The Franklin College admissions department hopes to have 1,130 students enrolled in the school within five years.
Officials are pleased with the increased diversity and better student retention that this year’s student body represents as the college works towards the five-year enrollment goal, said Kate Coffman, vice president of admissions at the college.
Diversity in the incoming class is the highest it has been in five years, Coffman said. In this year’s enrollment, 16 percent of students in the new student class come from ethnically or racially diverse backgrounds. That percentage is up from 12 percent last year, Coffman said.
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Click here to purchase photos from this gallery“It’s a decent job for a small school,” she said.
Franklin College reported that 297 new students enrolled this year, bringing total enrollment to 982 students. Initially, officials had hoped to have around 330 new students this year, Coffman said.
Still officials understand that growth takes time, meaning their goal of 1,130 is more long term, she said.
“We can’t do it all at once. That would be amazing if we could,” Coffman said.
Recruiting diversity is part of the admissions department’s overall strategic plan, Coffman said. But, the college does not just define diversity by ethnicity and race, she said. The college has added emphasis on reaching students of different faiths and sexual orientation, as well as those from other states and countries.
“It brings to the campus more representation of what the world is like and what people are going into,” Coffman said.
Admissions counselors spend much of the year traveling to high schools to recruit different students. All counselors travel to as many as 30 out-of-state schools, which is not something the college had done a lot in the past, Coffman said. Most out-of-state students come from Illinois, Kentucky and Florida, she said.
Additionally, Coffman traveled to India to increase the college’s visibility in partnership with Lindentours, an international consulting and recruitment service. She said many students in the country are interested in a U.S. college education.
While bringing students to campus is a critical part of the admissions strategy, it’s also vital to recruit who will succeed and want to stay at Franklin College, Coffman said.
Admissions researched data on past Franklin College students who have succeeded on campus, Coffman said. By looking at the pattern those students followed when admitted, they were able to find out what factors make a Franklin College student and what they may look like when going through admissions.
“We’re looking for if you were thinking of the epitome of a Franklin College student, that’s that student,” Coffman said.
When looking for a potential Franklin College student, the college looks holistically at test scores, academic criteria that shows they can handle the college’s curriculum and what students achieved in high school, to determine who would succeed at the college, Coffman said. But that doesn’t mean that all students on the lower side of those criteria are removed from consideration.
“If there’s any indication that they are going to succeed here, we are going to take that chance because we really do feel like Franklin changes lives,” Coffman said.
The overall goal is to make Franklin College just as appealing as the large state schools, Coffman said.
“They’re going to be challenged and they’re going to mentored in a way that they won’t get at a large state school,” she said.
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A look at the Franklin College enrollment numbers for the 2018-2019 school year:
297 new students
982 students overall
16 percent ethnic and racial diversity for the new student class
Five-year goal: 1,130 students
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