0920_September Comstock's Magazine September 2020 | Page 36

EDUCATION demic continues to evolve. California State University, the largest four-year college system in the country, announced in May that it would be canceling most in-person classes for the fall, moving primarily to online instruction. The University of California announced similar plans in June and will offer the vast majority of classes virtually. UC Davis enrollment jumps Before the coronavirus hit the U.S., UC Davis anticipated that enrollment might be light for the fall. “We had an inclination about the pandemic early on — even in January and February, internationally — and needed to look forward to see how that might impact our numbers,” says Don Hunt, associate vice chancellor for enrollment management for UC Davis. “You know your historical norms and your track record. If you haven’t shifted anything, there’s not likely going to be a significant change in numbers. But if there is an environmental shift, that could have an impact.” In response to the pandemic and the shift to remote learning, UC Davis offered admission to a record number of freshman and transfer students for fall 2020, opening up the opportunity for more students to accept admission to a campus in the competitive UC system. The number of students admitted to UC Davis for undergraduate study — 45,820 out of 94,763 that applied — is a 13.6 percent increase over last year. A larger than average number of students were offered admission off the UC Davis waitlist; 4,300 students for fall 2020 versus 2,500 last year, a 72 percent increase from fall 2019. “We went in more heartily than in the past,” says Hunt. “We didn’t want to have people wonder. They were already facing enough uncertainty, so we wanted to remove as much of that as possible.” Arya Gupta was one of those students facing uncertainty. The Fremont native applied to seven of the nine UC undergraduate campuses, along with a handful of state schools and private universities. In the UC system, he was accepted to UC Irvine and UC Santa Cruz and waitlisted at UC Davis. He had decided to go to UC Irvine, then got a notice that he was accepted at UC Davis. His family was particularly excited, he says, because the campus is only a two-hour drive from his home. The applied math major hopes to pursue a career in data science and says UC Davis has a great program for that field. Even though most of his fall classes are scheduled to be online, Gupta has no plans to delay his college career. After an academic stumble in his junior year of high school, the incoming freshman has a renewed focus. “I’m looking forward to working hard in college to prove to myself that I can do it, and I don’t want to put that off,” he says. UC Davis’ strategy to boost admission appears to have paid off. It estimates it will enroll about 9,500 new freshmen and transfer students this fall, a planned increase of about 5 percent from fall 2019. “California has always had too many students to meet demand,” says Hunt. “That coupled with the unemployment factor created a natural upward trend.” The overall freshman admission rate for fall 2020 for the UC system was up by 8 percent. Not all four-year universities in the Capital Region experienced increases. Sacramento State is expecting a small 36 comstocksmag.com | September 2020