Media Contact: Pat JaCoby at (858) 534-7404 

A record 20,550 students will begin their Fall 2000 quarter Sept. 18 at the University of California, San Diego, with the first day of classes set for Sept. 21.

Enrollment figures for the fall term, which will be finalized in October, show an expected enrollment growth of slightly more than three percent (or 650 students) over last year’s enrollment of 19,900, according to Robert Starkey, UCSD analytical study officer.

The estimated total enrollment figure includes 16,850 undergraduates, 2,450 graduate students, and 1,250 School of Medicine graduate students. The undergraduate figures includes:

• nearly 3,200 new freshmen, culled from a record pool of more than 35,000 freshmen applications, and
• more than 1,200 new California community college transfer students, drawn from a transfer applicant pool of 6,300.

With a high school GPA of 3.98 and a SAT average of 1258, the Fall 2000 freshman class will be the most academically prepared group of students in UCSD’s history, according to Darlene Morell, director of Student Research and Information.

This year’s freshman class includes an additional 40 local high school graduates who were admitted directly to the campus as a result of UCSD’s policy of guaranteeing admission to San Diego/Imperial County high school students who are UC eligible and whose grades in college preparatory courses placed them in the top four percent of their graduating class.

Students will find a number of new and continuing construction projects underway throughout the campus, some resulting in a loss of parking spaces. However, those losses will be partially ameliorated with the opening Sept. 18 of the Gilman Parking Structure containing a total 878 parking spaces. Meanwhile, a second new parking structure on North Torrey Pines Road, with a total 970 parking spaces, is under construction and expected to be completed in late winter.

The largest construction project in UCSD history, the $83 million Eleanor Roosevelt College campus, began this fall and is due for completion in the summer of 2002. The project, which also includes an International House, will provide 373,033 square feet of new construction. The internationally-famed architectural firm of Moshe Safdie & Associates of Boston, Mass., designed the undergraduate college, located on 12 acres adjacent to North Torrey Pines Road.

Other new projects due to start this fall are a Natural Sciences Building, a Brain Imaging Center and a Computer and Engineering Building. Construction is continuing on renovation of the Basic Science Building, expansion of the Central Plant and a tunnel under Interstate 5 to carry electrical, water and gas supplies between UCSD’s east and west campuses.

A new 75,000-foot Preuss School complex on the university’s east campus, under construction the past 17 months, opened Sept.5. This year’s enrollment of 431 sixth through ninth graders will total 700 sixth through 12^th graders when the school reaches steady state in 2003.