17% Admitted for 2014 Class

April 8, 2010

Lewis Aloysius

The Forum headed over to the admissions office to interview Richard "Dick" Vos, Vice President & Dean of Admission and Financial Aid, to probe him about CMC's upcoming Class of 2014. He answered our questions and shared his thoughts on CMC's potential new members.

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EARLY DECISION, REGULAR DECISION & YIELD

"We accepted 110 early decision students, and we want 190 regular decision students."

COMPOSITION OF CLASS

"The people we admitted are really strong, and very diverse geographically. There are more international students than we've had before. More applied, and more were admitted. I think that goes along nicely with the college's recent globalization efforts."

The admitted group of 732 students looks like this:

385 women (53%)
347 men (47%)
168 Asians/Pacific Islanders (23%)
98 Latinos (13%)62 African-Americans (8%)
263 California (36%)
120 non-US (16%) -- the most represented countries are India, China, United Kingdom, Jordan, Singapore, Canada and the Philippines
41 Washington (6%)
30 Texas (4%)
26 Colorado (4%)
21 Arizona (3%)
20 Massachusetts (3%)
40 other states which have between 1 and 18 students

SAT SCORES & ACCEPTANCE RATE

"The range is more important than the average. It's at least as strong as last year's freshman class. 4,264 applied for Early Decision or Regular Decision freshman admission, and the acceptance rate was 17.2%. We've received 288 transfer applications, and will begin reading them next week. We expect to notify transfer applicants around May 14th."

ADMISSIONS OUTLOOK

"We've accepted roughly the same amount of people from California, but state budget cuts to the UC system may change the landscape with regards to enrollment. Fewer may choose the UCs now and may choose Claremont McKenna, Stanford or Occidental. Our worries about how the economy would change the class last year were unfounded - they were legitimate, but it turned out fine. Families still wanted to send their kids to great schools."

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Dean Vos left out specifics when we inquired about the class' SAT range, a data point that supposedly drives the US News & World Report College Rankings. As biased observers, CMC students cannot help but remain interested in the premier college ranking source, which updates its lists annually. While its methodology is often debated, its influence is widely accepted. It should be noted, however, that admissions statistics have a year delay in their calculations and only make up a small fraction of each school's total score.

Either way, congratulations to the talented group on receiving their letters. Expect to see figures on the exact composition of the Class of '14 soon.

The Forum (newspaper)