After falling short during last year's admissions cycle, Longwood brought in roughly 120 students more, exceeding 1,000 incoming freshman for the 2017-18 year.
“Officially to best estimate we were at about 950 (students) this time last year, unofficially this year we are closer to about 1,070 (students),” said Dean of Admissions Jason Faulk.
The Class of 2021 is the fourth largest Longwood freshmen class from the largest in fall 2013 with 1,110 students, according to Faulk.
National deposit day for students to put a down payment to secure their position at the university they choose is May 1.
Faulk disclosed that Longwood receives most of their payments for the upcoming year prior to May 1.
“So on or a little bit after May 1 we (Admissions) realized ‘Oh we are up in numbers’,” said Faulk.
Faulk attributed the increase to recruiting in places where in the past recruitment wasn’t done.
Additionally, Faulk gives credit for this increase to Melissa Shepherd, previous managing director of admissions prior to Faulk’s arrival to Longwood in July 2017 and now serves as assistant vice president of university analytics.
Faulk added Shepherd developed new relationships with counselors in new areas apart from the usual Longwood student locations.
“So we are expanding our reach to out of state and I think that really helped to diversify that standard Longwood student to gaps of students we have just never seen before,” said Faulk.
Faulk mentioned Longwood has strong enrollment from Richmond, Va., the Tidewater area and Northern Virginia.
Now, the Admissions department has started recruiting in more out of state areas.
“We are going to areas such as Ohio, we are doing more travel to Washington D.C., also the same thing for Maryland, we are doing extensive travel to Boston (Ma.) and Delaware and Pennsylvania as well. We have always done New York but we are doing very focused areas,” said Faulk.
Admissions also has seen what they refer to as the ‘summer melt’ from students in years past who do not end up enrolling after paying before May 1.
“The summer you kind of access everything from the prior year-what worked, what didn’t work and some of the things that we saw that didn't really have the return that we were hoping to do we won’t do those again because we want to do the best bang for the overall buck,” said Faulk.
With future enrollment, Faulk sees the rise continuing.
“I think we are going to become a more diverse student body not just because when you think of diverse people think race, think past race where students are coming from. Students are coming from different socioeconomic statuses, religion, where people have been and where they want to go and really just that diversify who we are as Longwood lancers,” said Faulk.
