Admissions works to increase enrollment
By Micah Sommer
Faced with falling enrollment due to the current financial situation, members of the Earlham community are devoting significant time and resources toward attracting more students to the college.
The Office of Admissions is pursuing a number of initiatives aimed at increasing the applicant pool and improving the yield of admitted students who end up enrolling. Some of the initiatives are aimed specifically at students who are low-need, or whose families can afford to pay a higher portion of tuition costs.
In January, Vice President of Admissions Jeff Rickey and Provost Nelson Bingham delivered to the Board of Trustees a list of 17 admissions initiatives.
Rickey explained that the goal of the initiatives is to increase enrollment from last fall’s total of 1,124 students to the college’s target figure of 1,200 students. The initiatives are categorized by three specific goals: expanding the applicant pool, enhancing the quality of the applicant pool and increasing enrollment among accepted applicants.
The initiatives vary widely. One of the simplest has been to suspend the $30 fee Earlham previously charged students to apply.
“That has not resulted in frivolous applications, and we know that because our completed applications percentage is up over last year,” Rickey said.
The Earlham Financial Aid Application has also been eliminated, and Earlham will use the Free Application for Federal Student Aid to determine financial aid packages.
Other initiatives focus on messaging, capitalizing on Earlham’s place among Loren Pope’s “Colleges that Change Lives” and emphasizing Earlham’s academic rigor.
Hoping to attract more Quaker students, the college has hired a part-time Young Adult Friends outreach coordinator, who will work out of the Newlin Center for Quaker Thought and Practice.
One initiative provides travel vouchers to help prospective students visit Earlham.
Rickey explained that this initiative targets prospective students who are similar to current Earlham students and thus more likely to attend Earlham, as determined by analysis of a number of attributes. This initiative also disproportionately targets low-need students.
Rickey explained that attracting low-need students is vital to Earlham’s financial stability.
“Earlham has had and will continue to have … a commitment to students from low- and moderate-income families, but as time has gone by we have neglected to enroll a diversity of students that would include a larger number of students who are low-need,” he said.
He explained that increasing this economic diversity by attracting more low-need and fullpaying students will provide the college with the financial security to continue its commitment to higher need students.
Bingham echoed this sentiment, adding that exposure to socioeconomic diversity is important in preparing Earlham students for the future.
“I think there are vanishingly fewer opportunities … for people of different socioeconomic classes to really come together and get to know each other and interact in a positive learning fashion, ” Bingham said. He added that this interaction “provides an opportunity to really develop some understanding that this world is going to need in the 21st century.”
Although the initiatives disproportionately target lowneed students, Rickey said that the college still practices needblind admission, deciding who is accepted regardless of financial aid.
Most of the initiatives originated from recommendations by the consulting group SimpsonScarborough, which the college hired last fall to address the short-term need to increase admissions. In September the consultants visited campus and met with focus groups consisting of Earlham students, parents and prospective students. The college hired the consultants for a fee of $53,400.
Earlham has also contracted with the Art & Science Group, a consulting firm that is currently working with the college on formulating longer term approaches to admissions. The fee for these consultants is $274,300, which will be paid over two years.
Much of the funding for these initiatives comes from a draw in endowment funds that the Board of Trustees approved in June 2009. Earlham’s operating budget and the President’s Discretionary Fund also provide some funding. The total cost of the initiatives for this fiscal year is $242,000, which does not include the consulting fees. Rickey said that assessment of the initiatives’ success will determine future funding.
Senior Jay Zevin is a member of the Admissions Initiative Client Committee, which is currently meeting with the longterm consulting group. He also met last fall with the short-term consultants. Zevin sees this process as important to ensuring the continuation of what makes Earlham valuable.
“In order for Earlham to remain the community that I love and value, it needs to make good business decisions, and so I wanted to do something that was involved in the business aspect of the school,” Zevin said.
Zevin acknowledged that this may be an uncomfortable topic for some students.
“I think that at times the student reaction to things like admissions initiatives is to recoil a little bit,” he said. “That’s not the part of the community that we like bonding about, but it’s important to make sure that Earlham has a viable business strategy.”
Senior Aaron Goldbeck, who works in Admissions as a campus tour guide, said that he is conflicted about the initiatives.
“I’m invested in Earlham and I feel like it’s an important institution; it’s had incredible meaning for me,” Goldbeck said.
“I feel like if a broader applicant pool is what it’s going to take to ensure the health and the success of Earlham as an educational institution, then that’s great and I’m happy to be a part of that.”
However, Goldbeck expressed worry that, in promoting Earlham as an institution of academic excellence, the initiatives will dilute other qualities that make Earlham special.
“What makes Earlham unique, not just another well-meaning institution in cornfields?” he asked, citing Earlham’s commitment to community, social justice and its Principles and Practices as values he feared would be glossed over in promoting the college.
Senior Mandi Rice agreed that increasing the applicant pool is necessary for Earlham. However, she expressed concern about the focus on attracting low need students.
“I think that’s it’s a little suspect to be singling out economic groups for different treatment in the admissions process, because our admissions Web site still says that we practice a needblind policy,” Rice said. “I think that we need to be more upfront with [prospective] students about that.”
Rice also questioned how effective targeting low need students will be.
“I think that people who fit in well at Earlham don’t like being talked to on the basis of how much money their family has,” she said.
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