LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania’s campus is bustling with a record enrollment of 1,153 students. The former record, set in 2005, was 1,151, and last year’s enrollment was 1,117.
President Charles L. Shearer said he expects enrollment to level off at or slightly below the current level.
“We are delighted that our enrollment has increased at the rate it has over the past decade,” said Shearer. “Our enrollment is at capacity.”
The record enrollment is attributed to an excellent retention rate of returning students combined with a full class of new students and 14 transfer students.
Of the 335 members of the Class of 2011:
- 44 are Kentucky Governor’s Scholars, and five attended the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts
- Four are National Merit Finalists; two are National Merit Semifinalists
- Seven percent identify themselves as racial or ethnic minorities
- 48 percent rank in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating class, and 76 percent rank in the top 25 percent of their class
- 28 were valedictorians, and 18 were salutatorians
- 60 percent have a high school grade point average above 3.50, and the mean GPA of the incoming class is 3.51
- The ACT scores for this group are impressive with a middle 50 percent range of 23-29
“This year’s class is outstanding in every measure of academic strength,” said Shearer, “and these new students join a student body that is also academically strong. I think our enrollment record speaks very well of the overall satisfaction our students have with Transylvania—the quality of our faculty and staff, our academic and student life programs and our facilities.”
Shearer said that Transylvania’s success is a result of the hard work of many. “We are all committed to the value of a high quality liberal arts education and have worked diligently to offer the best to our students while keeping increases in tuition and fees as low as possible.”
Transylvania, founded in 1780, is the nation’s sixteenth oldest institution of higher learning and is consistently ranked in national publications as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country.