With the amount of high school graduates declining in the state, Grand Valley State University is looking to help new students overcome a series of challenges when applying to colleges.

Jody Chycinski, director of admissions, talked to GVSU’s student senate during their general assembly meeting on Feb. 4. Chycinski filters through 19,000 applications and hopes to keep recruiting more potential students and retain those who have already chosen GVSU.

In the recent years, Chycinski said students have faced a series of challenges with applying and getting into their colleges of choice. One large problem that GVSU encounters is the competition between schools.

GVSU crosses applications the most with Michigan State University, Central Michigan University and Western Michigan University. They consistently have to compete with other schools that give students high scholarship amounts.

“We’ve never given as much scholarship money as the schools we compete with, we’ve never been able to do that,” Chycinski said. “You know that 18 percent of our funding comes from the state and the rest is all tuition-driven, so for us to give large scholarships to students, where will it come from? Your pockets. It’s your tuition.”

She also noted the declining number of high school graduates is a challenge for both students and universities.

“We’re seeing some huge demographic shift, not just in Michigan but in the Midwest as well,” Chycinski said. “There has been a 20 percent decrease in the number of high school graduates in Michigan.”

However, she attributes this mostly to a declining birth rate.

Mackenzie Butler, vice president for diversity affairs, asked Chycinski what the office of admissions was actively doing to recruit a more diverse student population.

Chycinski said she was actively recruiting more diverse students in many ways, including targeting specific schools with kids that may not have the ability or means to visit the campus on their own time.

“There are definitely plenty of students that don’t have the resources to make a campus visit on their own,” Chycinski said. “A brochure can only go so far, to get out here and see what we’re all about is really important.”

The top five feeder high schools are Hudsonville, Jenison, Grandville, West Ottawa and Lake Orion. Although GVSU is targeting local schools, Chycinski said GVSU is starting to attract more students from “clear across the state.”

“The idea that the students are coming from the local and tri-county area is no longer true, and hasn’t been true for us for quite a while,” she said.

Another group of people Chycinski wants to focus on is transfer students, a growing population at the university.

She said this past fall semester had the largest number of transfer students, totaling over 1,800.

“We really pay attention to what our retention rates are and when we admit a student to the university, we’re looking for students we feel that will be able to retain and support effectively,” she said. “Just as important (as) recruiting new students is retaining those students at Grand Valley.”