With of a goal of bringing 1,090 students in fall 2018, Director of Admissions Jason Faulk said the office added campus recruitment opportunities with bringing more students to campus, texting with students via signal and shortening the decision wait time to 21 days.
“We are really going to manage the growth here at Longwood because you can grow by however many you want to grow but quality wise so for me quality is more important than quantity,” said Faulk.
He added, “We (admissions) tried to be more targeted on the students that we were inviting to campus."

Admissions hopes to see class of 2020 increase by two percent from 2015-16 and 2016-17 admissions cycles.
Faulk said students who visit campus are three times more likely to apply and enroll, and the number of students and their families visiting campus has increased by 800.
“So the more students we get on campus the better,” said Faulk.
Admissions hosted major-specific days on campus with art, athletic training and nursing.
“We had arts day and for students who may be interested in theatre anything in music or actually doing art we had a special day on campus where we invited 150 students on campus to come to Longwood, work with our professors in different workshops and at the end of the day they left with some kind of tangible object or project that they did here but while they were here, guess what, they also applied as well,” said Faulk.
The application for potential students is now online-based where a potential students application, test scores and transcript is located on the cloud where in the past there were paper files, according to Faulk.
With doing so, the application decision time frame has shortened to 21 days but the majority of applications receive a decision within seven days said Faulk.
Faulk said admissions now communicates with potential students via text with signal, a mass texting platform. He described the communication as a faster process as he sees replies with texts between five to ten minutes as compared to emails.
“We are seeing that this texting campaign is really helping us have good dialogue with students that is focused on that individual student,” said Faulk.
Faulk described the admissions cycle as being broken up into four separate phases. August through December is the application generation phase “where we are encouraging students to apply."
January through March is the application completion phase where potential students submit their application, application fee, transcript and test scores said Faulk. March through May 1 is when accepted students secure their spot at Longwood through their deposits.
The middle of May through July is referred to as the “summer melt," when students who have submitted their deposits may choose to attend a different college or decide against going to a four-year institution.
“Those students who have committed to Longwood we want to keep them committed to Longwood so they start classes in August,” said Faulk.
According to Faulk, the cycle has been tweaked to focus more on targeted recruitment that has resulted in higher applications from more "quality students."
“Instead of just focusing on one part of the cycle we really spread out the processes to make sure that we have something intentional for every phase of the way,” said Faulk. “All across the board we are seeing a very eclectic group that kind of makes up the state.”
Faulk said Longwood is seeing growth in Hispanic student applications, paralleling Virginia’s growth in the Hispanic community.
While the majority of applications remain from female students, the university has seen growth in male applications, said Faulk.
A large makeup of the admissions department is composed of Longwood alumni, according to Faulk.
“A lot of my (admissions) team has graduated from Longwood so they are able to bring their perspective to it and speak the Longwood talk,” said Faulk.
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3/28/2018 - In the original version, this article misstated that 1,090 students had committed to attending Longwood University in fall 2018. The figure 1,090 is the number of students Longwood University hopes to bring in to make the class of 2022. The article has been amended and clarified to show that this figure is a goal that the university hopes to reach through new recruitment techniques. The article was also amended to clarify the definition of the term "summer melt."
