Notre Dame will be slightly smarter come enrollment time this August.
The prospective students for the class of 2009 - with the strongest applicant pool in terms of academics to date - have received their acceptance letters and are currently deciding whether or not Notre Dame is the place they want to spend the next four years of their lives.
"The applicant pool was clearly stronger than ever in terms of college prep courses, grades, rank-in-class and test scores," said Dan Saracino, director of admissions at Notre Dame. Statistics prove Saracino's assessment accurate.
There were 11,316 students who applied to Notre Dame this year - the third-highest number of applicants ever. Of that number, less than one-third of applicants were accepted to Notre Dame, with 3,478 students receiving acceptance letters. Last year, just ten fewer students were admitted.
Of the students who received acceptance letters, the Admissions Office predicts a little more than half will enroll at the University. Saracino quoted expected enrollment at 1,975 students.
With such a large number of quality students applying to Notre Dame this year, the University was able to select an incoming class of high caliber in the classroom. According to Saracino, the average SAT score for the 11,316 applicants this year was 1312, and the average ACT score was 29. Both figures were the highest test score averages Notre Dame has ever seen in applications for an incoming class.
Notre Dame, however, looks for more than just academic excellence when selecting prospective students, Saracino said. Students must be well-rounded with a variety of experiences outside the classroom.
The class of 2009 didn't fail to impress admissions officers in this area either, despite its outstanding academic records.
"The students' extracurricular involvement was equally impressive this year," Saracino said.
Diversity is another key area the class of 2009 excels in. This year saw a jump in the number of minority applicants to the University, a fact the Admissions Office looks on with pride.
"We had a record number of ethnic minority students applying this year," Saracino said. "There were 2,028 minority applicants versus last year's high of 1,879."
Of those minority students who applied to Notre Dame, about half were accepted into the incoming class.
"We admitted a record number of ethnic minority students for the class of 2009 - 956 versus 885 from last year," Saracino said.
An increased number of applicants generally means a larger number of students will choose to enroll at the University, so predictions for the incoming class are high.
"Based upon previous years' yields on admitted students, we anticipate enrolling the largest number ever of ethnic minority students," Saracino said. "Twenty-three percent of the incoming class would be considered ethnic minority."
This year's applicants also exceeded expectations on the diversity of their geographical distribution. According to the Admission Office's statistics, all 50 states are represented in the admitted student pool, and 129 of the admitted students are international students.
