Admissions makes big push for high enrollment
David Serkoch
Issue date: 11/19/08 Section: News
|
Since its inception, the school has expanded its concentration from simply accountancy, to now including more than 30 undergraduate programs and 18 master's and doctoral degree programs. The campus has also matured to a hefty 230 acres, not including the downtown building, and is home to more than 5,000 enrolled students.
But with these developments, one constant has remained. RMU is not the first college that comes to mind when thinking of schools in the Pittsburgh area.
"Pitt," said Darren Bawler, a local high school student, when asked what the first college that came to mind was when thinking of Pittsburgh. "Not only because of its history and the Cathedral of Learning, but because of the national recognition it gets with the sports teams, too."
Without a national landmark centerpiece, or an array of popular Division I athletics, Robert Morris has had to rely on getting its name out there via some more conventional methods, such as word of mouth or advertising.
But one of the main aspects of the RMU recruiting process is a simple method most of us have encountered at one point or another in our academic lives: college fairs.
College fairs, just like the job fair that comes annually to RMU, is a day where an assortment of local colleges, and perhaps some military units, come together to entice high school students to enroll in their programs. And every year, more than 800,000 students attend college fairs in the hopes of making their choice and transition to college smoother and more efficient.
For Robert Morris, this is a very serious, and a very critical chance to showcase what it has to offer, and the school takes advantage of every opportunity available to them.
According to the Office of Admissions, there are eight full-time counselors who travel for two and a half months every year, attending as many fairs and programs that they can.
But just how many can they get to in the two-and-a-half-month time period. A few? Dozens?
Try hundreds.
"The school takes full advantage of every opportunity available to us," said an admissions spokesperson. "There are the local college fairs that go on, but then there are the individual high school visits, the regional fairs and even national fairs. There are plenty of chances for RMU to get its name out there. And as evidenced by the growing enrollment, it seems to be working."
Be the first to comment on this story