And another year begins

Today is the first day of class here at the University of Arkansas. The UofA is expecting another record-breaking freshman class. Last year's University population was about 21,500. This year's expected enrollment is over 23,000. Official numbers are not released until after the 11th day of class. I am anxious to see them.

The GSB did survive another round of Orientations. You may think admissions can now take a break. Well, that would be an incorrect assumption. Final deadline for MBA is September 15. We need to wrap this class up and believe it or not, applications are already coming in for 2012. PhD deadline is January 15. If you are applying to a Walton PhD program, I recommend applying by December 1. This facilitates the process for the Departments and the GSB.

Whereas application numbers started out slowly for the Walton MMBA (part-time MBA), we ended up with record breaking numbers. I do not have any final numbers yet for this fall. I will work on these next week. Preliminary counts for the MMBA show that we received over 130 applications (compared with 109 and 110 for the last two years). This class did end up with 68 new students as a result.

On the home front, I now have a child in high school. This doesn't seem possible. My daughter, Zoey, started 9th grade this year. She is running cross country right now. This will be her first year doing this sport and we are hopful that she will have a little success at her meets. She is also doing karate and just tested for her yellow belt two weeks ago. She was very glad to get rid of that white belt.

Jack is in second grade this year and so far so good. My kids started school last Monday. This will be his first year of tackle football and he is very excited.

The Razorbacks will kick off their football schedule with a home game against Missouri State on Saturday, September 3. I love football.

The summer was pretty busy for the GSB. We'll need to ramp it up because now that school's started, we'll get even busier. I start traveling next month, too. I guess that's why I love admissions, never a dull moment.