APPLETON, WIS. — Greg Peterson is hoping his new Lawrence University classmates and professors will understand if he occasionally answers their queries in the form of a question. Old habits are hard to break.
One of 376 new students Lawrence officials will welcome Wednesday, Sept. 19 for move-in day and the start of orientation activities, Peterson placed second in the 2007 Jeopardy! Teen Tournament, which aired on national television at the end of July. Leading after the first day of the two-day finals, he wound up with a total of $38,600, finishing a mere one dollar short of the title on the popular game show known for its answers-in-the-form-of-a-question format.
After years of practice, the self-described “quiz show nut” from Park Ridge, Ill., says “it just becomes so natural to say ‘who is’ or ‘what is’ at the start of every sentence.”
Peterson, who arrives at Lawrence after also applying to Northwestern, Princeton, Stanford and Yale universities, is planning on auditioning for “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” next summer. In the meantime, he hopes to restart a campus quiz bowl team after he settles in. In 1965, a team of Lawrence students retired as five-time champions on the GE College Bowl, a quiz show that aired on CBS.
Whether or not he finds similar success, Peterson already has helped make school history as a member of Lawrence’s largest-ever applicant pool. For the third consecutive year, Lawrence enjoyed a record-setting number of applications, jumping more than 12 percent to 2,599 over last year’s total of 2,315.
“Lawrence’s visibility on the national scale is rising and there are a lot more students seeking us out,” said Ken Anselment, director of admissions. “We’re increasingly enrolling more high impact, highly involved students and that has a ripple effect at high schools. When underclassmen at these schools see these student leaders heading off to Lawrence, that gets them thinking Lawrence is someplace they should be seriously considering as well.”
Anselment also credits Lawrence’s inclusion in the book “Colleges That Change Lives,” with boosting interest in the college. The book, written by former New York Times education editor Loren Pope, profiles 40 schools “that will change the way you think about college.”
Since 1998, as a follow-up to the book, Lawrence has participated in a special college fair tour that focuses solely on the 40 profiled colleges. In 2006, the tour made more than two dozen stops in major cities around the country and nine stops in Latin America.
“That’s been huge for us,” said Anselment. “People are coming out in droves on the tour, in part because they want a different perspective on what constitutes quality in higher education.”
The increasing applicant pool coupled with the university’s enrollment cap of 1,400 has enabled Lawrence to increase its selectivity. Lawrence admitted just under 56 percent of this year’s applicants. Two years ago, the acceptance rate was 68 percent.
“It seems counter-intuitive, but when a school starts getting more selective, it builds student interest and that in turn fuels additional application growth,” Anselment explained. “We’re still the high-quality place we’ve always been, but now there are a lot more students interested in us.”
Beginning in 2006, Lawrence became the first Wisconsin college, and one of a growing number nationally, to go “test optional,” eliminating the requirement of standardized test scores (SAT, ACT) for admission, instead allowing students to choose whether they want the admissions committee to consider their scores. This year, the program’s second, actually saw a small increase in the number of students opting to submit test results, 77 percent, up from 75 percent the first year.
“That was a little surprising, but not shocking,” said Anselment. “Going into the test optional phase, we weren’t sure just how many students would take us up on the offer. This year’s bump shows that our rise in applications cannot be attributed solely to our going test-optional.”
Two hundred seventy-five different high schools are represented by this year’s 361 freshmen, who hail from 37 states and 21 countries. While Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota again account for a little more than half of all incoming freshmen, New York surprisingly sent the fourth most number of students (17), with California, Massachusetts, Oregon and China also ranked among the top 10 home areas of new freshmen. Slightly more than 10 percent (37) of the incoming freshmen are international students.
“It’s a strikingly geographically diverse group,” said Anselment.
The academic profile of the incoming freshmen remains as strong as ever, with new students boasting an average high school grade point average of 3.6 on a 4.0 scale, while the average ACT score reached an all-time of 28.9. Twenty percent of incoming freshmen ranked in the top five percent of their high school graduating class, including 10 valedictorians, while 71 percent graduated in the top 25 percent of their class.
“We are thrilled with the quality and energy of this class and with the steady increase in applications. All of this will help us to continue attracting and enrolling the most broadly talented and engaged students we possibly can,” said Anselment.
More than 90 percent of the first-year students received financial assistance from Lawrence. The average need-based financial aid package exceeded $25,000.
“Lawrence continues to surprise people with the strength of our financial aid packages and remains accessible to families from a broad range of financial backgrounds,” Anselment said.
Classes for Lawrence’s 158th academic year begin Wednesday, Sept. 26.
