As 2,100 freshmen and 1,400 new transfer students begin their tenure at Towson, University officials are already planning for next year’s admissions and enrollment.
Each year, Lonnie McNew, the associate vice president for enrollment management, projects Towson’s enrollment for the next ten years. The projections offer enrollment targets; then it’s the job of University Marketing to recruit the prospective students and Admissions to admit them to the University.
“Everyone else on campus is [welcoming] this year’s class and we’re already planning for next year’s class,” Louise Shulack, director of undergraduate admissions, said.
McNew uses past enrollment data to model future growth for the University. He develops projections based on Towson’s goals.
“It’s based on the vision of the University’s leadership on what the size and mix of the University ought to be,” McNew said.
Then the Admissions office goes to work.
“They give us the targets and we implement the plan,” Shulack said.
She likened the task of recruiting and admitting students to keeping many different plates spinning in mid-air.
“It’s not easy,” she said. “You’re trying to predict the choices that a 17 or 18-year-old is going to make about college.”
Admissions and University Marketing aims to “get the Towson name on the radar screen” of sophomores and juniors, Shulack explained. They follow up with high school visits, application mailings, e-mail messages and open house events.
Towson admissions counselors begin reviewing applications from high school seniors each September.
Towson has a rolling admissions procedure, meaning that applications are reviewed as they arrive, and students hear back only a few weeks after they mail in their paperwork. The first high school seniors will be admitted within the next four weeks.
The office processed 10,700 freshmen applications last school year. Seven members of the admissions office are assigned the task of reading the applications. They have cut students during their preliminary review, based on a combination of GPA’s and SAT scores.
“Grade point average carries much more weight in the decision process than test scores,” Shulack said.
The admissions office recalculates GPA’s based on a 4.0 scale.
Some students are admitted based solely on their GPA and SAT, and sometimes the recommendations and essays don’t play a role. But for borderline cases, the counselors review the application in more detail.
“Not everything is black and white,” Shulack said. “Not everything fits neatly in a box. We have to take a lot of things into consideration.”
Borderline applicants are asked to send their first quarter senior year grades. A committee makes a couple hundred of the most difficult decisions during early spring.
By early March, 7,200 students had been admitted for the 2,250 slots in this fall’s freshman class. The number of admitted students was based on Towson’s typical 30 percent yield – in other words, three out of every ten admitted students decide to enroll. But it doesn't end there.
The number of newly enrolled students fluctuates up to the first day of school.
“Even after paying the deposit, they may not enroll,” McNew said.
Shulack called it the “summer melt:” About 6 percent of students cancel their plans after informing Towson they will enroll. Other students who don’t pay their tuition by the deadline will have their schedules erased.
Throughout the year, the University tweaks the statistics and runs models to predict the growth.
“Our long-range vision now is to grow fairly rapidly and to improve diversity and to become a much larger institution,” McNew said. “The annual enrollment projections are in effect the plan for achieving that vision.”
At the provost’s retreat last week, University leadership reaffirmed its plans for growth. Towson’s full-time undergrad population will grow by approximately 250 to 300 students per year, for the next 10 years, according to current projections.
McNew said Towson would be among the Maryland schools that help accommodate the increasing numbers of college-ready students.
“For me, it’s a lot more interesting when we’re growing because we’re not denying as many students,” McNew said. “When you’re flat, you’re denying students that you know could be successful. In growth mode, we can take any student that we think has a decent chance of graduating.”
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