Over 300 high school students registered for the fall Mustangs Rally held last Saturday afternoon. Students were given tours of the university and the residence halls, and a college fair allowed representatives from each college to give prospective students a closer look at the academic side of the university.
Keith Lamb, vice president for student affairs and enrollment management, said his staff sent about 50,000 postcards to prospective students in order to inform them about MSU and the Mustangs Rally.
“When you’re deciding where to go to college, for so many students, it’s like shopping,” Lamb said. “So we want to make sure that there’s a day where they can come to our campus and look at us.”
Lamb said the rally is designed to give students a preview of multiple aspects of campus life from academics, to clubs and residence halls.
“It allows them to meet with our faculty, allows them to see different programs on campus in one mass setting,” Lamb said.
Lamb said that of the two rallies, the spring Mustangs Rally is much bigger.
“Fall is very busy for the high school students between activities and sporting events, so spring is less busy for high school in terms of activities,” Lamb said. “It’s also closer to graduation.”
Lamb said beginning this year MSU will host similar rallies for each individual college.
“They would be smaller, they would have more interaction with the faculty, more with the dean, and that seemed appropriate given who we are,” Lamb said. “We’ve had one so far for health sciences and I think we had 62 students at that one.”
At last Thursday’s Board of Regents meeting, Lamb said that enrollment will be up to 7,000 by 2017, a claim he defended at the rally.
“By 2017 we’ll be in the neighborhood of 7,000,” Lamb said. “I don’t know which side of 7,000 but we should be in that neighborhood.”
Lamb cited this fall’s record freshman class as a positive sign for the university’s future.
“The main positive was the size of this year’s freshman class,” Lamb said. “If we can replicate that for two or three more years, actually just every year, that should help.”
Michael Mills, director of housing and dining services, said tours of the residence halls are one of the biggest draws for prospective students to come to Mustangs Rally.
“We get a lot of questions at Mustangs Rally,” Mills said. “Students choose institutions for the academics and for the majors, but they also want to know where they’re going to be living, so we want to be sure to answer their questions.”
Mills said housing and admissions maintain a good relationship in order to aid in recruitment.
“Even when admissions is just doing regular campus tours with one student or ten students or a group of students they usually incorporate housing into that tour because it’s something that students want to know where they’re going to live if they choose to go to Midwestern,” Mills said.
Alex Petree, senior in engineering, attended Mustangs Rally to represent Engineers for a Sustainable World as part of the organization fair in the Clark Student Center atrium.
“We wanted to advertise our organization and also promote the engineering department,” Petree said. “Engineering is a good investment of your college career because of the outcome you can get from it. Mechanical engineering provides a variety of jobs.”
Petree said it seemed like the main college fair located in the Comanche Suite drew attendance away from the organization fair.
“We didn’t get as much attention over here as they do over there with all the main stuff,” Petree said, then offering a solution, “there needs to be food in here too.”