Fredonia, N.Y. — May 14, 2008 — SUNY Fredonia has received a record 6,500 applications from high school seniors for the fall 2008 term — up more than 600 from a year ago. These, in turn, have to date yielded 1,100 deposits from students who will become members of the Class of 2012.
Fredonia’s incoming freshmen are among 3.3 million students — the largest pool of prospective college students in the U.S. since 1977. As children of baby boomers, they have been tagged the “echo-boom.”
“The applications that we received were an all-time high for our institution,” said Chris Dearth, director of Admissions, and represent a 10 percent increase in applications over 2007-2008. The number of freshman applications had been fairly consistent — between 5,804 and 5,871 — in the last three years. This growth has occurred across the board, encompassing virtually all Fredonia departments and areas of study.
SUNY Fredonia met its goal of 1,100 freshman deposits by May 2, two weeks prior to commencement. And more are expected as students finalize their college selections. Similarly, applications by potential transfer students grew by 129, from 1,104 to 1,233, reflecting an 8 percent jump. By May 2, those applications netted another 296 deposits, or 65 more than that date last year.
“The Office of Admissions along with the entire Enrollment Services division is thrilled about both meeting and exceeding our new student enrollment targets for 2008,” said Daniel Tramuta, associate vice president for Enrollment Services. “Under President Dennis Hefner’s and the Cabinet’s leadership, it has truly been a strategic, campus-wide effort.”
While the “echo-boom” issue has undoubtedly has played a role in these unprecedented results, Fredonia’s enrollment figures are distinguishing themselves beyond this trend. Among comprehensive colleges within the SUNY system, Fredonia’s more than 10 percent climb is, to date, the largest combined percentage increase in freshmen and transfer student applications, year over year, according to statistics provided by SUNY’s Albany headquarters.
“We reached out to more prospective students than we have in the past,” Dearth explained, through greater use of targeted print ads, a new television ad, direct mail, college fairs and high schools visits. “We also encouraged more students to come to campus to experience Fredonia first-hand,” he added.
Dearth credits SUNY Fredonia’s core strengths — value, academic reputation, small class size and safe campus — as well as the new marketing strategies for this recruitment success. His eight admissions counselors also attended more college fairs and visited more high schools than ever before.
Individual attention extended to all prospective students is seen as another strong factor that made Fredonia such an attractive choice for so many students, he added. “I think they liked the personal attention we gave them throughout the entire process. Over 85 percent of our new students attended an on-campus event during the recruitment cycle.”
Fredonia hosted close to 10,000 visitors, including students and their parents, at open houses, Saturday visits and daily information sessions.
The incoming freshman class reflects the university’s traditional 55:45 female-to-male ratio, while minorities constitute nearly 12 percent of new students, though that figure could climb. Education, music, communication, psychology, business, and biology remain popular fields of study. Vacancies do remain in a handful of majors such as Music Business, Women’s Studies and Computer science, Dearth said, and Fredonia will continue to accept select applications for another few weeks as it rounds out the Class of 2012.
A majority of students continue to be drawn from Western New York, with the largest representation coming from Erie County, followed by Monroe, Chautauqua and Suffolk counties. “Yet we are making great strides in out-of-state recruitment,” Dearth added. Fredonia attracts students from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts and New Jersey as well.
The university is taking steps to further expand its pool of prospective applicants. Fredonia was recently accepted into The Common Application, a non-profit service that streamlines the application process by enabling students to apply to multiple institutions through a single application. SUNY Fredonia is one of only 25 public institutions among the 340 select institutions that are Common Application members. “It expands our reach and gets our name out in front of more students,” Dearth said.
“We’re very excited about the growth across the board in all majors,” Tramuta added. “With proposals under review in Albany for new majors in both journalism and sports management, we’re looking forward to building on this momentum in the next recruitment cycle and beyond.”
