Foothill broke the record of received applications this year, administrators told the Dragon Press on Tuesday. This year, 697 students applied to Foothill for the upcoming school year, beating last year’s record of 679.
Students filled out the “Schools of Choice” form, which details what school they would like to attend, and returned it to the Ventura Unified Office or their school. The Ventura Unified Office put all of the information into an Excel spreadsheet, which Foothill administrators received last Thursday.
| 2010-11 | 2011-12 |
| 557 students applied | 638 students applied |
| 298 students admitted | 300 students admitted |
| 54 percent acceptance rate | 47 percent acceptance rate |
Of the 697 students that applied to Foothill, 359 have been sent acceptance letters, making Foothill’s current total acceptance rate 52 percent.
Foothill accepts a different number of students each year, depending on available space and the attrition of each grade level. However, the school’s overall capita is 1,000 students.
This year, 14 more students were accepted to adapt to the increased number of applications. Foothill took a smaller freshmen class last year, so a slightly larger freshmen class was accepted this year.
Principal Joe Bova said that Foothill tried to accept more students because of the greater influx of applications.
| 2012-13 | 2013-14 |
| 679 students applied | 697 students applied |
| 340 students admitted | 359 students accepted |
| 50 percent acceptance rate | 52 percent acceptance |
“We try to take a few more, but we are restrained by the cap,” Bova said.
Bova said he thinks that sports coming to Foothill could be a factor that caused the increased applications. Athletics Director Emily Stevens has given several presentations to local middle schools about the new program.
“The easy answer is to say, ‘Oh yeah, we got more applications because we marketed really hard this year because of the athletic change.’ I don’t know if that’s true or not. You can look at a million different factors of why something happened,” Bova said.
| Number applied 2013-14 | Number accepted 2013-14 |
| 577 freshmen applied | 318 freshmen accepted |
| 67 sophomores applied | 25 sophomores accepted |
| 47 juniors applied | 10 juniors accepted |
| 6 seniors applied | 6 seniors accepted |
“It could be that there’s just growing interest in the school, athletics could be a factor in that students now don’t have to make a choice where they come to one school [and] have to play at another school.”
Another factor Bova said he thinks could of caused the increased amount of applications is the new school website.
“The only thing that we did different this year is we marketed really heavily with athletics [and] we have a brand new website with a lot of information and marketing about the school, so those are the two new factors,” Bova said.
Initially, Bova said he thought and hoped that less students would apply to Foothill. The less students that apply, the less Foothill has to deny.
“It’s always my wishful thinking. My heart thinks that but my brain knows it’s not going to happen. Because of the uncertainty about athletics and about building brand new programs, our guess was that it might affect us and we might have less applications… I did think and hope that it would be less, but I was wrong again,” Bova said.
Foothill sends rejection and acceptance letters to all students who apply. The 697 letters to students were sent out today and will most likely arrive tomorrow.
Benjamin Limpich • Feb 19, 2014 at 4:21 pm
It’s not about athletics, if you look at the numbers Foothill has had its “record” for number of applications broken every year, and it’s only been decreasing in its rate. The difference between 2010-11 and the 2011-12 year is 81 applicants, 2011-12 to 2012-13 difference is 41 applicants, and 2012-13 to 2013-14 difference is 18 applicants.
What I don’t get though is that there was never any article (to my knowledge) by the dragon press about the previous year’s much more numerically substantial “record breaking”, which is why this article is a little odd. Given that numbers that the Dragon Press provides and the focus on the new athletic program in the second half of the article, I’m a bit skeptical. Due to the fact that (if memory serves me right) there was over 60% of students who polled last year on the dragon press against the new sports program, and as I can state with certainty as the person who organized and witnessed the event, the PAAC debate last year on this subject had an overwhelming majority of people voting against the change even after Mr. Bova, Mrs. Stevens, and Trudy Arriaga talked in depth about the issue in front of crowded students.
I still don’t like the new sports program, even though obviously I’m on the losing side, but this article seems not only annoyingly trivial, but false in its hyping of “record breaking” number of applicants, and alongside it’s mentioning of the new sports program that the administration is instituting against what can only be perceived as a reluctant student population, I can’t say that it was a good idea on part of the Dragon Press to publish this; it’s insignificant, misleading, and leaning towards an administrative bias.
Anonymous • Feb 19, 2014 at 6:38 pm
Had this been an article about sports at Foothill, these comments would be warranted. However, it is not. One must identify the thesis of a text before discounting its claims. The author is not asserting the validity of the conjecture made by the Mr. Bova, but rather that the conjecture had been made. The administration also stated:
“The easy answer is to say, ‘Oh yeah, we got more applications because we marketed really hard this year because of the athletic change.’ I don’t know if that’s true or not. You can look at a million different factors of why something happened,” Bova said.
Given that Mr. Bova himself is quoted that this might not be the reason, it is curious that such importance was placed on this in your comment. You disagree with Bova’s comments and reasoning, but the purpose of the press is to make those comments known. Additionally, your concerns about sports at Foothill are valid, and I encourage you to continue to voice them, but given the scope of this article, they seem misplaced here.
Benjamin Limpich • Feb 19, 2014 at 7:07 pm
You are correct in a sense, the article is not strictly about sports itself specifically. I simply stand by what I believe to be an incorrect justification, however seeing as the last half of the article frequently mentions the sports program (it’s even one of the tags at the bottom of the article if you look) I don’t believe my emphasis on the sports program is misplaced. In an article that’s title revolves around a new record number of applications, the amount of text that is related to the sports program, justifies the mention of it in criticism.
One thing that I would like to clarify since I didn’t make it clear in my comment I realize and you brought it up, I do not believe that the writer of this article has a bias or that the Dragon Press backs the validity of Bova’s statements. This is a News Article after all, it’s suppose to be unbiased. If this was an editorial then the Dragon Press would be publicly endorsing it, but it is not. Due to the inherent nature of a news article however I found that the amount of time in the article spent focusing on the sports program as a possible explanation for increased applications was misleading and that if it were an editorial, then it would be biased. That’s why I used the word “leaning towards” but I now realize that that word wasn’t accurate enough at describing what I wanted it to. Just wanted to clear that up.
Benjamin Limpich • Feb 19, 2014 at 7:11 pm
*words