Once again in 2003, the majority of the area's top high school graduates have either begun their college studies at Genesee Community College or plan to continue at Genesee Community College, the Board of Trustees learned this evening.
Using the lists of top high school graduates recently published in The Daily News and the College's own enrollment records, College officials learned that 68% of the top ten graduates in the eighteen school districts closest to the Batavia Campus had already begun their college studies at Genesee - largely through Genesee's Advanced Studies Program which serves area high school students.
The College also learned that Genesee Community College was the leading college choice among the area's "top ten" graduates. Eighteen of the area's leading students plan to continue studying at Genesee this fall. The next most popular college was the University at Buffalo, which will attract 16 of the area's leading high school graduates. Eleven graduates will pursue college study at the State University College at Geneseo.
Five of the area's top graduates have received Genesee Community College's President's Scholarship. This prestigious academic scholarship recognizes outstanding academic achievement and potential, and guarantees the payment of full tuition at Genesee.
The survey of the area's top high school graduates once again confirms that increasing numbers of outstanding students are making Genesee their number one higher education choice, according to Dr. Larene Hoelcle, Vice President for Human Resources and Planning. "As a community college, we have a mission to serve students from all segments of the community, and we do that quite well," Dr. Hoelcle told the Board. "The top students in our region can go to college virtually anywhere - 'prestigious' private colleges, ivy league schools, or other public colleges - but more and more of these students are choosing to spend their first two years of college at Genesee. The reasons are simple: the quality of our academic programs, the chance to work closely with their professors, affordability, and the numerous transfer opportunities we make available to our graduates."
Dr. Hoelcle cited Genesee's small class size - which currently averages about 22 students and rarely exceeds 32 students - as strongly influencing exceptional students to attend Genesee. "These are students who have performed well in high school," she said. "They are intellectually curious and very eager to learn. They want to participate and ask questions in class, and they don't want to sit in a large lecture hall with eighty or a hundred or two hundred other students, as is the case with so many colleges. They are amazed at the quality and the close-knit atmosphere they find at Genesee, and their parents are amazed that they save tens of thousands of dollars by choosing Genesee."
In other business this evening, the Board of Trustees: