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Applications up at UW-W

WHITEWATER — UW-Whitewater might just be going through its 15 minutes of fame, but freshman applications are up more than 10 percent for the second year in a row, setting the stage for the largest freshman class since 1985.

Officials attribute the flood of applications to a national championship in football, strong programs in accounting and business and a new student union and dorms.

But while those might be the most identifiable reasons that more high school seniors are applying, “none of those is strong enough to drive enrollment on its own,” said Steve McKellips, director of admissions.

He said it’s about communicating those varied victories to potential students that’s really at the heart of the university’s recent popularity.

“There’s so much going on,” McKellips said. “It’s not just ‘Oh, that’s the business school,’ anymore. That’s why people are learning about us.”

He said the university has changed its marketing strategy from putting out a cattle call to high school seniors to providing them with targeted information on an instant, need-to-know basis.

“We’ve stopped doing the traditional method: go to a college fair … tell them what they need to know and see if they apply,” McKellips said. “We do a lot more individual, one-on-one follow-up.”

He points to the Ask Away feature on the admissions office Web page, where prospective students can submit a question and receive an immediate answer. But while Ask Away operates similar to a search engine, it actually returns specific information, he said, and students whose questions aren’t answered still can e-mail the admissions staff.

McKellips said the Web traffic—students submit about 5,000 questions per month—proves Ask Away is effective.

“People have questions they know they can get answered,” he said. “There’s no more telephone tag. They can just go to the Web page and get the information they want right away.”

The university’s approach to recruitment reflects how most students approach college admissions, McKellips said.

“Nobody has a question about everything all at once,” he said.

UW-Whitewater’s viewbook no longer provides the cursory overview of everything from admissions to housing to financial aid. Instead, prospective students receive information that’s timed to what they should be thinking about when they should be thinking about it.

“We work with the people who want to be worked with,” he said. “Our idea is: ‘There’s too much to remember. Why don’t I remember it for you and you get back to me when you need it?’

“We’re all in a perpetual dialogue with the people who want answers.”

Even UW-Whitewater’s open house is different, McKellips said. Prospective students hear directly from the chancellor and the deans instead of from the admissions staff.

“A lot of campuses rely on their recruitment staff, but nothing competes with letting the dean explain the program,” he said.

McKellips said the university isn’t the only one that’s seeing an increase in applications. But the difference is high school seniors have UW-Whitewater at the top of their lists.

Incoming freshman Brandon Narveson of Oshkosh said it was the people that separated UW-Whitewater from other colleges.

Narveson toured the campus on a “bitter cold” February day and didn’t want stick around for much more than that. But his mother insisted he talk to an admissions staff member.

He said Troy Moldenhauer, the interim associate director of admission, sat down with them for an hour and took time to read his application and checked into scholarship opportunities.

“He made me feel like he wanted what was best for me,” Narveson said, “even if that meant attending another school. UW-Whitewater was really the first school that showed any interest in me, and that was extremely important to me.”

McKellips said freshman classes used to hover around 1,700 students until recently. This year’s freshman class is expected to be about 2,150.