MSU receives record number of applicants

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When it came time for Holt High School senior Nick Kreider to send in his college applications, he only sent his essays and transcripts to one university — MSU.

“My parents both went to (Michigan) State and I wanted to go into education,” said Kreider, who plans on being a music education freshman at MSU next fall. “I heard they’re one of the best education schools and one of the leading music schools in the area.”

Kreider’s application was one of a record-setting number of freshman applications MSU received this year — upward of 28,000, according to numbers from the MSU Office of Admissions.

The number marks the third year in a row that MSU has broken a record in the number of freshmen applications and it breaks 2010’s record by about 1,000, said Jim Cotter, director of the MSU Office of Admissions. It’s likely the university will receive close to 30,000 applications next year, he said.

“It really does reflect a momentum and excitement that really surrounds MSU,” Cotter said.

Cotter said MSU is targeting an incoming freshman class of around 7,400 students in the fall — similar to last year’s goals.

MSU saw a “dramatic increase” in the number of international students this year, which rose by about 15 percent from 2010, Cotter said. Applications from out-of-state students also increased by double-digit percentages and applications from Michigan students are up as well — despite a 2.5 percent decline in the number of in-state high school graduates, he said.

“We’re very excited about MSU’s degree of globalization in the application pool,” Cotter said.

Most other Big Ten universities also saw an increase in freshman applications, especially the University of Michigan, which switched to the Common Application this year — a standard application sent to various schools, he said.

Cotter said most high school seniors are applying to a greater number of universities than in years past and the university has been working to promote itself in places outside of Michigan. The push helps promote the diversity of campus and also is done partly to combat a population of Michigan high school graduates that is expected to decrease by 100,000 by 2020, Cotter said.

“The increase in the number of applications — some of it is normal movement upward, but (it also reflects) the significant impact of the quality of the MSU experience,” he said.

MSU’s alumni base also is tied in to the recruiting effort, said Scott Westerman, executive director of the MSU Alumni Association. The university has a large network of alumni in cities across the nation who have a passion for recruiting, he said.

When Westerman formerly lived in Albuquerque, N.M., he and two other MSU graduates were some of those recruiters, he said.

“You wouldn’t think there would be people in New Mexico who’d be interested in coming to MSU, but there were a ton,” Westerman said.

The alumni career services team also is very successful at helping MSU graduates find jobs, Westerman said.

“The message kids are seeing is if you go to MSU — you’ll be able to find a job when you graduate,” he said.

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