Today, a lot of schools, especially Catholic schools, are struggling. They are having trou- ble keeping their enrollment up and their tuition down. Fortunately, Cabrini is not one of those schools.
In January, Cabrini’s president Dr. Donald Taylor announced that Cabrini would freeze tuition through May of 2016. Just a few months later, it was revealed that Cabrini’s enrollment is up this year. The question a lot of people have is ‘why is Cabrini doing so well when other schools in the area aren’t?’
People might say that it is because Cabrini provides students with a quality education. While that may be true, there are other reasons behind the enrollment increase.
One of the main reasons is the hard work of the Admissions Office every year.
“We do a traditional college admissions recruitment cycle in the fall we visit high schools and college fairs and speak with students,” Sarah Lasoff, associate director of admissions, said.
Cabrini is also expanding and growing
which is attractive to potential students. Just this year, the college announced a new baseball program and broke ground on the Dixon Center renovation.
Another factor that President Taylor is doing to help enrollment is taking Cabrini College’s mission outside of the country. The college already has a partnership with Mother Cabrini High School in New Orleans. This summer, Taylor visited Argentina to try and recruit students from the schools there that were set up by Mother Cabrini.
“There were a number of students who really expressed interest in coming and studying here, so I think we’ll start to see that snowball,” Robert Reese, vice president for enrollment management, said in an inter- view with Philly.com.
While going out to college fairs and meeting with international students is a first step in the recruitment process, no one is going to want to come to Cabrini, leaving their home country behind, if they do not feel welcome
in the community. Luckily, Cabrini’s admission team does just that.
“A lot of it comes from the customer service that the Admissions office provides,” Lasoff said. “We are out at more high schools, we are doing more college visits, we’re traveling a lot and just really connecting one-on- one with the students, and that helps students know that Cabrini can be their home.”
While some other schools are struggling to keep their enrollment up and their tuition down, Cabrini is not having those problems.
“I think it’s important that a lot of students [know] what’s really different with Cabrini admissions is that our counselors know their students,” Lasoff said. “We’re visiting them, they’re visiting us, we’re making connections and we really believe that Cabrini is a great place, so we’re out there really saying that it should be your next home.”
