Kenan-Flagler proposes new application fee

Students hoping to major in business might have to pay for the chance if a new $50 fee is approved for all applicants to the Kenan-Flagler Business School.

Officials from the school said the fee is necessary to uphold the school’s standard of application review. Revenue would be used to increase pay for application readers and interviewers.

The fee was requested at Friday’s student fee advisory subcommittee meeting. If approved, it would take effect July 1, 2013. The subcommittee plans to vote on the fee at its next meeting on Friday.

UNC has only one undergraduate application fee — the general undergraduate application fee, said Barron Matherly, assistant provost for finance.

The business school would be the only undergraduate professional school at UNC with its own application fee.

Some of UNC’s peer institutions already have undergraduate business school application fees, such as the $75 fee at the University of Virginia, said Anna Millar, senior associate director of admissions for Kenan-Flagler.

Projected numbers for submitted applications in 2012 show the applicant pool has increased by 12 percent from last year to about 550.

The school plans to apply most of the approximately $27,500 in additional revenue to increasing application readers’ salaries from $13 per hour to the market rate of $20 per hour. It will also provide the same salary for interviewers, who are now unpaid.

Because the school has a low acceptance rate — 52 percent — administrators said paying a smaller group of interviewers would increase the quality of the interviews and the effectiveness of their results, Millar said.

“In the past few years, interviews have not been very helpful because most students score pretty well,” she said.

Additional revenue from the fee would be used for fee waivers for those who cannot afford the payment and more advanced recruitment efforts for potential applicants.

But the subcommittee was unsure about approving a new fee for students who simply want to pick a major, said Winston Crisp, vice chancellor for student affairs.

“The business school has done a nice job of laying out a proposal that makes perfect sense,” he said.

“But do we want to allow students to be charged to select a major that they may not even get?”

Alex Mills, treasurer of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation, said the fee might discourage prospective students from applying to the business school.

“Instead of students reaching for admission to the school, if you add $50, their first thought is going to be, ‘I’m probably not going to get in, so maybe I just won’t put in that application.’”

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