From officially admitting women in 1970 to meeting 100 percent of students’ demonstrated financial needs today, the University has changed substantially during the past several decades. Measures implemented under recently deceased Dean of Admissions John Blackburn during the past 30 years — including increasing racial and cultural diversity, adding comprehensive financial aid and recruiting students internationally — have changed the face of admissions at the University.
Affirming our actions
“This is a University that didn’t have the greatest history of inclusion,” Associate Dean of Admissions Greg Roberts said. “We admitted women later than many of our peers and, as an institution in the South, integration was perhaps slower [here].”
Ernest Ern, University admissions dean from 1967 to 1973, oversaw the planning and implementation of the University’s move to coeducation in the fall of 1970.
“After 1970, it took us exactly 10 years, until 1980, to reach parity in the distribution [of men and women enrolled] in the first-year class,” Ern said. “We were able to establish a base for beginning to attract non-traditional students ... primarily black students, [the number of whom] increased from a handful to well over 100.”
In 1980 the proportion of black students in the University student body reached about 10 percent and has remained close to that number ever since, according to data from the Institutional Assessment and Studies Office.
After about 20 years of relative stasis in recruiting minority students to the University, a coalition led by Linda Chavez, Center for Equal Opportunity chair, challenged the University Office of Admission with unfair affirmative action policies.
In January 1999, the Center for Individual Rights printed an advertisement in The Cavalier Daily and the campus newspapers of 15 other schools nationwide, accusing their respective schools of illegally using racial preferences to discriminate against white applicants, according to Inside UVA archives. The following week, CEO held a news conference in Richmond and accused a number of schools, including the University, of selecting less qualified black applicants instead of more qualified white ones, based upon white students’ SAT scores.
University Assistant Admissions Dean Parke Muth recalled the climax of the crisis when the University administration, including Blackburn, faced off in a debate on the steps of the Rotunda against Chavez.
“She was standing on the steps of the Rotunda, trying to make a big deal about this in an attempt to encourage people to bring legal action against the University,” Muth said. “Dean Blackburn never blinked, he never ever backed away ... It never even occurred to him.”
Ern echoed Muth’s assessment of Blackburn and the administration.
“The University was able to provide the appropriate information,” Ern said. “We are not compromising our standards in any way and we are working overtime on recruitment for all students.”
Ultimately, CEO pooled its resources and sued the University of Michigan instead, Muth said, in a case that reached the Supreme Court in 2003. He said Michigan had a system for evaluating its applications in which it assigned points to specific criteria, including race, and was thus seen as an easier target for legal action.
Muth also noted that the University of Virginia has been committed to making sure black students admitted to the University succeed.
“What is so impressive is that the graduation rate [for black students] has maintained its position at the top [of public universities] for over 15 years,” Muth said. “That speaks to the commitment of the University to diversity — not just to bring people in, but to make sure they are successful.”
Open access: financial need and application awareness
Financial Aid Director Yvonne Hubbard,, said there is a critical link between maintaining a class’s cultural diversity and meeting the financial needs of all qualified applicants.
“In 1996, we were trying to get an ethnically diverse class,” Hubbard said. “We had done turndown surveys, and many, many students were saying that they turned down enrollment because of the lack of financial aid and many were African-American students.”
Hubbard said University officials were conscious they were losing prospective students “because of financial aid issues.”
University President John T. Casteen, III traced the problem to the collapse of government support for low-income students.
“In the late 1970s, with the state funding its financial aid appropriation formula, we met 100 percent of all students’ demonstrated need,” Casteen stated in an e-mail. “When the state stopped doing that [about] 20 years ago, the proportion of need actually met slipped, and as the federal programs imploded during the 1990s, the proportion of need met became a crisis everywhere.”
Hubbard described a growing “need-gap” for students around the turn of the millennium, when there was a growing difference between what a family could provide with a financial aid package and the full cost of attending the University. Hubbard said people would plainly ask, “What do I do with the difference?”
Roberts recalled the administration’s concern when the University showed up near the bottom of a list of the top 25 schools that highlighted the percent of students eligible for federal Pell grants.
“Compared to most of our peers, there were far fewer needy students at U.Va.,” Roberts said.
Between 2003 and 2004, the Board of Visitors, in conjunction with Student Financial Services and the Office of Undergraduate Admission, created AccessUVa — a comprehensive financial aid program for low- and middle-income students.
“We devised a program in which we meet need, we have specific all-grant packages for low-income students, we set a borrowing cap and encourage financial literacy,” Hubbard said. “Put all that together and it is so comprehensive ... It’s not just focused on one cohort of diversity — it [is] looking at the whole cohort of students at the University.”
Hubbard added that this is a part of the University’s “need-conscious” philosophy, a term coined by Blackburn.
“For us it’s about understanding the whole student” in the admissions process, Hubbard said. “One student may seem to take on a lot of different activities, but another student is from a family of limited resources and works full time ... The point is — you are aware of those financial limitations.”
She noted that while the Office of Undergraduate Admission does not advocate a “tipping point” for students with financial limitations, it does consider every application it receives without sorting out applications in a “first sweep” like many other admission offices do.
Roberts noted that recent decisions to eliminate the early decision application option, establish guaranteed admissions programs from commonwealth community colleges and the move to the Common Application were made with the intent to increase access to all students.
“The decision to eliminate early decision was not based on self-preservation,” Roberts said. “It will not help us in terms of rankings because it decreases the yield rate.”
Roberts said the decision was made because Blackburn, and others, saw that few low-income students applied early decision, and equity in access was a “core value” in admissions.
“Now the University is seen publicly at the forefront of any discussion on access, affordability and diversity,” Roberts said.
Actions abroad
Beyond initiatives to open the University to the intellectual wealth of U.S. students, the establishment of international recruiting in the last 30 years has pushed the University abroad.
Through the 1980s, the international student applicant pool remained minimal, Muth said, because representatives from the Office of Undergraduate Admission did not travel outside the United States.
“Twelve years ago, [the office] decided to try to find some funds to travel internationally,” Muth said, adding that because it could not use state funding to recruit internationally, the office had to procure private financial support.
Since the beginning of international recruitment, applications from abroad have increased for every consecutive deadline, except the deadline following Sept. 11, 2001, Muth said.
Currently, the University recruits heavily through a group of international secondary schools belonging to United World Colleges. The schools are located in places such as the United Kingdom, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Norway and Singapore, Muth said.
Additionally, Muth said the University is among a few institutions of higher education that recruit within Chinese high schools.
“We were among the first to attend some of the top national [Chinese] schools,” Muth said. “We had a presence in China when other schools did not and saw our applications increase from less than 20 to 25 several years ago to over 800 today.”
Muth said this year alone, there has been a 40-percent increase in overall international applications, on the heels of an increase of more than 20 percent from last year.
Current challenges
In addition to seeing an increased number of applications from international students, the University also has seen changes in its domestic application pool.
“Test prep and summer programs have changed significantly” during the past 30 years, Muth said. “Students seem much more involved in a variety of things because of guide books ... It’s this sort of arms race — no matter how high the bar gets, it always gets higher.”
Roberts echoed Muth’s sentiments regarding the increasingly stressful environment for students applying to colleges, adding his concern about equity in access to college-preparatory resources.
“Economic issues are still at the forefront of our concerns,” Roberts said. “It’s not just about students affording college but just applying and preparing for college. Some students can afford test prep, while others can’t, and that’s clearly an equity issue.”
Despite these general issues for all admissions offices, the University’s public profile continues to rise; the University recently was named the “best value” public university by The Princeton Review and USA Today.
Casteen, in an e-mail, attributed the improving image of the University to an increase in the “quality of student body and ability to compete toe-to-toe with major national universities, particularly with the private universities in the Northeast.”
The changing face of the University owes much of its success to Blackburn and others’ work in the Office of Undergraduate Admission and throughout the University community during the past 30 years, Casteen stated.
“We needed the best Admissions Dean in the country. We needed the reputation for fairness and honesty and rock-solid competence that John Blackburn built,” Casteen stated. “We needed his gentle and genuine concern for our people and for students and school professionals generally. He provided all of that, and more.”
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