by Chester Tadeja
Asst. Editorial Director
The University of La Verne may be unveiling new undergraduate admission requirements. Among other things, stricter grade point averages and detailed student profiles may be some of the new guidelines implemented in as early as two years.
“This is going to be a long process,” said Doug Wible, director of admissions who is part of a committee looking into the new requirements. “But truly, nothing can be decided without faculty approval.”
According to Wible, on-going sporadic and individual meetings have been held between the Admissions Office and the University since early summer, although the group has yet to meet as a whole. Wible expects such meetings to continue throughout the semester, if not the entire year.
“We’re going to look at demographics,” he said. “We want to look at the type of students that are going to succeed at ULV.”
Wible has down played any speculation that ULV is getting soft or too easy to get in to.
“This is something that’s going to happen,” he said. “Our retention numbers this year were fantastic. We had a 75 percent retention rate. That means the students that came here last year were the right fit for ULV and that’s what we want.”
The majority of private universities in and around California do not have admission requirements according to Wible. Wible speculates that, among other things, higher SAT scores may be a key factor in determining admissions to prospective ULV students.
“We’re going to take a stronger look at the curriculum that a student takes for preparing for college,” he said. “We’re going to be detailed with what courses students took, not only to get the students in, but to stay (here at ULV).”
Wible also said that admissions will be looking more at what students have done academically.
“Although we admire those who do well outside of their academic life, we don’t admit (students) with poor academics,” said Wible.
The current demographics at ULV have put its population at 30 percent new Latino students, more than 10 percent are African American overall and another 10 percent are Asian Americans according to Wible.
“We’ll work a little harder to attract African Americans,” he said.
No changes to the admission policies have been made yet to the students attracted to ULV. He is confident that the new policies and changes, if any, will do so something good for ULV.
“We’re telling students who are applying the same thing we told them last year,” he said. “We’ll revise our section in the University catalog if anything changes.
“But this is a process that’s going to take some time. So until it’s approved by the faculty, we really can’t put it into play. But this is definitely something positive for the University,” said Wible.
