By all accounts, the past year has been a tough one and people are looking for good news. At Millsaps College, good news is coming to campus in the form of one of the largest incoming classes of first-year students in a decade.
“Thanks to the incredibly hard work of our admission team and our dedication to recruiting students in a different way, we are seeing tremendous growth for this year’s incoming class,” said Beth Clarke, vice president of enrollment.
The incoming class for the fall of 2021 is 56% larger than the first-year class in the fall of 2020 and 7% over the incoming class in 2019.
Clarke, who came to Millsaps in July 2020, brought a fresh direction to admission work for the college. She shaped the admission team, defined the direction they would take in recruiting prospective students and set her sights high.
“Millsaps has a solid track record of student and alumni success, and when that is presented along with our curriculum that offers a path to graduation in four years, then students and parents can easily see that Millsaps is a great place to be,” Clarke said.
The incoming students represent 14 states, with 42% of them coming from Mississippi; the college is also seeing more students from the Jackson metropolitan area choose to attend. It is a strong academic class, with an average GPA of 3.66 on a 4.0 scale, but students are bringing even more experiences to campus – one is conducting a medical internship in Vietnam during the summer, others are bringing state championship rings in tennis and baseball, and some have already started making plans to create new student organizations.
“These students are a diverse, innovative, creative and passionate group,” said Clarke. “We are excited to welcome them and work with them over the next four years.”