Prospective students now required to apply directly to College of Business
The academic rigor, ethical emphasis, and strong alumni network particular to the Mendoza College of Business have consistently made it one of the top-ranked programs in the country. Consequently, a high percentage of undergraduates at Notre Dame major in business.
Excluding the First Year of Studies, over 30 percent of all Notre Dame students are enrolled in Mendoza. In 2013, there were 1,971 students in Mendoza; the College of Arts and Letters, which contains more departments and majors than the business school, had 2,013 students. Due to these numbers, both faculty and students have complained about Mendoza’s large class sizes and poor teacher-to-student ratio. As a result, the Notre Dame administration implemented a limit on the number of business students enrolling each year, beginning with the class of 2019.
Mendoza currently graduates about 700 students every year, soon to be reduced to 550 with the new class-size cap. In order to admit only 550 students per grade, prospective applicants must check a box indicating their intention to study business. If accepted to the university and pre-approved for Mendoza, students will begin the business major during their sophomore year. If a student does not receive pre-approval for Mendoza, but is accepted to Notre Dame, he or she may enroll in any other college at the university.
In past years, students applied to the university rather than to a specific college and were automatically enrolled in the First Year of Studies (FYS) Program. One of the objectives of FYS is exposure to a wide array of academic disciplines, including math, science, fine arts, social science, and literature, in order to spark new interests and allow students to discern a major.
With the Mendoza enrollment cap, first year students will continue to be placed in FYS, but some will already have chosen their college before stepping onto campus.
Of the 550 students in each class, 500 will be pre-approved at the time of their acceptance to Notre Dame, and transfers will fill the remaining 50 spots. Students studying in a college other than Mendoza will be considered internal transfers, while those enrolling from another university will be external transfers.
In the past, external transfers were not allowed to enroll in Mendoza. Although the process will now be more competitive, students transferring from other universities can apply to study business. Given that only 50 slots are made available to transfers, Notre Dame informs those not pre-approved for Mendoza so that they have the chance to consider other universities.
Students have varying opinions on whether the pre-approval process is a positive or negative change.
Asher Enciso, a sophomore in Mendoza, told the Rover, “Hopefully this cap will make incoming freshman seriously discern their desire to study business before coming to the university. This way, only those who truly have a passion for the subject matter will enter Mendoza.”
“I came to Notre Dame as an architect, which is a far cry from business,” said Ryne Quinlan, a senior studying accountancy. “I really learned to like business after switching, but I obviously did not have the intent to major in Mendoza as an incoming freshman. I think this cap on enrollment seriously hinders the discernment process undertaken by many freshmen during their first year, and makes it very difficult to switch into the business school.”
For the time being, it does not appear that this policy will be implemented outside of Mendoza, as no other Notre Dame college currently experiences the same overwhelming demand.
Laura Hollis, who teaches both in Mendoza and the Law School, told the Rover, “Perhaps, if another college ends up with the volume of applications that Mendoza has had, it will become necessary to implement [the limit] more broadly across the university. But I have heard nothing to that effect.”
The sheer number of business students made it increasingly difficult to adequately provide a proper teaching environment. Dean of Mendoza Roger Huang previously stated, “This cap is about educating students the right way. We don’t want to just reach students and not be able to do so properly.”
Furthermore, the oversaturated business school has made it increasingly difficult for concentrations, majors, and minors outside the business school, such as the Business Economics minor in the College of Arts and Letters, to appropriate the necessary number of class seats. Limiting Mendoza enrollment to 550 students is meant to solve this problem.
Beyond the issues of space and teacher-student ratio, the cap on the business school is also seen as necessary to maintain balance within the university as a whole. With the growth of Notre Dame’s business school has come the relative shrinking of the College of Arts and Letters, to the extent that some have begun to question the balance between the university’s colleges and schools.
Dean Huang previously told the Rover, “At what point do we start losing balance? … We are not a Notre Dame college of business. We are a true University in every sense of the word.”
Dan Currie is a sophomore living in Keenan who still cannot decide his major. Contact him at dcurrie@nd.edu.