Despite a national decline in the number of graduate school applications, Georgetown University has not seen a significant decrease in the size of its applicant pool.

According to David Lightfoot, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, most graduate programs at GU have been able to maintain similar numbers of applicants in recent years.

“We have done well,” Lightfoot said. “Overall our applications are within 100 of last year’s, about 1 percent lower.”

Much of the overall decline can be traced to lack of interest in graduate programs by foreign students. The Council of Graduate Schools found in its study that international applications had decreased by 32 percent nationwide.

Lightfoot says that this trend is most prevalent with Chinese applicants, an area where American universities have reported drops in the 60-80 percent range.

“Increasing difficulties in getting visas seems to be an important factor, as are the increased efforts on the part of the Australians and Europeans to attract foreign graduate students,” he said.

But Lightfoot also says that Georgetown has not been affected by this shift as much as other schools because, apart from chemistry and economics, Georgetown does not have the types of programs that attract large numbers of foreign applicants.

Ray Mitchell, dean for medical education, says that the Medical Center has also performed particularly well during the past few years. Nearly 20 percent of all nationwide medical school applicants continue to apply to Georgetown.

“[The Medical Center] had a smaller decrease consistently than the national rate, and since 2000 has seen an increase of 5 percent,” Mitchell said.

Overall, Georgetown issued 385 acceptances for 170 seats with an acceptance rate of 8.1 percent. Mitchell said that because of the nationwide physician shortage, the Medical School has increased its class to 182 for 2004-05.

Lightfoot said he expects the declines to continue in international applicants. But he also cautions that such shifts are to be expected from time to time.

“Applications to graduate schools tend to fluctuate along with the economy,” he said “When jobs are available, fewer people apply to graduate school.”