The Corporation approved an increase of about 50 to the number of admitted transfer students for the 2011-12 school year at its Feb. 12 meeting. The increase is designed to stabilize the number of enrolled undergraduates at 6,000 without sapping any first-year-specific resources, according to Provost David Kertzer '69 P'95 P'98.
Those resources include first-year dormitories, space in first-year seminars and first-year advisers. The number of admitted first-years will increase slightly from 1,485 to 1,500, according to a Feb. 25 Herald article.
Kertzer said the prospect of additional revenue was a deciding factor in the University's decision to increase the number of transfer students. Transfer students are admitted need-aware, not need-blind, so increasing the number of transfer students could increase the University's revenue from tuition, he said.
While tuition will rise 3.5 percent to $53,136, the total revenue from undergraduate tuition is expected to increase 4.8 percent next year — from $235,376,000 to $246,576,000 — according to the annual budget report of the University Resources Committee.
Other financial aid restrictions mean that increasing the number of transfer students is cost-effective for the University. Transfer students who request financial aid are automatically placed in the highest loan bracket regardless of their parents' income levels, meaning they get fewer scholarships and more loans, according to a Sept. 25, 2007, Herald article. If they do not apply for financial aid in their first year at the University, they are not eligible to apply in subsequent years.
"The University has a set amount of financial aid dollars available for transfer students. If admissions officers admit students whose financial situation requires them to use up all that aid before deciding on all the transfer students they want to admit, then they can only admit transfer students who have no demonstrated need," Kertzer said.
Last spring, the Office of Admission planned to increase this year's transfer class by 50 students, but administrators decided not to do so when fewer students studied abroad and more students returned from leave than expected, according to Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron.
"There were more students on campus … than we had predicted," Bergeron wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. "The budget is modeled on the number of on-campus students."
Between 2003 and 2005, the University did not offer any financial aid to transfer students, citing its implementation in 2003 of a need-blind admissions process for incoming first years as too expensive to continue offering aid to transfers, according to a September 2004 Herald article.
But in 2005, the Corporation earmarked $400,000 for financial aid for transfer and resumed undergraduate education students. Those funds were designed to support incoming transfers as they moved through the University for two to three years, supplemented by further increases over the long term, then-Provost Robert Zimmer said in a March 2005 Herald article.
The financial aid budget for transfer students will remain the same as last year, according to James Tilton, director of financial aid. Tilton did not return a request for comment on how the increased number of transfer students could affect their financial aid packages.
