Spring Break
2007 freshman class stats
Jordan Osecki
Issue date: 9/20/07 Section: News
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With the inclusion of the new freshman class, the University has reached approximately 11,000 full-time undergraduates, and 20,250 overall, which includes all undergraduate students, all graduate students, medical students, law students, part-time students, and online students.
According to Joan McDonald, the vice president of the Enrollment Management office, this class is "more bright, more diverse, and a larger draw across the country" than previous incoming classes.
Higher hopes
The Enrollment Management office has benchmarks in place in accordance with the University's master plan. According to McDonald, the office wants to see the number of full-time undergraduates increase to 12,000, the average G.P.A. increase to 3.7, the average S.A.T. score increase to 1260, and wants the number of freshman who were in the top 10 percent of their high school class to increase from 30 percent of the incoming freshman to between 40 and 50 percent.
McDonald believes the University can achieve these numbers because of some of the quality changes Drexel has already made and the many more which are outlined in the University's ten year master plan. This includes physical improvements such as the new science building that is planned, hiring of faculty, increased focus on research, and streamlining of administrative processes.
McDonald also agrees with the idea of thinking of Drexel as a "brand", an ideology that came to the University along with President Constantine Papadakis.
"The Drexel brand is what most administrators should be interested in. It may be a corporate term, but it's all about increasing the value of student's degrees. If students are happy, administrators are happy, the alumni are happy, and professors are happy. Its one big cycle," McDonald said.
Recruiting
McDonald also described Drexel's brand as "super-regional", to describe Drexel's recognition in the Mid-Atlantic Region.
The Enrollment Management office has a strict focus on expanding its recruitment efforts to other parts of the country. This is both to make the Drexel brand "super-national" and "super-international", but also because of a projected population dip in the number of incoming students. According to McDonald, around 2010 the number of 18-year-olds will begin to decline, and the areas which will be most heavily hit are the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions, two of the top three regions that Drexel draws its students from. In response, Drexel already has recruitment centers on the west coast and in Florida, and this year they plan to add one in Texas.
According to McDonald, when Drexel is looking to recruit students, the two main selling points of the University are the co-op program and urban location. McDonald described the new layout for the admissions page, which focuses less on the campus, and more on the co-op. "The web site has some pictures of the campus, but its new main feature is three videos, one about a student who is working for an accounting company in Center City, another who is working for Microsoft out in Seattle, and one about a student who is working at a graphics design firm in New York.
The competition
The main set of universities which receive applications from students who also apply to Drexel are Penn State University, Rutgers University, Temple University, Villanova University, Northeastern University, and New York University.
The Enrollment Management office constantly monitors the "overlap", which is comparing Drexel's applicants to each school's, and adjusting their marketing accordingly.
McDonald describes the typical Drexel freshman as driven, wanting to work, and wanting to apply their knowledge. "If I see a student who is talking about a web site that they have run for another business for years or that they created their own business or are working for their parent's business, I can tell that is a Drexel student," McDonald said.
Diversity
Drexel's freshman class diversity composition is changing in other ways besides just ethnically. The percentage of females is increasing, and McDonald expects it to be 50 percent in three or four years. McDonald also stressed the socioeconomic diversity that Drexel has and can boast against other schools.
A.J. Drexel founded the University as a school for first generation college students. Along with this trend, at 18 percent, approximately one out of every five Drexel students is a low income student. This compares to University of Pennsylvania, where only three to four percent of its student body is low income.
Do rankings matter?
When asked about rankings such as U.S. News and World Report and The Princeton Review, McDonald believes students pay attention to rankings, but most students pick a college by forming an emotional attachment with the university.
"Usually, a student will look at a university because their uncle's brother went there and it was kind of nice, and the student's parent may have heard 'Oh yea they have that co-op program', and then the student goes to visit and falls in love with a certain degree program and the campus and that's where they want to go. Does it matter if you are ranked high? Yes, but only to an extent."
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