Online applications to Penn State's undergraduate programs are on pace to become the highest rate ever this year.

So far, 78 percent of all undergraduate applications for next year have been received via the Internet, Penn State President Graham Spanier said in his opening report at the Penn State Board of Trustees meeting Friday.

This year will mark a record high in the percentage of online undergraduate applications if prospective students continue to apply online at the present rate. Last year, the undergraduate admissions office received between 73 and 74 percent of its applications online, said Patrick Smith, director of communications and customer services for undergraduate admissions.

Penn State's undergraduate admissions office will continue to accept applications for the fall semester until August, Smith added, so the final total of students who applied online will not be known until then.

Associate Director of Admissions Mary Adams cited two reasons for the abundance of online applications.

"It's easier," she said. "You don't have to call a school and ask them to send you an application. You don't have to wait for it to get to your house."

Penn State is also "electronic partners" with many high schools, Adams said, which allows students at those high schools to apply to Penn State online and have a notice of application sent to their guidance counselor. This makes the guidance counselors' jobs easier, Smith said.

"As counselors have become more familiar with the Web application, they feel better about it, and they are more frequently recommending it," he said.

Penn State's undergraduate applications have experienced an "evolution," Smith said. A little over a decade ago, paper applications were the only means available to prospective students.

Starting in 1996, however, students applying to the fall freshman class were able to request an application on a disk from the admissions office, fill it out on their home computer, then mail it back to Penn State with a copy of their high school transcript. This practice continued through 1999, when the admissions office turned their attention to developing a Web application.

In 2000, the undergraduate admissions office found itself in the "developmental and early implementation" stages of the Web application, Smith said. In 2001, Penn State students were able to apply online for the first time.

"We've seen the Web application grow every year since then," he added.

Applicants to Penn State's graduate programs were first able to apply online in 1998, Director of Graduate Enrollment Services Cynthia Nicosia said. She said she was not sure how many students applied online that year.

"In the beginning, people had concerns: 'Was it secure?' " she said. "Now that everybody uses online processes for so many things, they've realized they are secure."

As the graduate school moved toward emphasizing online applications, prospective graduate students had to pay a higher application fee if they wanted to submit a paper application. Starting in 2001, the paper application fee was $60, while the fee to apply online was only $45.

"There was an incentive," Nicosia said. "Any time they're not filled out online, we have to hand-key them in here, and that opens it up for errors."

Today, the "preferred method of applying" to Penn State graduate programs is online, Nicosia said. The graduate admissions office decided to stop offering paper applications in summer 2004. However, if an applicant has trouble accessing the online application, they can ask the graduate admissions office to provide them with a downloadable application to mail in, she added.

Smith said changing technology makes it hard to predict whether undergraduate applications to Penn State might one day be available only on the Web, though he expects that the office will continue to provide hard-copy applications.

"I don't see any immediate point in the future where we'll say we no longer take paper applications," he said.