The Changing Face of Mason's Student Body

The amount of students living on campus has grown from 4,062 in 2005 to 5,058 in 2009. Much of the growth has been concentrated in the new Chesapeake housing. (Daniel McEnrue)

George Mason University's student body has gotten bigger, more diverse and more high-profile in terms of academics since 2006. While this trend aligns with Mason’s trip to the Final Four, many believe that the university was already experiencing overall progress before the tournament.

"[The Final Four] did not change the world in terms of who our students were or in what the university was," Mason's Dean of Admissions Andrew Flagel said. "If the institution had not been progressing in that direction already, I think the effects would have been much more ephemeral."

Flagel has worked at several schools with unusual athletic success now. Before he came to Mason, he worked at George Washington University when its team went to the Sweet Sixteen only two years after going 1 to 24 in basketball. He was also at University of Michigan when the school won a national football championship and Michigan State University when the school won a national basketball championship.

“I often tell Jim Larranaga that obviously it’s me [that brought about Mason's trip to the Final Four],” Flagel said.

Flagel said in each of those cases, the athletic victory had some impact on admissions.

“The effect tends to be in how you leverage it and in how the institution interacts with it,” Flagel said.

According to Flagel, Mason’s student population has grown more diverse in background and geographic location while also becoming more high profile—all at the same time.

“That’s very unusual for that to happen successfully for an institution,” Flagel said. “Usually you sacrifice on something. If you have higher profile, you lose on your diversity or you don’t get [students] from as far away—somewhere there’s usually a tradeoff. I’ve told the president and provost, ‘We’re getting to have our cake and eat it too.’”

Flagel said the Final Four run acted as a catalyst to Mason’s continuing rise as a university.

“It accelerated our already strong trajectory,” Flagel said. “We got to hit the button on turbo-boost.”

This can be seen in the increasing number of prospective students visiting Mason. Before the Final Four, 20,000 to 23,000 students visited per year. The year after the run saw an increase to 30,000 visitors. Now, Mason is up to 35,000 students visiting the school a year.

At the time of the Final Four run, Mason was on a large upward trajectory in terms of applications.

“We’d had five straight years of double-digit percentage increases in applications,” Flagel said. “After the Final Four, we had an even larger jump. We went from a pretty consistent ten to twelve percent increase to a twenty two percent increase in [Fall 2007].”

However, all these new applicants did not necessarily enroll.

"The media attention often focused on how exciting it was that this small rural Virginia institution was doing all these amazing things," Flagel said with a wry smile at the inaccuracy of the characterization. "So you have a lot more name recognition but not necessarily a lot more brand recognition."

Mason's enrollment reached 32,504 last August—the highest number in its history and an overall increase of nearly 8 percent since fall 2005. With 2,656 freshmen, the school saw the largest enrollment of first-year students in student history. This number also places Mason as the largest university in Virginia in terms of population.

Flagel attributes the growth of the student body largely to retention rates.

"Not only are we having larger classes but they're higher profile and increasingly successful, both in terms of how Mason is serving them and in terms of their persistence, retention and graduation rates," Flagel said.

Transfer applications have also soared in the past few years.

"Generally transfer applications boom wildly when the economy softens," Flagel said. "We started out as a large destination for transfers and we remain one of the biggest destinations for transfers in the country."

Mason's out-of-state population has also seen a growth of over 15 percent since 2005.

"We're getting more and more students from further and further away," Flagel said. "The number of applications has grown wildly from California, Texas and Florida."

In terms of diversity, the most marked increase has been in Mason's Hispanic American population, which has risen 20.81 percent since Fall 2005. The number of students who do not report their race has nearly doubled from around 3,000 to over 6,000.

Though Mason's overall international student population has barely changed in the fast few years, increasing amounts of students are coming from certain countries, such as China, India, the Republic of Korea and Saudi Arabia.
Flagel believes Mason's success is due in part to the steadfast faith of its administration in the institution.

"I had a discussion with Dr. Merten several years ago about what success would look like here at Mason," Flagel said. "Usually as the dean of admissions, when you have discussions with presidents and ask them what they'd like to see happen, they talk about more students, higher SAT scores, GPAs. But President Merten didn't even think about it—he said we're going to change the world."

Flagel says the entire applicant pool has gotten more competitive academically.

“This coming year will probably be in acceptance rate and profile our most competitive in history,” Flagel said. “You’ll see us up there in the top five percent of most competitive in the country in the next five years.”

The changing student body has also been marked by an increase in overall spirit. Associate Director for Housing Services Brian Davis graduated from Mason in 1998 and has seen it unfold since the Final Four run.

"As an alumnus, it was really exciting to be here," Davis said. "Mason really became a university community at that time. When I was in school here, it was rare that you saw Mason gear. During the run, it was like the uniform."

Davis' job for the last ten years has been part organizing housing and part building bonds in the university community.

"Since I've been employed, community has always been a main focus here—building that sense of belonging among students," Davis said. "If students feel they have a bond with the university besides going to classes and leaving, that helps everyone."

New on-campus housing has increased the number of residential students and created a greater sense of community. The amount of students living on campus has grown from 4,062 in 2006 to 5,058 in 2009, and this has led to expanded residential life weekend programs.

"Final Four was like the icing on the cake," Davis said. "It gave an outlet to students who were already feeling that bond. I think we'd be there without it, but it helped."

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The above piece will run in Mason Nation: Four Years Later, a magazine to be released later this month that plans to document and analyze the university's development since the Patriots' historic run in 2006, possibly shedding light on what's connected to the Cinderella story--and additionally, what's not.

Led by senior history major and Student Media veteran Rachael Dickson, the magazine's other topics include changes in men's basketball to effects on other athletics, and from an analysis of media coverage to Ciao Hall's farewell and the rise of the Chesapeake residential neighborhood. Gunston and the pep band will also receive shout-outs.