Following an atypical admissions cycle, Longwood University’s freshmen enrollment declined by 103 students after boasting one of their top three largest incoming classes of over 1,000 in 2015.
After the semester’s add/drop period ended on Friday, Aug. 26, the 2016 freshman class officially contained 950 students, missing admissions’ projected enrollment range of 975 to 1,100; last year, the university had 1,053 students enroll.
According to Longwood Vice President of Strategic Operations Victoria Kindon, the drop in deposits by May 1 - the National Decision day for high school students - was unexpected. Kindon said Longwood’s number of deposits matched or exceeded the university’s projections until the week and a half before the decision day as other universities statewide began to accept students from their waitlists.
“That has a trickledown effect that every institution is feeling right now. There are very few schools that actually hit their target (enrollment) numbers for the spring,” said Kindon. She added even though the 2016 freshman class is lower than the university’s target, it’s “not dramatically smaller.”
Jennifer Green, the associate vice president for enrollment management and student success, headed the 2015-16 admissions cycle as the department continues to go without a dean of admissions.
“When other institutions go to their waitlist, it impacts other institutions. This year, every institution went to their waitlist,” said Green.
Last year, 4,716 prospective Longwood students applied to the university and 63 percent were accepted, according to admissions figures provided by Kindon. Of the 2,971 applicants accepted, 35 percent of the acceptances attended Longwood in the fall leading 2015’s freshman class of 1,053 students
This year, the university received 565 more applications than during the 2015 cycle, totaling 5,281. Longwood’s acceptance rate held steadily at 63 percent, the same as last year’s cycle. Of the 5,281 applicants, Longwood sent 3,327 prospective students acceptance letters. Twenty-eight percent of the students, 950 students, came to Longwood and remain following the end of the add/drop period.
For the 2016 cycle, the number of acceptances who decided to deposit with the university dropped by seven percent from the previous year.
“(Admissions) is a statistical prediction, and in statistics you’re using the information that you have and how things have gone for the past few years to figure out how you expect it to be, and in any statistical prediction there’s error,” said Green. “You go with what you have seen, and if something changes you adjust. However, you aren’t adjusting until you see it change.”
Kindon said Longwood chose not to accept more students from their waitlist when their enrollments didn’t meet projections entering the final week and a half.
“If we wanted say we just want to make our number, we could have just accepted more students. But our confidence that they are ready for school and/or going to stay here is not as strong. We want a strong class so we have made conscious decisions on who we’re accepting,” said Kindon. “We’re not going to our waitlist as aggressively as we have in the past… We don’t want a student to have to take out a loan and not have a degree to show for it. So, while we may have a fluctuation in numbers because of that, we’re okay with that.”
The 2016-17 Longwood University operating budget said the plan is “based on assumptions related” to enrollment projections, actions by the Virginia state government and revenue and expenditure estimates.
Kindon said the institution didn’t miss the enrollment target enough to affect the annual budget because the budget bases tuition revenue off of credit hour production versus head count. She said while credit hours from the freshman class may be lower than expected, Longwood’s number of transfer students surpassed expectations, helping to balance the deficit.
“From a revenue point of view, the headcount is of almost less of a factor than credit hour production,” said Kindon, adding that Longwood’s budget is “conservative” and has “enough cushion to balance out loss.”
Both Green and Kindon listed a number of other factors contributing to the decline in enrollment outside of the unusual waitlist issue despite Longwood’s rising application numbers, saying the increase in application usually corresponds with an increase in interest in the institution.
They said Longwood competes with private colleges offering tuition at “discounted rates” close or lower than the cost of public universities, the recent viability of community colleges which offers savings students can save on both tuition and room and board and more schools recruiting high school graduates from Virginia.
In response to the fluctuation in the 2016 cycle, Green said admissions is “certainly approaching this year with the understanding that what happened this year could be the new norm.”
12:00 a.m. EST - The difference in the amount of students Longwood enrolled from 2015 to 2016 was changed from 153 to 103 after realizing a calculation error. The 1,053 student class of 2015 was one of Longwood's top three freshman classes, not their largest. The lead has been adjusted to reflect both inaccuracies.
