Seeking Future Bears

Prospective students should find a much smoother application and admissions process at Baylor University since the school reorganized its recruitment and admission staffs and enhanced the services they offer.
Last year, the recruitment and admissions offices merged to become the Office of Admission Services. Teri Tippit heads the recruiting arm of the office and said the merger is going well.
"The merger has been positive for both offices and the counseling staff has been very pleased with the process," Tippit said.
Under the new system, a prospective student is assigned an admission counselor who guides the student and his or her family through the entire application, recruitment and admission process. Before the merger, the recruitment office would transfer students to the admissions office once they were admitted to the university.
"It's a more continual and seamless process," Tippit said. "We are able to tell students who their counselor is and they can keep in contact with that person. It helps a family to know who they can count on."
Diana Ramey serves the office as director of admissions. Her staff primarily handles applications, transfer students and campus visits. However, she said a major benefit of the merger is that the staffs of both offices can work in either the recruitment or the admissions area.
"We have doubled our efforts and doubled our resources," Ramey said. "We trade our services all the time. Both staffs are cross-trained and support each other during peak times."
An addition to the recruiting effort was the establishment of a telecounseling center. Fifteen Baylor students staff the center and call prospective students to answer questions about Baylor and help determine each student's interest in the university. Tippit said a current student can communicate with a prospective student in ways an admission counselor may not.
"It's another personal contact from the university," she said. "We are able to talk directly to students and find out what their interest level is," she said.
The admission services staff has also developed new strategies for recruiting students that will increase the number of students admitted while maintaining the university's academic standards. The admission services office assigns each prospective student a value that is dependent on how likely the student is to attend the university. The value reflects a number of variables including the student's location and how many times the student has contacted Baylor. This value changes as the student shows more or less interest. Tippit said the value helps the recruitment staff know which students they should most actively recruit.
"Prior to this year, we were taking a shotgun approach," Tippit said. "Now we focus our efforts more."
The office also has set specific numeric goals in its recruiting plans. Approximately 80,000 students annually make inquires to the university. The admission services staff would like to obtain applications from at least 10 percent of the people inquiring about Baylor. The staff would then like to effectively recruit 80 percent of the applicants, which would result in a freshman class of between 2,500 and 2,600 students.
The office has continued its practice of hosting student receptions and high school visits throughout the country to inform students about Baylor. Admission Services hosted 32 receptions this spring and visited more then 225 high schools throughout the year. Saturday, the office hosted Spring Premiere in which hundreds of high school juniors and their families came to visit the campus. The office will host Premiere programs this fall and in the winter of 1999.