SUNY Fredonia has reached a new campus record for freshmen applications, exceeding last year’s previous high of 6,538 received. The new mark stands at over 6,600 and will continue to rise as freshmen applications are still being accepted.
College officials are attributing a number of factors to this success, including the attractiveness of a high-quality state university in the current recessionary environment, as well as the residual demographic effect of the “Echo Boom” — 3.3 million children of baby boomers, and the largest pool of prospective college students in the U.S. since 1977 — which peaked last year.
However, perhaps the biggest impact to SUNY Fredonia has been its decision to join The Common Application, a non-profit service that streamlines the application process by enabling students to apply to multiple institutions through a single application. As one of only 25 public institutions among the 340 Common Application member schools, Fredonia received more than 1,500 submissions directly from this service this year.“This has been an extremely positive enrollment season for our campus,” said Director of Admissions Chris Dearth. “Our decision to include the Common Application in our recruiting has clearly paid off, as we have seen increases not just in the total numbers of students, but in key targeted growth areas as well, such as minority, transfer and out-of-state students.
Fredonia has received more than 320 additional minority applications than in 2008, an increase of 23 percent. Additional outreach by admissions counselors to urban centers in Buffalo, Rochester and New York City played a clear role in this improvement. Transfer students are up the most dramatically, seeing a nearly 60 percent increase over 2008’s fall transfer enrollment. And while the majority of Fredonia’s students continue to hail from Western New York, with the largest segments coming from Erie, Monroe and Chautauqua counties, increased travel to Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey and Massachusetts by counselors resulted in a 10 percent rise in out-of-state applications.
“We’re very excited, because not only are the physical numbers of students applying to Fredonia on the rise, but the quality and diversity of those students is clearly increasing as well,” SUNY Fredonia President Dennis Hefner explained. “There’s no question that — while it won’t be considerably larger — we will be admitting our strongest freshmen class ever, in terms of overall academic metrics such as high school averages, SAT and ACT scores, as well as geographic and ethnic diversity.”
This is an important goal for the university, as it increases the overall prestige and usefulness of a Fredonia degree for its graduates. In addition, this heightened selectivity carries over into the community in the form of the contributions these students make while at Fredonia, as well as the impact they will make in their own communities after they graduate.
“We’ve seen a very nice increase in applications from high-achieving students,” Dearth added. “That comes from talking with them about our excellent programs and academic reputation. New programs in Sport Management, Journalism and Music Business have also played a role in this increase.”
Just as importantly, despite the challenging economic environment, freshmen deposits are slightly ahead of last year’s pace, which is something many other campuses are not experiencing.
“It’s clear that these students understand the high demand that exists in today’s college search process,” Dr. Hefner added, “and they’re quickly locking-in their spot once they learn they’ve been admitted to a great school like Fredonia.”
Dearth also knows the impact his admissions team has had in this year’s success.
“We reached out to more prospective students in more places, launched a more effectively branded set of direct mail publications, and supported those with some targeted advertising and numerous college fair and high school visits. Plus, as always, we encouraged students to come experience Fredonia first-hand, because that always makes such an impression.”
The number of campus visitors was up considerably this year, Dearth reports. Fredonia hosted more than 10,000 students and parents at open houses, Saturday visits and daily information sessions, also a new record for the campus, up more than 18 percent from 8,450 visits last year.
With all of this positive activity, the university is likely to cut-off accepting freshmen applications in the coming weeks, so that students can make their commitments and contingency plans with adequate time. However, graduate and transfer student applications will still be accepted until June 1 or later.
President Hefner also underscored that, despite the budget cuts issued by the state, SUNY Fredonia’s proactive steps have allowed the university to successfully manage this difficult economic environment.
“We’re fully committed to ensuring that every student we admit will have access to the classes necessary to allow him or her to graduate in four years,” President Hefner added. “It’s a great time to be at SUNY Fredonia. We’re going to have a fantastic Class of 2013!”
