Sept. 11 has mixed effects on admissions process

While there was no significant decrease in college enrollment after last Sept. 11, many colleges changed their recruitment strategies over the past year to focus more on applicants from their region at the expense of applicants living further away.

For some colleges, including ones in Washington, DC and New York, where the attacks occurred last year, the new strategies yielded a rise in applications to record numbers.

Georgetown reported a seven percent increase in early action applications last year, and also reported an increase in international applicants. Barnard, the all-female affiliate school of Columbia University, showed a 15 percent increase in applicants. New York University was one of the few top-tier schools whose applicant numbers declined. The school saw a five percent drop in early decision applicants.

A December 2001 study conducted by Noel-Levitz, a consulting firm that specializes in higher education enrollment management, found that four-year private institutions were "significantly more likely" to change their enrollment goals than other institutions. The main changes have been in geographical focus: lowering the expectations in national and international enrollment but increasing local and regional numbers.

The bottom line seems to be positive, with 59 percent of colleges reporting jumps in applications. Most of the schools with significant number changes were in the Midwest. Top-tier schools showed only negligible differences.

Admissions officers have said that students from the East and West coasts are more likely to be willing to travel to college, while Midwesterners are more likely to stay close to home. This may reflect the recent economic downturn rather than the threat of terrorism following last September, and the Noel-Levitz study reported that 37 percent of the colleges surveyed thought more students would have to borrow money in 2002 than in 2001.

Tufts freshmen interviewed for this article did not cite Sept. 11 as a factor in their college application decisions. "Most of us already had lists," explained freshman Jasmine Landry, who hails from Philadelphia. "I don't think most people had time to rethink the whole thing." Landry said she applied to schools in New York because she was planning to anyway.

Freshman Christian Haslestad, who lives in Norway, said he did not reconsider his plans to study in the US, although his parents did feel more concern after Sept. 11. "It wasn't anything I thought about . . . [but] my parents actually were kind of scared, since Boston wasn't too far from New York where everything happened. They thought maybe it would be easier to just go to Europe," he said.

American freshmen, for the most part, did not think their parents had become more concerned after September. "The security skyrocketed, so my parents felt that it was safer than ever," freshman Jessica Levine said.

Despite the apparent lack of concern among freshmen, colleges changed some of their marketing strategies last year. Apart from different geographical focuses, many institutions changed their brochures, highlighting campus safety, affordability, and "caring" environments. These changes reflect heightened concerns of prospective students and their families