Ohio University surpassed its enrollment targets for Fall Quarter this year, exceeding its goals for transfer students but falling short in new freshmen.
The Athens campus has 151 more students this fall than last fall, and 88 more than the university's goal. But it has 21 fewer freshmen this year than last, 65 fewer than the goal. Transfers are up 74 over last year, 65 more than the goal.
Total enrollment on the branch campuses is up 428 at this point, with Chillicothe up 254, Lancaster and Southern up more than 100 and Zanesville up 22. Eastern campus is down 31 and OU has 76 fewer life-long learners this year.
Regional campus numbers are still in flux, according to the Office of Institutional Research. Final enrollment numbers are due to the state this week.
Craig Cornell, vice provost for enrollment management, attributed the drop to increased selectivity this year.
We could've always used a few more new freshmen but we really feel good about all the other aspects of the class in terms of the quality
the numbers the growth Cornell said. We were able to basically modify the class.
OU received a record number of applications this year (14,046), 1,000 more than last year, and admitted 4.2 percent fewer students. Cornell cited a .1 percent increase in average ACT score (to 23.7) and average high school GPA (to 3.37) as proof of the strength of this year's freshman class.
That really gets to the heart of quality
he said.
Cornell said the university is particularly pleased about the increase in international students. This year, OU has 22 percent more international freshmen and 105 percent more international transfer students.
-
Cornell said. It's not all because of international
but a large part of our growth is that we had a lot of students coming in as transfers on the international side.
OU also increased retention by 2 percent this year, something Cornell and Executive Vice President and Provost Kathy Krendl have both hailed as significant progress.
Moving one or two percentage points in one year is a pretty phenomenal thing
Krendl told Faculty Senate in September.
While administrators are pleased with enrollment this year, they are already working on recruiting next year's class.
Cornell said OU is looking into working with a few companies that help colleges find potential students through profiles the students create online, almost like Facebook. Cornell said he worked on this targeted enrollment management before he came to OU and that the information provided to schools varies based on company.
It really runs the gamut from students doing test scores
areas they're interested in
(etc.)
he said. The main thing for me is to really find students' academic interests so we can match them up with a program.
Cornell said OU will try a few of these services this year and evaluate their effectiveness next fall. Though he said cost varies and declined to provide a specific estimate, Cornell described the cost of subscribing to the services as insignificant.
