DURANGO,
CO – Fort Lewis College welcomed its most academically-prepared freshmen
class ever this fall. This year’s freshmen class carries an overall
index score of 101, far above the required 92 index score and the
highest overall index score in College history.
The
new admission standards call for students admitted to Fort Lewis
to have a CCHE Admission Index Score of 92 or better. This compares
to the 86 score required in fall 2007. The index score is obtained
by factoring a student’s ACT or SAT score with their high school
GPA or class rank.
The
increase in standards in fall 2008 moved the College into the selective
tier of Colorado public colleges and universities. The College has
been pursuing the goal of admitting students who are more academically-prepared
since 2002.
“I
am gratified by our success in attracting the finest academically-prepared
freshmen class in our history,” said Fort Lewis College President
Brad Bartel. “The new admission standards clearly aligned the student
quality with the already existing high quality of our faculty and
degree programs.”
Another
motivation for raising the admission standards was to admit more
academically-focused students in the hope that the loss of students
because of academic and/or maturity issues would be minimized.
Also
of special note are the 758 Native American students who now attend
Fort Lewis College, the highest number FLC has ever seen. This number
represents 20 percent of the student body, the highest percentage
of Native American students in more than a decade.
Yvonne
Bilinski, director of the FLC Native American Center, says that
the Center has been swamped with students this year, the majority
of them being new students.
The
College has a long history with the Native American peoples of this
country. The original Fort Lewis, a military fort built in the late
1800s, eventually evolved into an educational institution and was
turned over to the state of Colorado from the Federal Government.
Accompanying this transition, a Sacred Trust was created that said
that any Native American from a federally-recognized tribe would
be provided an education at Fort Lewis free of tuition.
This
Sacred Trust continues today at Fort Lewis College and draws Native
American students from more than 100 tribes from all over the country.
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