Admissions standards and turn-around for admitting students into Texas A&M University-Commerce is an important part of recruiting new students to attend campus.
The A&M-Commerce admissions department has been accomplishing the entire admissions process quickly, setting a new precedent for the university.
“If a student were to apply for admissions today, provide us with the necessary transcripts and/or test scores, typically there is about a 48 hours turnaround. That’s only if the application submitted is complete,” said Becki Byrd, interim director of undergraduate admissions. “If they submit an application, but do not submit anything else we have to wait and notify the student that we have received the application and here are the missing documents.”
According to Byrd, there is a misconception on campus that it takes longer than 48 hours to get admitted, but due to an improved admission-processing staff, they have shortened the time it takes to get a student admitted.
“In the past, we had one transcript evaluator and two admissions processors, and now we have four admissions processors who do the whole process,” Byrd said. “They can evaluate transcripts, can enter in applications and can make the admissions decisions. We have more staff and the staff is cross-trained.”
Getting an admissions letter processed quickly has a significant impact on what university that student chooses. Students can submit an online application to several schools through applytexas.org.
If they submit the application on the same day, send the transcripts to all the schools, and A&M-Ccommerce is thefirst school to send them notification, it makes an impact on the student and the parent, Byrd said.
“The parent has a lot to do with the decision-making process. The parent, if they know their son or daughter has been admitted to Texas A&M University-Commerce, that’s something that they don’t have to worry about anymore,” Byrd said. “And for the student also, if they know that they have been admitted to the university, then they can go on with finishing out high school or finishing out their college work and get ready to transfer and enroll …”
For freshmen students, current admissions standards require a 20 on the ACT or a 920 on the verbal and math portions of the SAT, or a student ranking in the top 25 percent of their high school graduating class. For transfer students, if they have more than 21 hours of transfer work, they must have a cumulative 2.0 GPA in order to be admitted, according to Byrd.
The State of Texas mandates all freshmen students graduating in the top 10 percent of their class gain automatic admission to the university, but A&M-Commerce raised their standards to the top 25 percent.
“I know within the A&M system, we have a meeting of enrollment managers and there are several schools within the system that have expanded their automatic admissions to the top 25 percent,” Byrd said. “In our immediate area – and that includes, UNT, University of Texas-Arlington, Stephen F. Austin – it varies though, and is based on a sliding scale.”
Up until this year there has been a $25 application fee required to make an admissions decision, but in order to speed up the process that fee is now put on a student’s bill, she said.
“I know right now we are running ahead in admissions applications, admitted students and then also our scholarship recipients. We are offering more scholarships to students than we have in the past,” Byrd said. “We have admitted already over 1,200 students for the fall semester. Last year, we did not reach the 1,200-admit mark until (the) middle or end of May, so we’re running about a month to six weeks ahead of last year at this time.”
“We are also ahead in scholarship offers, so the quality of our incoming freshmen and transfer student body is higher,” she said.
The admissions department is also changing their appeal process to a committee that will review appeals made up of faculty members instead of just administrators. Students will now be interviewed by the committee.