Temple’s record-breaking incoming freshman class and innovative Temple Option program were featured in a front-page story in The Philadelphia Inquirer on Tuesday.

The university has received more than 30,000 freshman applications for fall 2015, an all-time high, and Temple is well ahead of last year’s pace in freshman deposits, average freshman high-school GPA, minority freshman recruitment and many other measures.

Inquirer higher-education reporter Susan Snyder cited a variety of factors contributing to Temple’s red-hot admissions cycle, including “aggressive recruiting,” merit scholarships, the Fly in 4 program, Temple’s value and the Temple Option, the university’s new alternate admissions path for talented, motivated students whose academic potential isn’t accurately measured by standardized tests.

Snyder’s story led with one such student, incoming Honors student Farid Abdelrahman, a Philadelphia resident who graduated from Northeast High School “with a 3.88 GPA, a string of leadership and extracurricular experiences and big aspirations: He wants to become a neurosurgeon and open hospitals all over the world.”​

Read the full story.