FAMU’s fall applications up by ten percent

A student receives a scholarship during the Pensacola stop of the 2013 FAMU President’s Tour

Diverse Issues in Higher Education recently reported on the success of FAMU’s retooled recruitment program.

From the article: “FAMU’s new recruiting strategy paying off”:

The new recruiting strategy of Florida A&M University (FAMU), strengthened by this month’s clean health ruling from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) is boosting the university’s admissions applications, the institution’s chief executive says.

So far applications for the fall, 2014 academic year are up 10 percent compared to this time same a year ago, said university interim President Larry Robinson. The increase indicates success so far in FAMU’s more feet-on-the-street, earlier in the recruiting season, new message strategy, Robinson said in a brief interview as the university approached the last days of fall and prepared to close for its winter break.

“We’ve had a much more deliberate effort to focus our recruitment much earlier,” said Robinson, whose enrollment growth has faced several serious challenges in recent years. “We’re trying to make the bulk of it in the fall time frame when parents and students are trying to make up their minds.”

[Robinson] noted that tighter federal PPL financial criteria for parents has undermined enrollment goals for the past two years.

For the fall, 2013, the university lost more than 400 students whose parents were unable to qualify for federal PPL financial aid but were otherwise eligible for admission to FAMU. That last-minute enrollment hit cost FAMU several million in anticipated income.

“We’re putting out competitive scholarships that people will know about now,” Robinson said, noting that one attractive dimension of the overall financial obligation will be that FAMU’s fall 2014 tuition costs will be basically the same as that for the fall of 2013.

How students fare once the family FAFSA disclosures have been processed by the federal government and institutions to which students have applied is unknown at this point in time, Robinson said.

Read the full article here.