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