First-year black enrollment decreased by 28 students, not 82 as misreported by The Post last week.
In Friday's article Early estimates reveal minority data
The Post compared 2007's preliminary first-year enrollment figures to Office of Institutional Research's 2006 freshman statistics.
Freshman enrollment, as defined by Institutional Research, includes second-year students who did not take the 45 hours required to obtain sophomore standing. First-year enrollment includes only incoming freshmen.
Before the original, erroneous story was printed, university spokeswoman Sally Linder said officials would not comment because the numbers were preliminary.
Michael Williford, associate provost for institutional research and enrollment planning, felt it was important to correct The Post story so it accurately reflected the progress made.
Diversity is an important goal of the university he said. There's a lot of competition and when there's success in the area we want to make sure it's recognized.
Overall, non-white first-year enrollment at Ohio University increased by 51 students this year. The university saw the largest increase this year in international first-year enrollment ' 80 first-year students this year as opposed to 19 last year, a gain of 61 international students.
David Descutner, interim executive vice provost and associate provost for undergraduate education, attributed the increase to the efforts of the offices of Graduate Studies, International Studies, Admissions and International Student and Faculty Services.
Fundamentally
the success of this year owes to everyone on campus who collaborated and gave their all to help us meet our goals
he said.
While final numbers won't be released until next month, Williford said the current, preliminary figures are very close to final.
While the first-year class of 4,023 is smaller than last year's enrollment of 4,084, Descutner said the academic profile of first-year students ' measured by ACT scores ' is up over last year's class. The average ACT score for the current freshman class increased to 23.6, up from 23.4 last year.
We had the second-highest number of applications in history
and we admitted fewer students
increasing selectivity
he said. So by any measure
this has been a very good year.
Although overall enrollment is greater than the goals set last year, the university fell short of its goal of 4,050 first-year students and is still three transfer students short of its target.
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