The estimated 950 new freshmen starting classes at SUNY Geneseo Monday, Aug. 31 have a mean SAT score of 1340, a record-high for the college and an increase from last year’s entering class average of 1326.

The SAT score is a composite of the critical reading and math sections of the national standardized test that most students submit when applying for college admission.  The national composite average for all college U.S. students taking the test in 2009 is 1016.

The mean high school GPA for this year’s entering class at Geneseo is 94 and nearly 60 percent ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school classes, also an all-time high for the college.  The admissions committee selected the entering class from 10,413 applications.  Total estimated enrollment this year will be 5,626 (5,481 undergraduates and 145 graduate students).

“We continue to see an increasingly stronger academic profile in students applying to Geneseo and that allows us to be more selective in those we admit,” says Bill Caren, associate vice president for enrollment services at the college.  “We reluctantly denied admission to many highly accomplished students this year, but we hope to admit many of them for the spring term when several current students graduate or leave on study abroad programs.”

The college’s opening convocation for the 2009-10 school year is Friday (Aug. 28) at 3 p.m. in the Alice Austin Theatre in the Brodie Fine Arts Building, where Geneseo President Christopher C. Dahl will address the gathering and present the college’s 2009 awards for excellence to faculty and staff (see list below).

New school-year activities for freshmen will continue Sunday afternoon as they participate in campus-wide discussion of the summer reading program book, “A Hope in the Unseen” by Ron Suskind, which focuses on the journey of a boy from the inner city to an Ivy League school.

New student convocation is scheduled Sunday evening on the College Green in the center of campus, where Jeffrey Koch, professor and chair of the political science department, will address “Seven Practices for a Successful Geneseo Education.”

A wide variety of activities are planned for students during the college’s Weeks of Welcome (known as WOW), which run Aug. 28 through Sept. 26.  WOW events include the Geneseo 100 Volunteers Project in which 100 student volunteers will spend Labor Day morning helping people in need in Livingston County with miscellaneous household chores.

Tagged as: Geneseo-Groveland, SUNY Geneseo