Top students denied university admissions

EVERETT – With her solid grade-point average and SAT score, letters in softball and cheerleading, and various awards, Kamiak High School senior class president Julie Perrigo figured she’d have no problem getting into the University of Washington.

She was wrong.

Like a growing number of high school seniors across the state, Perrigo didn’t get into the UW – an overloaded system bombarded with the glowing transcripts of more students than it can admit.

Tuition costs are rising, and the state is scrambling to sustain the funding needed to meet the growing demand.

The problem is a combination of the “baby boom echo” – expected to peak with a record number of high school graduates in 2010 – and the state’s predicted $1 billion shortfall.

Officials say there just isn’t enough money to enroll more students.

The number of high school graduates in Washington is expected to climb 40 percent from 1996 through 2009, reaching nearly 67,000 five years from now.

University branch campuses chip away at the problem, but the state isn’t keeping up with the rising numbers.

Washington’s top research universities recently agreed to cut the number of new admissions over the next few years because the state isn’t paying its full share of the tab. They say they have enrolled 1,700 more students combined than the state funds. The state is supposed to pay an average of $5,000 per student.

As good students are turned away from UW, the competition for slots is getting fiercer at Western Washington University in Bellingham. Central Washington University in Ellensburg closed admissions for freshmen this month for the first time since 1987. Washington State University received 9,600 applications for 2,950 places and stopped accepting freshman applications in May, a month earlier than last year.

It’s also getting harder for community college students to transfer to the state’s four-year schools.

UW’s long-held admission guarantee to students with a 2.75 grade-point average and a transfer degree is ending this fall, in favor of a more competitive process. UW deferred enrollment for 1,500 transfers this year, delaying when admitted students can start for up to two quarters.

Perrigo, 18, thought she’d played the game just right. She was an athlete, a student leader, a freshmen mentor and went on a church mission to Mexico. She took at least two advanced-placement or honors classes every year in high school, posted a 3.53 grade-point average and scored 1150 on her SAT.

She even turned in her application early, but UW still turned her down.

“Who does get to go there?” she said. “All along, they tell you if you want to get into college you have to be involved (in school activities) and take challenging classes.”

Barbara Erickson, Perrigo’s counselor at Kamiak and a UW alumna, said she’s just as mystified.

“This is our most respected, most rigorous university in the state,” Erickson told The Herald of Everett for a story in Sunday editions. “Julie is somebody we should have there.”

Instead, Perrigo is heading to the University of Colorado with her many scholarships. Her rejection ends a Husky family tradition that includes her mom, dad, nearly 10 aunts and uncles and her grandparents.

“We’re frustrated and pretty angry about it,” said Richard Perrigo, Julie’s father. “We’re frustrated with the fact that local kids who are good, qualified kids can’t seem to get into their local university that’s tax-supported.”

Tim Washburn, UW’s assistant vice president for enrollment services, recognizes that admission is more competitive than ever.

“It is particularly difficult for us in the admissions office where there has been a long family relationship with the university,” Washburn said. “That’s probably the most difficult conversation to have.”

Washburn noted that highly qualified students are sometimes turned away because of grade inflation, which some officials say gives students artificially higher grades than they would have received in the past.

“Their (parents) are thinking their children are doing so much better than they did,” Washburn said. “But in fact, so many more students have a 3.5 (today) that it’s making it appear more selective than it really is.”

UW’s average incoming GPA this year was 3.67, and the average SAT score was 1180. At WWU, the average GPA was 3.6 and SAT 1130.

Erickson is convinced that if Perrigo had taken easier classes and posted a higher GPA, she’d have been accepted at UW. “But I can’t counsel that way,” she said. “The more rigorous classes you take … you’ll be more prepared to go to college.”

The state’s 34 community colleges are also struggling. Edmonds Community College, for example, enrolls 800 more students than it receives state money for.

Statewide, colleges and universities have admitted an estimated 13,000 students without state aid. By 2010, that number is expected to reach 33,500.

“That’s a train wreck waiting to happen, and we can see the train coming,” Edmonds Community College President Jack Ohrah said.

The state Higher Education Coordinating Board has suggested a pilot project to promote three-year bachelor’s degrees. That would open up spaces for more students.

From time to time, there’s talk of building a new university. The Evergreen State College in Olympia, which opened in 1967, is the only public four-year school to open in Washington since WWU in 1899.