By SHANNON O. WELLS
Despite a Supreme Court ruling affecting race and ethnicity in admissions decisions and a crippling delay in Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) forms last spring, Pitt enrolled its largest in-state undergraduate class this year, increased overall application numbers by 4% and saw notable increases in graduate and professional enrollment in the past year.
These are among the takeaways shared by Marc Harding, vice provost for enrollment, and Amanda Godley, vice provost for graduate studies, during presentations at the Nov. 8 meeting of the Student Aid, Admissions and Affairs committee.
“I can tell you it was a year of ups and downs,” Harding said.
A 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that outlawed using race and ethnicity in admissions decisions at colleges and universities created considerable uncertainty in Pitt admissions practices. Also, technical glitches related to FAFSA forms last spring led to significant delays in students receiving the forms they needed to apply for financial aid.
Non-Pennsylvania enrollment was down from 2023-24, and Harding said he doesn’t “doubt for a minute that's demographics kicking in, cost competition, and of course, just the FAFSA debacle is going to more than likely disproportionately impact our non-resident students,” he said. “Our underrepresented minority students (numbers) were down, and (the) SCOTUS and the FAFSA (issues) absolutely impacted that.”
International student enrollment numbers also were down. “China took a big hit this past year, and I think that's a concern moving forward, what's going to happen with the international market,” he said. “Particularly the year ahead, given the current … global environment.”
On the upside, Pitt’s first-year applications of around 60,900 were up from 58,415 in fall 2023. “I think applications, as much as anything, just indicate strength of brand, and that remains very, very strong,” he said.
The University also enrolled its largest class from Pennsylvania in Pitt history. “I think it's a super bright spot,” Harding said, noting an increased focus on attracting rural students. “We’ve increased the number of rural students pretty significantly.”
Calling the approximate 30% increase in Pell Grant recipients a “real shining spot,” Harding said it was a “pretty significant increase,” noting roughly 21% of Pitt’s first-year class were Pell Grant students, or a little more than “one out of every five … which is tremendous.”
Harding said he would “dive more deeply” with specific numbers and visual aids at an upcoming committee meeting and called the recent undergraduate enrollment trends “overall good considering the current headwinds we're facing.”
Gains despite adversity
On the graduate and professional enrollment side, Amanda Godley updated the committee on the strategic Plan for Pitt goal to increase graduate and professional enrollments in the next five years.
“As many of you know, this has been one of my priorities over the past four years, since I entered the Office of the Provost,” she said. “So I want to share with you both what we've done and what we plan to do.”
Using a newly created admissions/applications dashboard to track the graduate and professional programs — which Godley called a “major accomplishment” by Jennifer Walker, associate director of academic affairs in the Graduate Studies office, and Amanda Brodish, associate vice provost for data analytics — she drew attention to an approximate 10% overall increase in applications from 2023 to 2024.
Unlike on the undergraduate side, graduate and professional programs did not see a drop in international applicants. “We saw among in-state, out-of-state and international students … a pretty steady increase in terms of applications,” she said, noting that overall applications grew in most categories other than professional doctorate, which stayed “pretty flat.”
Similarly, professional master’s and research master’s applicants are holding “pretty steady” in terms of acceptance rate across schools and programs, and an increase in professional master’s degree program acceptance rates of about 8%.
Explaining a decrease in the acceptance rate of applicants to research doctoral programs, Godley said “we saw an increase in applications, but we always have a limited number of those spots for the Ph.D. programs. So they can't expand at the same rate that, say, professional programs can.”
Looking at the yield — percentage of those offered admissions to those who accept offers — Pitt graduate and professional programs are “actually pretty consistent with national trends.”
“I've talked to a number of my AAU and ACC counterparts about this, (and) everyone saw an increase in number of applications, but then a decrease in yield,” she added, noting that the measurement was based on fall enrollment because unlike undergraduate applicants, many graduate programs don't require a deposit. “Sometimes people will say they intend to enroll, and then we see a big difference between that and actual enrollment.”
Nationwide, that yield is going down again, although Pitt saw some increase on the research doctorate side.
“That's pretty competitive, but might also suggest that our programs are increasing in reputation and competitiveness,” Godley said. “But the rest of it is a pretty overarching trend that we're seeing in graduate and professional education, (which) has changed very little from last year.”
About 45% of Pitt graduate and professional students are from Pennsylvania, 31% out of state, and 24% international. “I would say this is pretty steady compared to last year.”
Godley presented data related to illustrate effects of the 2023 Supreme Court decision on the acceptance rate of underrepresented students. With admissions committees not able to consider race as a factor directly affects the acceptance rate of students, she said, clarifying that it refers to U.S. students, “not international students who identify as black, Latinx or indigenous.”
“We did not see big changes in acceptance rates between last fall and this fall,” she explained, noting a 4% decrease in indigenous student applications since the Supreme Court decision. “We got very few applications from indigenous students, which is something we're hoping to change. But I think it's hard to find a clear story there, because there are so few.
“I think everyone's predicting that the effects of the Supreme Court decision will kind of continue to roll out as we continue to try to find ways to keep equitable admissions practices going,” she added. “So we were glad to see that there wasn't a major shift here.”
Data science program spurs growth
Pitt saw a 3% increase in Black applicants for graduate and professional programs and a slight decrease in new women at the University who identify as Black or African American. However, the University saw a 6% increase in applications from Latinx students and an 11% increase in new student enrollments.
“That's something we're very proud of, and we're continuing to really focus on that as well,” Godley said, noting the numbers exclude the School of Medicine because of problems “getting their data imported into the central system. But we believe that the data we have for this year is correct, and going forward, it will be correct.”
Godley said one of her major priorities since she joined the provost’s office was to increase graduate and professional enrollment, which had decreased by approximately 2% per year for around seven years before she took on the role.
“So we have some good news here,” she said of the 6% enrollment increase, reported as full-time equivalent (FTE) rather than head count. “If we measure through FTE, we can get a better sense of overall students taking multiple classes.”
Godley attributes a good part of growth in the past year to the new online Master of Data Science Program, which she said has a “very low barrier of entry and is designed very carefully for adult learners and professional learners (who) don't have a bachelor's degree in computer science.”
“(Data science) is a high growth area of the workforce, and it is online and flexible, so we'll (continue) to look into programs like that that can help us increase our growth and that really are designed for the needs of professional adult learners.”
Godley said she’s “really excited” that graduate and professional studies are now a central focus of the new branding campaign for Pitt, “so there's a lot of thought about how that online marketing might also attract graduate and professional students.”
She credited LaToya Walters — a centralized graduate-student recruiter who, for the first time, works for both Godley’s and Harding’s offices — for her “excellent” work.
“She has jumped right in and been planning major events and things for recruiting across the University,” Godley said, including a recent campus tour for more than 50 undergraduates from the University of Puerto Rico wanting to learn about Pitt’s Ph.D. programs. “So we're super excited about that.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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