Final admissions decisions were delivered to prospective University students Friday, and for many, the tidings were grim.

At least half of the admissions pool was denied entry for the fall, University President Michael Adams told administrators last month.

“This shapes up to be the most difficult April on admissions that we’ve had,” he said. “Many, many young people who would have been admitted here five or 10 years ago, maybe even into the Honors Program, are going to be disappointed.”

Samantha Bowden is one of those students. The senior at Woodstock High School expected to be admitted when she applied – given her high GPA and four Advanced Placement credits.

But Bowden was notified Friday that she would not be attending the University in the fall, even after being deferred from early admission.

“The worst part was – why would they defer me just to deny me in the next round?” she told The Red & Black in an interview Sunday. “Especially since my grades improved since the last semester.”

Since Bowden was deferred, she had to reapply – which meant another $50 application fee, another set of essays and another long application to fill out.

But Bowden said she has a back-up plan and is thankful she planned ahead.

“Luckily before I found out I got denied, I decided I wanted to go to [Georgia] State,” she said. “I was tired of waiting [on UGA]. It was taking so long.”

Adams warned top administrators to expect calls from people denied admission for the fall. But Bowden said the people she knows who were denied aren’t planning to complain.

“It’s getting harder [to be admitted], and I think people realize that – especially after this year,” Bowden said. “[My friends] had back-up schools and that’s where they just have to go.”

Emma Ensley, a senior at Dalton High School, said she knows many classmates who were denied admission, but she has not heard of anyone planning to call the admissions office.

Adams said 1,000 applicants were accepted Friday, on top of the 7,360 students the University already has admitted. The University has a goal of 4,800 new students to attend in the fall – the same goal as last year – said Tom Jackson, vice president for public affairs.

“There may be another 200 in January, for a total of 5,000,” he said in a phone interview Monday.

But with economic conditions, more students might decide to stay in state.

“The difficulty this year is we don’t know what the economy is going to do to the yield rate – the number of students who actually show up,” he said.

Jackson said the University traditionally admits about twice as many students than the amount who show up in the fall. But if more than 50 percent of the accepted students decide to attend, that could make for some crowded classrooms in a university that offered 30 fewer courses and course sections last year.

If less than 50 percent of the admitted students decide to attend the University, there is a waiting list of 1,000 students that can be drawn from until June 30, Jackson said.

Not counting athletes, the average GPA of students admitted to the University for the fall is a 3.9, leaving many exceptional students to be dispersed throughout other system schools, creating a rolling effect across the state, Adams told the media in March.

According to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution report, Southern Polytechnic State University, Georgia Tech and Georgia State all had an increase in applications for the fall. Some of the other colleges and universities in the state may end up with higher than normal enrollment in the fall due to the amount of applicants who were denied admission to the University.