MONDAY, AUGUST 26 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
Grants. The share is 13 percent at
the flagship University of Vir-
ginia but 30 percent at George
Mason University in Fairfax
County.
In the last admission cycle,
Virginia Tech switched to the
Coalition for College online appli-
cation. That helped boost to 20
percent the share of prospective
students who received waivers of
the $60 application fee, Espinoza
said, a boon for those in financial
need. Previously, the share was 5
percent.
“Fantastic,” Espinoza said.
“That’s where we want to be.”
Sands, the Virginia Tech presi-
dent, is pushing for the school’s
undergraduate ranks to swell to
30,000 by 2023, up more than 20
percent from when he arrived in
Blacksburg in 2014. He wants this
growth to be gradual. The surge,
he said, was “not part of the plan.”
After it became apparent last
spring, the university offered fi-
nancial incentives for incoming
freshmen to delay enrollment.
Only a few dozen took them.
Now, the pressure is on resi-
dent advisers and others to help
the Class of 2023 assimilate. Zoie
McMillian, 21, a senior from Rich-
mond, is an RA in West Ambler
Johnston Hall. She will have a
roommate, which is unusual for
RAs, who typically need privacy
to counsel students seeking help.
“I know a lot of RAs are prob-
ably overwhelmed,” McMillian
said. “Of course, we’re going to do
our best to make it as good as
possible” for the freshmen, she
said. “It’s not their fault. They just
applied.”
Adrienne Soule-Beller, the
mother of a student from Texas,
said she is watching closely to see
that Virginia Tech delivers for her
daughter Gina — “considering
what I’m paying for it.” Soule-
Beller noted that she pays far
more than Virginians. Out-of-
state tuition and fees total about
$32,800 for this school year, not
counting room and board. That is
nearly $19,000 more than the
in-state price.
Weeks ago, Soule-Beller said
she had fears about housing and
academic capacity. “I’m less wor-
ried now,” she said. “Everybody’s
kind of locking arms to make sure
this class has a quality experi-
ence.”
[email protected]plus private bathrooms, hotel
couches, shuttle buses and hotel
breakfasts.
“That’s good living,” Michael
Frongillo, a new HIE resident,
said with a grin as he unloaded
his belongings from a pickup.
“That’s the high life — continen-
tal breakfast in the morning.
Eggs, waffles, fruit.” The 18-year-
old from Harford County, Md., an
engineering student, declared he
was “not worried at all” and
pointed to his Trek mountain
bike. “I’ve got this to get around.”
Espinoza is a primary architect
of changes to admission and re-
cruiting. A graduate of Virginia
Tech who grew up in Fairfax
County, the 38-year-old son of
Bolivian immigrants aims to
eliminate roadblocks for disad-
vantaged students at a university
where 16 percent of undergradu-
ates qualify for need-based Pellsions, microwaves, laptops, print-
ers, extra-long sheets and other
gear arrived with pumped-up
freshmen and nervous parents.
Among the helpers was Juan Es-
pinoza, the associate vice provost
and director of admissions.
“Welcome — you’re here, you
made it,” Espinoza said to a family
at the Holiday Inn Express.
“We’re here to help out.” Out of
the car and into a wheeled cart
went a student’s rubber rain
boots, clothes hangers, a suitcase
and an industrial-sized box of
Goldfish crackers.
HIE, as the temporary dorm is
called, will sleep 190 students on
a site off Prices Fork Road that is
about a mile and a half on foot
from the green Drillfield and the
Gothic limestone edifices at the
campus core. Students will get air
conditioning (unavailable to
many in Virginia Tech housing)times result.
In 2018, the University of Cali-
fornia at Santa Cruz begged facul-
ty and staff to open their homes to
students who needed a roof. This
year, the University of Massachu-
setts at Amherst surpassed its
freshman class target by about
500 students, leading officials to
convert dormitory lounges to
four-bed rooms. “Those are quite
popular,” said U-Mass. spokes-
woman Mary Dettloff. “They’re
bigger and roomier.”
In Virginia, James Madison
University years ago put students
into an old Howard Johnson’s
Motor Lodge that has since been
torn down. Shenandoah Univer-
sity reports this year that it will
briefly house some students in a
La Quinta Inn.
Analysts say universities in
these situations must ensure they
don’t alienate parents and stu-
dents on drop-off day, a time
when families are already ner-
vous about transitions.
“Those first impressions are
important, both for retaining
those students and making sure
they’re part of the community,”
said Michael Fischer, a campus
facilities expert with the educa-
tion consulting company EAB.
Students want to know, he said,
that the university “is largely able
to provide the experiences they
were promised.”
Virginia Tech fielded a battal-
ion of student and staff volun-
teers, called Hokie Helpers after
the school’s mascot, to help when
all of the mini-fridges, televi-joked Abdelaziz Alsharawy, 25, a
graduate student in economics
who is a residential fellow in a
dorm.
Spiking enrollment also spot-
lights the strength of Virginia
Tech’s brand, students and offi-
cials say, at a crucial moment for a
public university founded in 1872.
With a powerful research portfo-
lio and key support from Rich-
mond, Virginia Tech is raising its
profile in the Washington region
by developing a $1 billion high-
tech graduate campus in Alexan-
dria near Amazon’s planned
headquarters. (Jeff Bezos, found-
er and chief executive of Amazon,
owns The Washington Post.)
“If that many people are trying
to get in, it means there’s some-
thing good here,” said William
Stubbs, 19, a freshman from Ma-
con, Ga., who moved into the Inn
at Virginia Tech on Wednesday.
He said he turned down presti-
gious Georgia Tech to come here
for engineering.
Volatility in demographics and
demand often strains univer-
sities. Predicting the yield on
admission offers — the share who
accept — is crucial but ever more
difficult as students apply to
more schools in more places.
From the moment admission de-
cisions are launched until the
deadline to respond, said Timo-
thy A. Wolfe, dean of admission at
the College of William & Mary,
“there is an ever-present sense of
uncertainty as to whether the
class may come in too high or too
low.” Housing shortages some-the school overhauled recruiting
systems to reach a wider market
in Virginia and beyond.
Among other steps, Virginia
Tech shrank the share of students
admitted through binding “early
decision,” which tends to favor
well-off applicants who can make
a commitment to enroll without
comparison shopping. It intro-
duced a nonbinding “early ac-
tion” option for those who do
need to shop. It allowed appli-
cants to self-report grades and
test scores, which sped up the
review process. It also adopted a
new online application and re-
vised essay questions.
In the end, the school offered
admission to about 22,000 of the
31,815 who applied.
With so much change at once,
the outcome of those offers was
hard to foresee. Far more said yes
by the May 1 deadline than any-
one predicted.
Still, university leaders ap-
plauded the rapid transforma-
tion. “Why wait?” said President
Timothy D. Sands. He is confident
this year’s data will lead to better
enrollment forecasts next year.
“We’re in good shape,” he said.
Virginia Tech’s surge may have
siphoned students from other
public colleges. Freshman enroll-
ment at Longwood University in
Farmville is down more than 10
percent from the usual 1,000.
“There is no doubt Virginia Tech’s
actions last spring had an impact
across the Commonwealth’s pub-
lic universities,” said Justin Pope,
chief of staff and vice president at
Longwood.
Almost always, colleges would
rather have too many students
than too few, but the behemoth
class at Virginia Tech posed chal-
lenges far beyond where all those
students would sleep. How would
they all eat? Would there be
enough professors and enough
classrooms? Virginia Tech offi-
cials scrambled all summer to
make it work.
“Crisis is not quite the right
description,” said Cyril R. Clarke,
executive vice president and pro-
vost. “It was a matter of signifi-
cant urgency.”
The university hired more than
30 instructors and visiting pro-
fessors over the summer, plus 20
graduate teaching assistants, to
hold the size of introductory
courses steady. Freshman writing
courses will still be capped at 20
students each, and chemistry lab-
oratories will still be limited to
- Many students will have to
wake up earlier than normal to
get to classes starting at 8 a.m.
“We are using more of the day,”
said Rachel Holloway, vice pro-
vost for undergraduate academic
affairs.
Students might also want to
avoid popular food spots at peak
times even though the university
expanded staffing and hours. Pro
tip: Waits could be long at noon at
Turner Place dining commons.
“Like airport security lines,”
HOUSING FROM A
Enrollment miscalculation brings a crowd to Virginia Tech
JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST
Residence halls are being constructed on Virginia Tech’s campus in Blacksburg, Va. Rising enrollment at Virginia Tech has led to a student
housing crunch. The university is leasing a Holiday Inn Express and the Inn at Virginia Tech to house students this school year.JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POSTVolunteers help unload the belongings of Rionna Luck on Wednesday as the incoming Virginia Tech
freshman moves into HIE, a temporary dorm at a Holiday Inn Express off Prices Fork Road.
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