Ole Miss is drilling for admissions gold in Texas.
Texas’ Crosswell Family recently donated $400,000 to Ole Miss admissions to place a second recruiter in Texas so more high-achieving students will choose Ole Miss.
Ole Miss currently has one admissions recruiter located in Dallas, but Texas has the most students at Ole Miss after Mississippi.
After graduating from Ole Miss in 1989 with a degree in business administration, Alan Crosswell is funding a program that will place an admissions recruiter in Houston in order to get more awareness for universities.
“The size was a big factor for me,” sophomore Spanish major Isabelle Repinski said. “Texas schools are a lot bigger, and I loved the homey feeling that Ole Miss has.”
Repinski is from Dallas, which is where the current Ole Miss admissions recruiter is located. She found out about Ole Miss because other students she knew were traveling to Mississattending nearby state universities.
The program Crosswell has been working on with Ole Miss admissions will get Texas high school students in touch with Ole Miss students in various major Texas cities, plan campus visits to Ole Miss and arrange meetings between prospective students and Ole Miss faculty, according to a statement the university released announcing the Crosswells’ donation.
The main goal of this program is to create more awareness for Ole Miss in Texas. The Crosswells hope to provide a personal touch with their program encouraging Texas students to consider all Ole Miss has to offer, which is great academics while having a fun-filled college experience including SEC football and Greek life, the statement said.
“I heard about Ole Miss because I saw more and more people from my hometown starting to go there instead of Texas schools, and Ole Miss grabbed my attention,” Repinski said.
Ole Miss has students enrolled from all 50 states. Forty-four percent of incoming students are from out of state, and enrollment has increased by 40.5 percent over the past decade, according to the university.
Texas A&M is the flagship university of Texas. In-state tuition for a full-time student costs $27,272 including tuition, housing, travel/personal expenses and books and supplies. Out-of-state tuition for Ole Miss, which also includes the previous listed expenses, is about $33,774 for a full-time student. There is only a $5,500 difference in tuition between the two schools for an in-state student in Texas and an out-of-state student at Ole Miss.
Texas A&M currently has more than 49,000 undergraduate students. It is located in College Station, Texas, which has about 170,000 residents. Oxford has almost 21,000 residents and only 24,250 undergraduate students.
“I do think more students will choose Ole Miss over Texas universities if the Ole Miss name is promoted more by admission recruiters,” Repinski said.
