After a slump in applications, the numbers are back on the rise — more students have applied than ever before to Ohio University.
OU received a total of 20,770 applications for first-year OU students for the 2013-14 academic year.
It’s the third consecutive year for an increase in applications — more than 84 percent of those submitted this year were by students looking to be part of the class of 2017, according to admission statistics.
The increase comes from a combination of different factors, said Craig Cornell, vice provost for enrollment management.
“It’s really just a combination of several, many different efforts coming together kind of at the same time,” Cornell said. “All indications are another very strong growth in our multicultural numbers, as well as out-of-state, as well as in-state. It’s everywhere; all of them are up.”
Cornell cited additional marketing, recruiting events, analysis of the current student population, focusing on more out-of-state students, athletic success and the academic reputation of the university as reasons for the increase as well.
“I meet with each of the deans multiple times throughout the year to have specific conversations about their colleges, their programs within their colleges and their schools,” Cornell said. “We continually kind of remodify what capacities we have as we have the last couple of years because of the banner applications and interest we have from students.”
OU is rebranding itself and launching a new marketing campaign to attract more students. University Communications and Marketing is in the midst of developing television commercials and other promotional materials with the slogan “It’s you.”
But it wasn’t the pamphlets that convinced Danny Veech, a freshman studying business, to attend OU; it was the landscape.
“It’s a beautiful campus,” Veech said.
His father is a professor at Ohio State University, but Veech felt OSU was too large.
“This is the perfect size, it’s not too big, not too small,” he said. “I like the small-town feel of Athens.”
Certain off-campus aspects attracted Theresa Fish, a freshman studying history, to apply.
“Everyone is just really laid back. You always find somebody smiling at you walking down the street,” Fish said.
As of Aug. 16, 4,464 new freshmen were confirmed in a preliminary count, according to the Office of Institutional Research Fall 2013 Admissions Statistics, making this the biggest freshman class in the university’s history.
Freshmen moved into the residence halls Aug. 22 and 23, and despite ongoing construction projects and the largest-ever OU class moving to campus, Veech said he didn’t have any major problems.
“It was easy; it was nice and smooth,” Veech said. “I didn’t really have that many struggles.”
Earlier in the weekend, OU President Roderick McDavis and his wife Deborah McDavis helped new students move in on East Green.
“I don’t like it when there’s a break because the energy of this campus are the students,” McDavis said on Friday. “When the students are here, it’s alive and well and — we’re coming alive again.”
The university also sponsored “Go Green Weekend,” which included the annual Bobcat Bash at Baker University Center; Peace, Love, Rec at Ping Recreation Center; and the President’s Convocation for students in The Convo.
md781510@ohiou.edu
