The recent decision to return the grade point average requirement for the UNM Bridge Scholarship to 2.5 could result in an enrollment increase of nearly 250 freshmen in fall 2001, University officials say.
UNM administrators announced in early March that high school students would no longer need a B average to get the $1,000 scholarship, which covers tuition for a New Mexico high school student's first semester.
Students who recently graduated from New Mexico high schools and meet the UNM first-semester requirements are eligible for the lottery scholarship, which can provide about $1,200 per semester for eight semesters.
The 3.0 GPA requirement and an application deadline were put in place last year in response to uncertainty about the availability of full funding for the Lottery Scholarship, said UNM Provost Brian Foster.
Additional problems with funding for the bridge scholarships, which come from a variety of sources including University endowments, factored into the decision to change the GPA requirement which had remained at 2.5 since 1998, said Mark Chisholm, director of institutional research. The program began in 1997 with a GPA requirement of 2.25, he said.
"It affected enrollment more than we expected it to - it wasn't as equitable as before," Chisholm said.
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According to the Office of Institutional Research, UNM saw 2,406 incoming freshmen in Fall 2001, an 8.8 percent decrease from the Fall 2000 freshman enrollment of 2,639. About 900 bridge scholarships were awarded in Fall 2001, compared to the average of about 1,900.
In the meantime, Chisholm said, the State Legislature shored up the lottery scholarship program, which will keep it afloat. And problems with the bridge scholarship funding were dealt with, Foster said.
Arturo Sierra, director of the UNM College Enrichment Program, which aims to retain freshman, says at least some of the blame for the lower Fall 2001 enrollment lies with the changes to the bridge scholarship.
Students that graduate high school with a 2.5 GPA do not perform noticeably lower than those who carry a 3.0, Sierra said. Other factors, such as college preparatory courses, play just as important a role, he says.
"What's unfortunate is that those students who came in without the bridge scholarship - a fair amount of them attained the lottery," he said. "Sixty percent of them attained the lottery scholarship after a semester. The decision had an adverse impact on students across the state, especially students of color."
Besides the stiffer GPA requirement, the April 1 deadline may have blocked other students who applied after that date, he said. The return to the 2.5 GPA requirement and removal of the application deadline will help bring enrollment numbers back to where they previously stood, Sierra said.
"This is speculation, but we will have an increase of between 200 and 300 students who would have gone to T-VI or elsewhere," he said. "A student who has a 2.5 in high school with support and appropriate course selection will do well."
Sierra said the performance difference between students with a 2.5 and 3.0 GPA is minimal. Often, students who come from households without college educated parents will perform at C levels in high school, and barring those students from college opportunities perpetuates that cycle, he said.
"Unfortunately, the correlation is income," he said. "People don't like to talk about the strong correlation that students with a 2.5 come from a lower socioeconomic class."
Chisholm agreed.
"When you do statistics like that, the odds are the students who got at least a 3.0 will do better, but there's so many exceptions," he said. "There's so much variation - a lot of kids who aren't strong in high school will do well at UNM. A lot has to do with their lives."
