The Quadrangle

Issue date: 3/23/05 Section: News

The wintertime entrance to Manhattan College welcomes increasing scores of high schoolers

Whether walking from Leo or strolling along Broadway, watching as the top of Smith kisses the sky, it is hard to deny that Manhattan is a "college built upon a hill." In the more complicated times that now surround the admissions process, both on and off campus, does Manhattan still hold up as an example of the ideal college experience?

While current students here are trudging through the middle of the semester, high school students from far and wide are looking towards their futures. Many often ask themselves why they chose the path they did, but in light of all that has been learned, why are students, now more than ever, casting a hopeful eye towards Manhattan College?

Manhattan is on the rise in the eyes of many college advisors and continues to be a "hot school" when it comes to when and where students are being told to apply. According to Kevin Cavanagh, Associate Director for Enrollment Management, many soon to be High School graduates are recognizing the school's ability to retain its close, communal atmosphere, while still offering its students easy access the greatest city in the world. Contrary to some of the larger schools that offer a more direct connection to New York, and often end up losing their uniqueness to the city itself, Manhattan has strived to never sacrifice its key selling points.

The more manageable class sizes and close knit feel that students experience, both with each other and the administration serving them, are among the most often cited reasons for wanting to be a Jasper. Continuously on the rise is not only Manhattan's prestige, but its undergraduate enrollment numbers, which have climbed north of four thousand in recent semesters. This has prompted those in the Admissions office to raise the level of quality Manhattan expects from those it will accept. This has also placed the task on the community as a whole to keep its appeal from disappearing amongst all of the new freshman clad in Kelly Green.

As the students, both current and prospective, have expectations that they want to see met during their college experience, those charged with the task of filling Manhattan's ranks also have expectations, not only of incoming students, but of themselves. Cavanagh explained how Manhattan has an ideal, "Freshmen class of 660, a number which we are now meeting, as opposed to the Freshmen classes of only 600 a few years ago." Whittling down the thousands of applicants to less than seven hundred has allowed the administration to provide the College with a more diverse and weathered population, without sacrificing the caliber of people Manhattan can attract.

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