Asa Daniels, senior staff writer

Berry College’s student population currently stands at 2,177, according to Andrew Bressette, vice president for enrollment. This is at the higher end of the student enrollment goal range of 2,100 and 2,200, which was set by the Board of Trustees. One of the sources for this large population increase was this year’s freshman class, which stood at around 700 students. Bressette said that for next year, the goal is to have an incoming class in a range around 610 students, including transfer students.

Bressette said that incoming students are selected based on a holistic model, in which grades, classes, volunteer positions, leadership roles, recommendation letters and application essays are all taken into account. In general, Berry looks for students with many interests and engagements.

“Berry students tend to be well-rounded students,” Bressette said. “They’re not just someone who studies all day or they’re not just athletes, you know, they tend to be students who have broad experiences and really want to engage around campus.”

The way that the admissions office determines which applications to admit is based on a number of data, including present national data, current applications, the timing of enrollment deposits and data from the last five years, Glenn Getchell, director of admission and enrollment engagement, said. From the number of applications sent to Berry, a prediction is then made as to who will accept an admission offer. In the past, the number of students who accept going to Berry was much lower than the number of students who applied. However, last year saw a dramatic increase, where more students accepted their admittance to Berry than expected.

Bressette said that the events of last year are guiding their decision-making this year to prevent strain on the college.

“As exciting as it is to know there is great demand for Berry, we don’t have capacity,” Bressette said. “We will be slowing our admits slowly so that we can watch how students respond to the offers of admission and if we see students choosing Berry and paying their deposits at a rate similar to last year, we may slow the rate at which we admit students a bit more.”

Getchell explained that there are a number of steps in the admission cycle that allow the admissions department to assess the situation regarding applications to see if changes need to be made to control the number of students admitted to Berry. This includes giving less in terms of merit-based financial aid, being more selective for majors near full-capacity and looking at which students are more engaged in the enrollment process.

“The types of students who really tend to come here are students who are very, very engaged at home, they’re engaged in the admissions process and when they come on campus, they’re trying to get involved in everything that they can because they’re trying to make their best experience,” Getchell said.

Bressette explained that a high demand for Berry allows the admissions office to select students so that the student population is diverse in a number of geographic and demographic ways, including racial and ethnic identity and political beliefs, in order to help Berry better reflect the diversity of the world off-campus.

“[Students] have opportunities to engage with students with a wide range of backgrounds which may cause [them] to think differently about what somebody else believes and why they believe that,” Bressette said. “I think those conversations, which are not meant to necessarily get everyone to think the same thing, help our students to prepare them, the better we can do here at Berry in shaping a class that looks and has this diverse sense of ideas and backgrounds, [we] can better prepare students for when they’re out in the workplace.”

Bressette added that another reason for Berry to remain near or at capacity is so that its various organizations and groups are able to operate optimally.

“If we stay full, it means that the college has the revenue to execute all the programs,” Bressette said. “When we have a great year, and then we recruit a small class, what that does is, revenue changes, but it also makes it hard in hiring faculty or planning on the residential side.”

One of the entities that was challenged by this year’s large enrollment class was Residence Life, which had to make changes regarding residences available for students. Lindsey Norman, associate dean of students, explained that this included the addition of the Oak Hill Residences, the inclusion of Edgewood and Cedarwood as student cottages and the change where RAs had to have roommates. Berry has a total of 1,967 beds available for students, depending on how layout and furniture are configured, which guides their practices for the year to ensure students have a place of residence on-campus.

As for next year, Norman doesn’t believe there will be any drastic measures in order to accommodate the student population.

At the same time, Residence Life is trying to consider the interests of returning students as well, Norman said, and how their housing experience can help them to have a greater experience at Berry overall.

“It’s more than numbers – these are people and we want them to be, [when registering] for their classes and [finding] out their hall for the next year, [which] are two really important parts of the spring and we want it to be pretty positive for them, we want students to feel confident going into the summer because we do want them to come back to Berry,” Norman said.

Getchell echoed this belief, explaining that the college’s admissions department still considers current students.

“We put a lot of attention on enrollment, naturally, but we’re just as much, if not more, focused on [the], fifteen-hundred [students] that are still here and we need to be making sure they’re having a great experience,” Getchell said.

Berry currently has no plans to add any buildings on campus that would accommodate for a larger student population. Getchell explained that it is a matter of working at the most effective level.

“Berry operates really well as a tightknit, close community, and so, to expand that enrollment to be too much bigger then, you are going to have to invest in housing, in personnel recruitment, class sizes and things like that and I think there’s just a premium on the relational aspect of our community,” Getchell said.

Getchell added that too much of an increase could grow faster than financial aid, which would put an extra strain on that system for students.

Norman also said that there are predictions that the current growth in college student populations may decrease in the coming years and that potential additions could become burdens in that situation.

“There’s some hesitation [that], if we do head out on building something new to respond to the increase, that’s a risk because there’s this projection in a couple years [student college enrollment is] going to reduce again, then you have a building you’re paying for that you can’t actually fill,” Norman said. “So, the goal is to have just what you need and that’s kind of frustrating.”