Admission Numbers

Our latest college admission numbers are out. I always look at these because (1) I want to be depressed and (2) I want to be even more depressed.

They're not that depressing.

Take Journalism/Public Affairs, really the heart and soul of the college. We usually admit 16 students, but it dropped to 9 last semester. The latest report has it at 19. That's heartening. Of those 19, nine had it as their first choice. That number is actually fairly stable, ranging from a low of 4 (Spring 13) to a high of 11 (Fall 12). There's some random walk here, a student or two making what seems like a big difference. Now the depressing part:

Journalism/Public Affairs

• First Choice: 9
• Second Choice: 9
• Third choice: 1

Nothing like walking into a room full of students who'd rather be somewhere else. Oh, wait. I get that all the time. Never mind.

By comparison, public relations admitted 81 students, all of them first choicers. And 112 overall had wanted it as their first choice. If you ever wanted to feel bad about the future of mankind, that's enough to do it.

Now a lot of this will likely change soon. This report reflects the various separate majors of journalism and broadcast news, but with luck (and all the right votes) we'll combine curricula come Spring 2016.