College Admissions Standards for Some New Orleans Colleges Could Prevent Students from Acceptance

Published on Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 by Brenda Stokes Category: College News

Source: Times-Picayune archive

Something is happening in New Orleans that could make it next to impossible for many students who would have qualified for college before to attend. Apparently, the University of New Orleans and the Southern University at New Orleans, may be merging soon, resulting in harsher admission standards for both and many a discouraged high school senior.

College Admissions Changed at Southern University at New Orleans

This is a big deal. If this merger happens, 80 percent of students currently admitted to the Southern University at New Orleans wouldn’t qualify as of 2012. This means all of those high schoolers who were completing courses they thought would get them into SUNO, won’t be able to go now.

College Admission Requirements

The new requirements increase the standards quite a bit. New SUNO students would need a 2.0 GPA or a 20 on the ACT while new UNO students would need a 2.5 GPA or a 23 on the ACT. Plus, any student that needs remedial courses won’t be able to get them at the universities and will need to take them at a community college first before being admitted. While these may not seem like incredibly high standards, when considering the averages of current SUNO students, this is alarming.

Currently, the average ACT score is 15.5 and over 60% of freshmen need to take remedial courses. To put this in a more straightforward way, this puts 15% of students who would have qualified for a four-year university won’t anymore.

Why New College Admissions?

As unpopular and unreasonable these new admissions standards may seem, there is a reason why SUNO and UNO would merge. The thinking behind this move is that it will increase the number of students that actually graduate from college. Plus, it will help students be completely prepared for college-level courses prior to admittance. Those students that need remedial courses will go to community college first to get caught up and prepared for college-level work. That way, they won’t take up room in classes they’re not ready for at a university.

The long-term goal is that admissions will eventually level back out. They will certainly drop in the first year these new standards are implemented, but many of the students who are initially rejected will go to community college, get the courses they need then re-enroll successfully a year or two later. At least, this is what has occurred in other states, according to Jim Purcell, a Higher Education Commissioner.

Opponents of the new college admissions standards argue that they would unfairly target minorities and rather than encouraging the successful completion of college, would discourage them from attending altogether. Furthermore, many minority students have attended high schools that did not prepare them for college-level coursework, creating an unfair disadvantage.

The legislation that would approve this new merger still needs to be passed by the state House and Senate.

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