Incoming freshman Heather Gamble said she remembered seeing students in the library on the weekend she toured Boston University. They gave her the impression, she said, that BU students are “incredibly focused.”
“The classes that my tour guide talked about seemed difficult and the teachers appeared unrelenting in their quest to bring out everyone’s potential,” Gamble, who has enrolled in the College of Arts and Sciences for Fall 2012, said. “I’m not going to lie, most of the time I do need to be pushed. BU seemed like the best place to have this happen.”
BU is touting the academic standards of its programs, as it markets itself to applicants and prospective students, officials said.
In response to the increasing number of applicants interested in BU’s curricula and faculty, Admissions is highlighting BU’s academic rigor in material sent out to potential students, rather than resources such as the Fitness and Recreation Center or residence halls, said Stephen Burgay, senior vice president of external affairs.
“There’s been a pretty substantial change in the emphasis and what about BU we’re marketing,” Burgay said. “The more [students] learned about the rigor, the more they liked what they heard.”
Admissions surveyed 1,000 freshmen, all of whom were admitted by BU and 500 of whom enrolled elsewhere.
“The focus then became the 500 who went elsewhere,” Burgay said. “They tended to be academically very highly qualified, and we were trying to get a sense of what additional info we could have shared with them that could have influenced their decision.”
Financial aid was the largest category driving applicants’ decisions to enroll or not enroll, and the next largest was academic rigor, Burgay said.
Professor achievements, academic programs and the University Honors College are showcased first in the newer view books, which were updated last spring. Information on athletics, Boston and housing can be found toward the end.
The average GPA for last year’s admitted students was 3.67. Students admitted into the Class of 2016 so far have similar GPAs.
“This is sort of an emphasis on that, when you’re looking at the materials that we’re sending to the students,” said BU spokesman Colin Riley.
Riley said in 25 years, BU has spent over $2 billion on new resources, most of which were academic facilities such as the Life Science and Engineering building, the Photonics Center and the School of Management.
Amanda DoAmaral, who was an admissions ambassador in spring 2010, said she focused on the many options BU has to offer when she ran tours.
“I feel like, generally, the students ask more about amenities, food and things like that or activities here, and the parents ask more about academics,” DoAmaral, a School of Education senior, said.
Some upperclassmen, however, said they also gravitated toward BU because of its academic standards.
College of Communication junior Baldev Sandhu said his decision to apply and later enroll in COM was based off the good things he had heard academically and seen physically.
“The qualities of BU that made me want to attend included the communication program, the way the campus stretched along [Commonwealth Avenue] and the huge student population, which I felt would be a nice change,” Sandhu said.
Nicolas Darre, a senior in SMG, also said academics was his prime reason for applying to and attending BU.
“I think that BU’s best quality is actually how rigorous and interesting the higher level courses can be,” he said. “They actually made me love my major.”
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