During the first week of the application cycle, the California State University has received 54,362 applications for fall 2011, which are fewer than the record 66,399 received around the same time last year, according to a CSU press release.

“That period saw unprecedented demand due to CSU’s closing of the spring 2010 cycle to reduce enrollment in alignment with available funding,” according to the press release.

Sacramento State has received 6,638 applications for fall 2011 since the application started on Oct. 1. Of these, 3,517 are incoming freshmen, 2,833 are transfer students and 288 are graduate and second-bachelor’s students.

Fall 2010 received the most number of applications, with nearly 6,000 undergraduate and graduate applicants within the first two weeks of the application period. Around the same time this year, Sac State received 4,826 fall 2011 applications.

The decrease in number is because Sac State has declared campus-level impaction for fall 2011 to limit the number of qualified students. The university had anticipated receiving more qualified applications than it can financially accommodate, so it added more enrollment requirements for out-of-area students.

The press release also stated 16 of the 23 CSU campuses have declared impaction for incoming freshmen, and 15 of those campuses are impacted at the transfer level for fall 2011.

Current Sac State students are not affected by the campus-level impaction.

“If you’re a student in good standing and you continue, you’re not going to be kicked out of the university,” said Sac State spokeswoman Kimberly Nava. “Students here always get first priority. Our goal is to get our students educated, graduated and out into the workplace.”

Students applying to Sac State from high schools or community colleges in Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Yolo, San Joaquin or Solano counties &- Sac State’s local admission area &- will not be affected by the impaction, and will keep the same minimum requirements to enroll.

Local transfer applicants have to have a minimum grade point average of 2.0 with at least 60 transferrable units, 30 of which must be from the CSU general education requirements. Applicants must have completed courses in oral communication, written communication, critical thinking and math above intermediate Algebra with a C- or higher.

Local first-time freshman applicants must meet the minimum eligibility index score, which is a combination of SAT or ACT scores and high school GPA.

“For students that are outside of our local area for admissions, they may have to meet slightly higher criteria,” said Ed Mills, associate vice president for student affairs, enrollment and student support. “We’re working on that with the faculty senate at the moment, so I can’t tell you what that criteria would be, but it’s likely to be a slightly higher GPA.”

About 90 percent of Sac State’s students come from the local region, Mills said.

Specific programs at Sac State are also impacted. Similar to the campus-level impaction, the programs declared impaction because they had too few resources and staff to accommodate the number of qualified students.

The undergraduate programs for interior design and graphic design have been impacted since fall 2006 and fall 2004, respectively. The nursing program has been impacted for about 30 years, said Lakshmi Malroutu, special assistant to Provost Sheley, while business administration programs will be impacted starting fall 2011.

These programs require supplemental applications and higher GPAs for students to be accepted.

“Supplemental criteria vary among programs and could include a minimum GPA requirement, completion of prerequisite courses or a minimum test score identified by the department,” Malroutu said.

Interior design professor Jim Kenney said he is optimistic about his program’s impaction because it has resulted in higher academic standards for students.

As an impacted department, interior design requires an annual portfolio review of all pre-interior design students’ work from lower division courses before allowing them to take upper division courses as official interior design majors.

The department also saves resources by encouraging interior design marketing majors, who focus on the business aspect of the field, to avoid enrolling in studio classes that would not benefit them as much as lecture classes with a higher student-to-teacher ratio, Kenney said.

“I think we’re doing one hundred times better now than we were before impaction,” Kenney said. “We should be the model for other programs on campus.”

Kenney said Sac State’s interior design program is impacted only because it is such a highly sought-after degree.

“The nursing program, for example, is also impacted,” Kenney said. “All that means is that lots of students want to be nurses. That’s a great thing.”

Kenney said he is in an enviable position to be part of an impacted program.

“When we talk amongst faculty, there’s a bit of jealousy because we’re impacted, because we can apply secondary criteria,” Kenney said. “We can control our growth in a professional and creative way, whereas other programs are still having spikes in enrollment, so they’re still trying to figure out the right amount of sections each of their classes should have. We however, don’t have these worries; we’re sitting pretty.”

The word impaction, Kenney said, is negatively misleading and falsely implies a state of failure toward students.

“Impaction is like if you have an impacted tooth that’s painful,” Kenney said. “I really don’t like the word. This is a positive thing that is associated with a negative term. Who wants an impacted tooth? Therefore, who would want to be in an impacted major? We need a new word to describe this state we’re in. If someone could magically rephrase it somehow, I’d buy into it in a heartbeat.”

Micah Stevenson can be reached at [email protected]