Increased Competition To Get Into UGA Causes Upsurge In UGA Visitors Center Activity

by Bailey Simpson
12/09/2007

More tour buses are rolling out of the Visitors Center for increasingly competitive prospective students and their parents.

The amount of visitors coming through the University of Georgia Visitors Center has increased sixfold since it opened its doors.

“It seems like we no longer have down time like we used to,” said Natalie Harris, assistant director of the center. “Every month we have been filling up our tours, whereas it used to be March, April, July and October were the busiest months.”

After its transformation from a dairy barn in January 1996, the UGA Visitors Center adopted a mission to provide a warm welcome to visitors, to assist in the purpose of their visit and to collect and disseminate accurate information about the university.

Approximately 516,370 visitor contacts have been made at the Visitors Center since its beginning, yet the majority of these numbers have been seen in the past few years.

“Over the past three years that I’ve been working, I have definitely seen more visitors,” said Blade Thompson, a student staff tour guide. “There just wasn’t as much of a demand back then.”

Last year, over 19,000 visitors came into the center, over 12,000 people participated in a campus tour and over 18,000 phone calls came into the information line.

Statistics demonstrate an increase of over 900 people from 2005 to 2006 alone.

“There used to be times when no one would show up to take the tour and we would just get to go home,” said Adam Smitherman, a junior genetics major from Dalton. “Now that never happens.”

Recently, the Visitors Center has been forced to rent more university buses for regularly scheduled tours because the 13-passenger mini buses are not able to accommodate the large numbers.

“I’d say within the last two year we’ve had to order large buses outside the normal time periods,” said Harris. “It used to just be that we would need to have them during high school spring break.”

Additionally, the standby list has become an essential that was once not necessary.
This whole trend can be explained by the rising competition and stress experienced by high school students not only to attend college, but to be accepted by a top tier university.

“I think people are realizing the importance of taking a tour and getting a student’s perspective,” said Thompson, a senior from Arlington. “They see it as an important part of the selection process.”

High school juniors and seniors feel stressed due to UGA’s higher acceptance standards.

“Now a lot more kids are looking at harder schools,” said Erin Trinidad, a senior at Northview High School in Duluth. “The pressure is getting really intense now because of the competition and getting into schools like UGA is getting increasingly hard.”

Prospective students and their parents are booking tours with the Visitors Center several months beforehand in order to get that competitive edge.

“We scheduled it as soon as we found out about it,” said Trinidad, 17. “We wanted to be the first and not wait around.”

Students from around the country are experiencing the same pressure.

“I had my whole trip planned out to visit UGA four months in advance,” said Kerry Bialis, an 18-year-old senior at Edmond North High School in Edmond, Oklahoma. “I just wanted to make sure I did it all right.”