Enrollment numbers for 2011-2012 increase, Winslow says

"All colleges and universities push students to that day, which is a reasonable amount of time between Sept. 1 and May 1 for students to complete their college search processes, visit campuses and make a decision," Winslow said.

Enrollment numbers for the upcoming academic year have risen since last spring, with deposits from 241 students submitted as of April 27, compared to 235 last year. There are 955 active admits, who Winslow described as "admitted students who are still active in our pool of prospects." This number rose substantially from spring 2010, when there were only 679 active admits still being recruited by the College. Winslow added that although the National Commitment Day has passed, his office will continue to communicate with prospective students who have not committed to a college yet.

"Obviously, the fact that we have a bigger admit pool means that there’s still more potential out there as we head into the rest of May and the summer," Winslow said. "Our communication flow won’t stop—we will still communicate with them in all the ways that we normally do – snail mail, email; we’ll be on the phone talking with those students."

Winslow also said that there are still 40 student-athletes who need to be recruited for next fall for track, baseball, men’s and women’s basketball and the newly-established men’s and women’s swim team.

"Those sports will be continuing to recruit student-athletes into the summer. The coaches and the athletic leadership sets squad sizes for their teams, so they know at the beginning of any given year how many students they are going to need to recruit in order to maintain their squad size," Winslow said.

After the substantial changes to the College’s study abroad policy, there has been concern as to how the changes will affect the recruitment of prospective students. However, Winslow said that so far, his staff has noticed no major repercussions of the policy change, and that the office has been intentional about communicating these changes to potential students.

"We actually started changing our language on the overseas study issue well over a year ago. The language changes in terms of the details we talk to families about changed a while ago," Winslow said.

He also added that the changes William Jewell has made to their study abroad policy are more comparable to what other colleges are doing in their respective overseas programs.

"Most colleges do not provide the level of aid that we were providing for students who are going overseas, so we’re not seeing a lot of students saying ‘That’s the reason I’m not coming to Jewell.’ I don’t think it will impact our overall enrollment that greatly," Winslow said.

One addition that the office of admission has added to its recruiting strategies is establishing a new visit event at which prospective students can spend more time learning about the major that they are interested in potentially pursuing. The event will feature six of the College’s academic departments.

The high school academic statistics of the incoming first-year class include an average ACT score of 25.62 and an average SAT score of 1150. Additionally, 14 percent of the class enrolled thus far will graduate as valedictorian or salutatorian in their high school and 33 percent will graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school class. The average GPA of the incoming first-years is slightly higher at 3.70, compared to that of last year’s class, 3.69. Winslow added that these numbers could still increase or decrease depending on the additional students who will enroll at the College over the summer.

Tara Moreland can be reached at  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.