Although SUNY-ESF is a state university, the number of students coming from outside New York state this year is the largest in the school’s history.

About 320 incoming freshmen and more than 230 transfer students from 17 states and several countries will be entering the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. SUNY-ESF is one of the most geographically diverse of all SUNY schools with 24 percent of freshmen — and nine percent of transfer students — from out of state.

Robert French, the vice president for enrollment management and institutional research at the college, attributed this trend to an increase in out-of-state recruitment efforts.

“We contact thousands of prospective students by email each year, and ESF is such a unique school that many cannot find similar academic programs in their home state,” French said in an email. “Our tuition costs for out-of-state residents is also fairly low, and we offer a fair number of academic scholarships to attract the highest quality students.”

SUNY-ESF anticipates that this diversifying trend will continue. Because the high school student population in the state of New York has been declining, especially upstate, the college has been making efforts to recruit more broadly, French said.

Beyond that, as SUNY-ESF’s reputation grows, more students are finding out about the school. The school is also popular for transfers because many discover their environmental interests after they have started at a different school, so they transfer to get a more specialized degree, French said.

SUNY-ESF has not only grown its enrollment numbers, but it has also its raised academic scores for admittance. Since fall 2010, the average SAT of a first-year student at the college has increased by 25 points and the average transfer GPA has risen from 3.19 to a projected 3.23 for this year.

There are many factors involved in this increase, French said, such as the appeal of a small-school atmosphere with great professors, the positive rankings that SUNY-ESF has received from organizations such as U.S. News and Forbes and new attractive additions to the campus such as Centennial Hall and the Gateway Center.

While interest in the college is increasing, the distribution among majors at the school has been relatively consistent with conservation biology, environmental engineering and environmental studies being among the most popular.

Don Leopold is a distinguished teaching professor and chair of the department of environmental and forest biology at SUNY-ESF. His first year as the chair of the department was 10 years ago when the department was receiving less than 500 applications; today they are getting about 900 each year.

“With the increase in applications there is an increase in selectivity so we are able to accept students with higher scores,” Leopold said in an email.

Leopold anticipates that this trend will continue as each year, there is an increasingly larger number of prospective students from the Midwest and West.

Said Leopold: “Given that environmental problems are nationally and internationally, we hope that more students from throughout the U.S. will enroll at ESF.”

Published on August 30, 2015 at 9:45 pm

Contact Anjali: acalwis@syr.edu