University popular for ‘Gwinnetians’

If you are a GC&SU student reading this article, there is approximately a 16.5 percent chance that you are from Gwinnett County.

GC&SU pulls more students from Gwinnett County than any other region. Gwinnett County is home to 883 of the 5339 currently enrolled students at GC&SU. This is a higher number than the second and third highest contributing counties combined.

Jesse Bowen, senior assistant director of Admissions, said that the popularity of GC&SU with Gwinnett County students is largely due to geography, something that he likes to call “laundry distance.”

“I think a lot of it has to do with our location,” Bowen said. “Students can really feel like they are out on their own and still get that small- school atmosphere, but when the time comes and they need to sneak home or they have a family emergency, they aren’t that far away.”

Jess Humphries, a senior art major from Gwinnett County, said that location was just one of the reasons so many students from Gwinnett County choose to attend GC&SU.

“I think so many people choose GC&SU because it’s so close and reasonably priced. And it’s easier to get into than UGA,” Humphries said.

Director of admissions Mike Augustine said that the merits of GC&SU are being relayed from current Gwinnett County students to the college-bound back home.

“What’s happening is that happy students and happy parents are going back and spreading the word,” Augustine said. “That’s what we hear reports about- people creating a lot of buzz.”

Bowen agreed, saying that students are the most effective recruiters.

“Word of the school is spreading faster than we can go out and recruit,” Bowen said. “Because of the amount of students that we have now from Gwinnett County who are going back and telling their friends and family about what a great time they’re having here, it’s just really caught on.”

Augustine said that recruitment in Gwinnett County is not any more of a focus than other areas such as Macon, Augusta or Savannah.

“The main thing to keep in mind first and foremost is that Gwinnett is such a huge population center,” Augustine said. “Gwinnett County, Cobb County and Fulton County– that area alone, in my opinion, is kind of the student engine that fuels the university system.”

Bowen agreed that while GC&SU is a popular choice for the college-bound statewide, the quantity of students in Gwinnett County means higher enrollment numbers for the surrounding colleges and universities.

“Just the sheer size of those schools leads to a huge number of students,” Bowen said. “It’s not just us pulling in a lot of Gwinnett County students- there are just a lot of Gwinnett County students to be had.”

Augustine and Bowen are quick to point out that popularity with certain county school systems tends to fluctuate.

“When I started working here (in 1991) our larger feeder school was Newton County High School in Covington. Then we became big in Rockdale (County), Then we caught on in Gwinnett (County). I’ve watched it march westward. Now we’re seeing a lot more of North Fulton (County). we’re seeing more of Cobb (County),” Augustine said. “You may reach a kind of a saturation point where you may have a kind of a backlash; students at a high school perceive that there are too many students there so it may taper off for a few years but then it comes back; it’s all cyclical, all up and down.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 3 2006. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry