Cal Poly Pomona has admitted an impressive total of 7,200 new and transfer students for the current fall semester.
However, this is lower than the record number of 7,800 students admitted last year. This number includes transfer students, new freshmen and international students.
When deciding how many students to enroll, Sepehr Eskandari, associate provost for academic affairs, stresses the importance of CPP’s ranking as being one of the top schools for undergraduates in the state.
“We (received) over 10% of all the applications that come through the (California State University) system, which means that there’s great demand both in our local area but also statewide,” Eskandari said.
A large fraction of applicants are eligible to attend CPP, but with limited space, not all eligible applicants are admitted.
The CSU system receives a large portion of its funds through taxpayer money. As a result, CPP has a sense of duty to enroll as many students the school can accommodate; all while making sure the needs of the current students are met, Eskandari said.
According to Jessica Wagoner, senior associate vice president for Enrollment Management and Services, various factors are considered when crunching potential enrollment numbers that must satisfy both incoming CPP students and current students.
“Let’s say we graduate X number of students, but we now need to bring in X amount of students, but we also need to understand there is a retention of how many students will be retained from term to term,” Wagoner said.
Wagoner mentioned that they also look into transfer students to verify that they are guaranteed to graduate in two years, due to their completed coursework.
“We have more room for those (transfer) students because we know they’re on the pathway already when they walk in the door to graduate in a timely manner,” Wagoner said.
The planning committee includes the Division of Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Information Technology and Administrative Affairs, according to Eskandari.
Enrollment Management and Services cooperates with other departments and services that could be impacted by the new number of enrolling students. The enrollment planning committee works with Parking and Transportation Services to accommodate more parking for students.
Student concern about the number of admitted students is raised with the parking congestion on campus.
Krusha Patel, a third-year psychology student, offered her concerns about the parking situation.
“It could be pretty dangerous when looking for spots,” Patel said. “I was looking for parking in (Parking) Structure 1. I was heading up to the second floor and (a driver) was coming down really fast. It’s no secret that a big fraction of commuters may experience close calls with negligent drivers. He had to break really hard when he saw me.”
According to Eskandari, “All summer we work with Parking and Transportation Services to do an analysis of what we thought the number of students would be in the fall and how many additional (parking) spots we needed compared to what we have last year to make sure we can accommodate the students.”
Eskandari also addressed that an additional 700 parking spots were added both to the overflow lots and corporate center.
In the first few weeks of the semester, Enrollment Planning Services and Parking and Transportation Services acquired the use of a drone that documents the activity in the lots. The drone use is to see how many parking spaces are available throughout the day and the volume of traffic in the parking lots, according to Eskandari.
Eskandari sheds light on the parking situation, stating there are available parking spots open during peak time. “We got a report from the Chief of Police (Dario Robinson) that even during the peak, we still had about 150 open (parking) spots campus-wide.”
Peak time for students to find parking Monday and Wednesday is from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., and 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. for Tuesday and Thursday.
Both Eskandari and Wagoner stress that they are here to work for and work with students and their needs, while at the same time filling in available seats on behalf of taxpayers.
