NORMAL - The number of freshman applicants to Illinois State University grew 11 percent this year, giving ISU officials another reason to boast of what they say is the campus's growing ability to draw talented high school graduates.

More than 14,000 students applied to be ISU freshmen for this fall term. The number was 12,675 last year.

"More people want to have a degree from Illinois State, it's as simple as that," ISU President Al Bowman said.

Getting a small-college experience at a large research institution became ISU's niche, and that appeals to incoming freshmen, he said.

Not every student who applies is accepted, and not everyone who is accepted ultimately decides to enroll because they may apply to multiple institutions. ISU also saw an increase in students choosing to enroll, so the class planned to have 3,300 freshmen is just shy of 3,400.

The increases partly are attributable to two factors: May's U.S. high school graduating class was the largest since the last of the baby boomers finished high school in the early 1980s; and high school graduates now tend to send out more college applications.

But ISU leaders say those are only minor factors.

The U.S. high school class of 2008 only was about 2 percent larger than the class of 2007, so a double-digit increase in ISU applications says a lot, said Jonathan Rosenthal, ISU's assistant vice president of enrollment management and academic services. The double-digit growth wasn't seen at all Illinois universities, he added.

ISU recruiters have spread the word to high school counselors about ISU's rising ACT score averages and other enviable rates, said Rosenthal.

ISU’'s graduation and freshman retention rates are second only to University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana among the state's public universities, for example.

The application increase isn't limited to freshman, either. More than 4,500 transfer student applications arrived, up 5 percent from last year. Of those, about 1,700 start class Monday at ISU.

"There's been a major change in perception about Illinois State," said Bowman.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the positive changes started to come in the 1990s, shortly after the Board of Regents system was broken up and ISU gained its own governing board. That freed ISU from competing with two other universities for the system's attention and resources, said Bowman.

At that time, ISU developed its current strategic plan, which contained what Bowman calls the key factor behind ISU's success: A decision to put more resources into the undergraduate experience, especially the freshman year.

People started to see that ISU had undergraduates in smaller classes that usually were taught by full-time faculty. That isn't the norm in university settings, Bowman said.

Meanwhile, in the 1990s more of ISU's academic departments also began to gain national attention, said Bowman.

While ISU can afford to be more selective with a larger applicant pool, ISU remains committed to embracing first-generation college graduates, said Bowman.

To make enrollment easier for such students, ISU is putting more money into need-based scholarships - $5 million this year alone - despite shrinking state appropriations, he said.

While the annual intake of applications is up nearly 30 percent compared with five years ago, enrollment has stayed level around 20,000 - what ISU defines as its ideal maximum size.

On Monday, 19,701 students are expected to take seats in class, said Rosenthal.

"We have the ability to grow, and that's an enviable position. But without funding for additional faculty resources, I think it would be a mistake," said Bowman.

Such a move would force bigger class sizes - a move ISU is not interested in pursuing, he said.

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Pop-U.-lar

Although ISU isn't increasing the number of students it accepts, the number of people applying to attend the university each fall is climbing. ISU leaders attribute the growing interest to a variety of factors, including ISU's improved reputation.

Year…applications

2003…10, 926

2004…10, 975

2005…11,046

2006…12,413

2007…12,675

2008…14,008

SOURCE: ISU enrollment management office