summer melt

n. a reduction in the number of students who enroll at a specific college or university in the autumn, as compared to those who earlier in the year confirmed they would attend. Also just melt or, rarely, summer thaw. Subjects: English, Education, Slang

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Citations: 1987 Connie Pryzant Dallas Morning News (Texas) (June 25) “SMU Expects Entering Fall Class To Be ’86 Size” p. 28A: Bryant said that, typically, some students change their minds during the summer. However, he said, he is confident that the university will not lose significant numbers to what he calls “summer melt.” 1998 AP (Sept. 11) “UNH freshman class smallest in three years” (in Concord, N.H.): Many schools see a “summer thaw,” when students who have decided in May to go to a certain school change their minds before September, he said. This can create a drop in the number of freshmen actually registering. 2001 Peter Wood National Review Online (June 27) “Summer Melt”: By late spring, millions of high-school seniors have mailed in deposits to confirm their college destinations. Some of these “confirmations,” however, will be broken. A student will be belatedly admitted to a school he prefers; a family will re-examine its college nest egg and judge it too small for a tuition omelet; little Jack will decide he would rather spend the year hitchhiking the Maghreb from Marrakesh to Mahdia. The folks who work in admissions call these defections “the summer melt.” 2004 Brian Whitson William & Mary News (Williamsburg, Virginia) (Aug. 17) “W&M makes space for crowded Class of 2008”: Because of overcrowding problems in previous years, the college reduced the number of offers of admission from 3,486 in 2003 to 3,366 this year. However, this year the college’s admissions office experienced an unexpected low “summer melt” of just 26 students. The summer melt refers to the number of students who initially enroll at William and Mary after being admitted and later decide to attend a different college or university. In 2003, the summer melt was 57 students. Two years ago, it was 43 students. 2006 Genevieve Marshall Morning Call (Pennsylvania) (July 6) “Happy Valley faces fall crowding”: The largest-ever freshman class has caused a housing crunch at Penn State University.…“We expect that we will see a couple hundred more students change their minds over the summer.” While the admissions department waits for the effects of what is known as “summer melt,” the housing department is trying another tactic. 2006 Veronica Gonzalez StarNewsOnline.com (Wilmington, North Carolina) (Aug. 4) “UNCW to house students in hotel”: Typically, university officials expect about 9 to 10 percent of students to change their minds and go elsewhere—a process known as “melt”—before school starts.

Posted 10 Jul 06 | Permalink | Tell a Friend