildings that I talk about were built in the last 20 years including: two residence halls and the Hughes Hall renovation in the last three years, O’Hare Hall in 2006 and the William D. Walsh Family Library in 1997.  This is in addition to all of the minor touch-ups, renovations and additions that the University engages in continuously.

Fordham students are too quick to doubt and much too quick to criticize.  I think it is time that we take a step back and understand that we are the recipients of a world class education and many of us will be the future of this fine city of New York.  It’s time that we all take a little more pride in our one-of-a-kind university, the Jesuit University of New York.

Patrick Maroun, FCHR ’15, is a theology and political science major from Norwood, Mass.