Record-Setting Fall Enrollment

The growing enrollment trend at McKendree continues, as the campus community welcomed its largest incoming class in 186 years. First-year enrollment at the Lebanon campus is up by 10 percent over last year’s class, with 430 freshmen and 140 transfer students.

Like so many of their predecessors, these students are academic achievers with 83 percent of the first-year students receiving an academic scholarship. Adding to the impressive numbers is a 27 percent increase in students accepted into McKendree’s honors program.

While 75 percent of the new Bearcats call Illinois home, others have arrived from 21 other states, as well as 12 nations: Australia, Canada, Chile, Germany, India, Ireland, Jamaica, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Panama and the United Kingdom.

Ninety-one percent of McKendree firstyear students, and almost half of the transfers (46 percent) live in campus housing this year - 1,100 in all. To accommodate this growth, two new apartment buildings were built at McKendree West this summer.

On Aug. 20, new students signed the Matricula - an official document that starts their college career - during the opening convocation.

They also participated in four days of orientation activities and “Into the Streets” volunteer service in Lebanon and other local communities.