Earlham Rides Record Wave of
Applications for Third Year in a Row

For Immediate Release:
April 20, 2005

RICHMOND, Ind. — For the third consecutive year, admissions officials at Earlham College report receiving a record number of applications from prospective students.

According to Director of Admissions Nancy Sinex, applications for the 2005-06 academic year have increased roughly 3.4 percent from the previous-record total of a year ago. Compared to 2003, however, applications to Earlham are up 11.7 percent. Since 2002, requests for admission to the College have swelled by more than 25 percent.

Of the 1,552 prospective first-year students applying for places in the Class of 2009, Sinex says 1,077 have been sent letters of acceptance. That figure is nearly identical to the number of prospective first-years who received notices of admission in 2003 and 2004. But, because of the growing volume of applications, the College’s admissions rate  has dropped from 76 percent in 2003 to 69 percent this year.

A total of 73 transfer students also applied for admission this coming fall — up 30% from ’04.

First-year Earlham students and their parents gathered in August 2004 for the annual welcoming convocation in Goddard Auditorium.

Although demographics play a major role in Earlham’s application gains — with the nation’s high school-age population in a general expansion projected to last until 2008 — Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Jeff Rickey is quick to note that the overall rate of increase in applications to the College during the past several years is significantly higher than the rate of student body growth in America’s high schools for the same period.

The difference for Earlham, Rickey says, can be traced to several factors, including the College’s intensified marketing and recruitment efforts since a “repositioning” of the institution for admissions purposes was initiated in the late 1990s.

The results of those efforts include at least one and possibly two other, new admissions-related records.

In 2004, while nearly half of American colleges and universities reported decreases in international student enrollments and the number of foreign students attending U.S. schools overall slipped by nearly three percent (the first decline in more than 30 years), Earlham that fall registered its largest international class ever.

The previous year, following a 12 percent jump in applications from 2002, the College welcomed a first-year class of slightly fewer than 400 students, acknowledged by most longtime campus observers as the biggest entering class in memory and, possibly, the largest in Earlham history.

Another factor contributing to the record-setting increases in Earlham’s application pool, says Rickey, is the College’s success at improving its student retention rates, which translates to “more of our students telling their younger friends about their positive Earlham experience.”

Between 1999 and 2004, reports Associate Dean of Student Development Wendy Seligmann — point person for the College’s programs aimed at student retention — the percentage of first-year students returning to campus for the sophomore year has risen from 81.4% to 89% (climbing as high as 91.4% in 2001). Similarly, the share of sophomores returning for the junior year has increased from 73.6% to 80.9%, and juniors returning for the senior year from 71.3% to 76%.

Approximately 70 percent of students who arrive on campus as freshmen eventually leave with an Earlham diploma, Rickey says.

Also influencing the rise in applications to Earlham, Rickey believes, are recent moves by the College to increase its visibility, particularly among high school counselors. As a result, says Earlham’s dean of admissions, higher numbers of counselors “are referring more students to us and putting Earlham on more students’ lists of prospective colleges.”

Minority, multicultural applications soar

At the same time, efforts to raise Earlham’s profile outside  of the high school environment also are beginning to pay potentially handsome dividends for the College, the latest application figures indicate, especially as they involve prospective African American, Latino and other “multicultural” students.

Following its general repositioning for admissions in the latter half of the ‘90s, Earlham two years ago developed a new strategic plan for reaching out to more students “by making better connections within community organizations,” explains Assistant Dean of Admissions and Coordinator of Multicultural Recruitment Kevin Browder-Handley.

Although less a response to a perceived problem in minority and multicultural representation at Earlham (already long recognized for hosting a minority student population substantially larger than many of its peer institutions; 25% in 2004-05) than as an answer to “a couple of student surveys expressing concerns with the entire recruitment process,” Browder-Handley says the new initiative still has done much to extend Earlham’s commitment to creating the broadest possible range of cultural, ethnic and religious diversity on campus.

Since inception of the plan — described by Browder-Handley as an “unconventional, total team approach” to establishing Earlham’s identity not only among high school counselors, but also within smaller, “grass roots” community organizations involved in, for example, tutoring and college readiness training — applications from prospective African American students have jumped 53 percent, from 79 in 2003 to 121 this year.

In like fashion, requests for admission from Latino students have increased 38 percent (from 34 to 47) over the same period.

Besting even those impressive figures, however, is the nearly 63 percent rise in applications from prospective multicultural (multi-racial, Amer-Asian, Native American, etc.) students, from 59 two years ago to 96 in 2005.

“In the area where I recruit, primarily Indiana and the Midwest, I know it’s been very important that we’ve formed these kinds of partnerships,” says Browder-Handley, who while “definitely pleased” with the results of this year’s recruiting believes the next step for the College, admissions-wise, is to “get even better at what we did this year and try to reach out to even more community organizations.

“I think we’re definitely headed in the right direction.”

Winds from the West

Speaking of directions, Sinex says the latest applications data also show several interesting — if not yet fully analyzed and understood — trends in terms of the geographic areas from which students seeking admission to the College are sending their requests.

Perhaps most noticeable, says Sinex, is a nearly 50 percent jump in applications from prospective first-year students in California, from 41 in 2004 to 61 this year.

Although the College hasn’t “fully recruited” in California in some time, Sinex says for the last several years she has represented Earlham in annual recruiting “tours” of the state by admissions representatives from many of the 40 or so institutions included in the influential college guide Colleges That Change Lives.

“I guess it goes to show Earlham does pretty well at standing out in a crowd,” says Sinex, who nevertheless admits being “pleasantly surprised” by the level of this year’s applications from the Golden State.

From the Southwest region (including Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico), meanwhile, applications rose an average of 30 percent this year over last, Sinex says, led by a 92 percent surge (from 13 to 25) in applications from prospective students in New Mexico.

Applications from the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states, always productive recruiting territory for Earlham, also rose a modest though still solid seven percent this year, reports Sinex. Although requests for admission from would-be students in its host state, Indiana, fell slightly — from 260 last year to 243 in 2005. International applications edged up slightly, to 221 from 215.

For the 2004-05 school year, the College counted among its student population representatives of 43 states and 46 foreign nations.

From this year’s applicant pool, Rickey and Sinex say the College looks to enroll in the fall a first-year class of 320 students, an intentional decrease from last year’s freshman class of 336. The planned reduction in first-year enrollment is meant to keep Earlham’s total student population near the optimum number of 1,200 prescribed by President Doug Bennett and the College’s board of trustees.

— EC —

Contact:
Nancy Sinex, director of admissions
765/983-1600 — E-Mail Nancy

Kevin Burke, director of media relations
765/983-1323 — E-Mail Kevin

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This page last updated: April 20, 2005