SEATTLE – High school seniors hoping to go to the University of Washington next fall faced the toughest competition for admissions in years, as the university accepted 62 percent of the more than 17,719 applicants for the fall freshman class.
Philip Ballinger, UW director of admissions, said the university received 7 percent more applications and accepted fewer students than last year, hoping to enroll a smaller class.
The university aims for a freshman class of 5,300, but this year’s freshman class was larger than expected at 5,438.
“We weren’t able to admit a lot of really good students, and that’s tough on families, to be sure,” Ballinger said. The university sent letters of acceptance to 11,000 students this spring, 200 fewer than last year. Students have until May 1 to decide which college they will attend.
The tractor-trailer rig carrying a massive bridge expansion joint made it to the site of the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge early Saturday after a three-week delay in Spokane.
The 100-ton deck expansion joint, on the 200-foot-long tractor-trailer, started across the state on Wednesday. The state Department of Transportation said crews planned to lift the expansion joint off its trailer Saturday afternoon.
The deck expansion joint, and a twin parked in Sioux Falls, S.D., will be installed on each end of the new suspension bridge being built.
The Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center near this southwest Washington volcano will close permanently on Nov. 5, Gifford Pinchot National Forest officials said Friday.
The closure is designed to “meet the goal of delivering visitor services across the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument,” according to a news release.
In addition, the Forest Service will transfer its Mount St. Helens Visitor Center at Silver Lake to the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission. Gifford Pinchot officials said that transfer would be the culmination of a “more than six-year partnership between the two agencies.”
Arizona regulators have ordered a Seattle-based online home price estimator to stop doing business in the state.
The Arizona Board of Appraisal issued two cease-and-desist letters to a company that operates the popular real estate Web site Zillow, saying it needs an appraiser license to offer its “zestimates” in Arizona.
“It is the board’s feeling that (Zillow) is providing an appraisal,” Deborah Pearson, the board’s executive director, said Friday.
Zillow warns users the estimates it provides are not a definitive value but a starting point for consumers. Launched in February, 2006, the company claims it has 4 million users a month, including people wanting to how much their homes – or their neighbors’ homes – are worth.
Associated Press
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