Office of Admissions

This morning I met with a high school sophomore who was wanting to know how she could take some college classes this summer. I get this question fairly often and so I decided it would be a good topic to write a blog post about.
High school students who are a junior or senior may earn college credit from Austin Peay through either dual enrollment or joint enrollment. What is the difference? Dual enrollment is when a student takes classes through a university that count as both high school and college credit. When enrolling for dual credit, your school counselor also will need to certify that the classes will fulfill high school requirements or electives. Joint enrollment is when a student takes a class at a university that counts as college credit only. Although these options are not for everyone, both dual and joint enrollment are great ways for college bound students to get a jump start on their college career.
To qualify for either dual or joint enrollment students must meet these requirements:
-GPA of 3.2 on a 4.0 scale
-Minimum ACT subscores of 19 (or 460 SAT) in math and English
-A recommendation from your high school principal or counselor
-Your parents’ consent
If you are interested in dual or joint enrollment, please visit www.apsu.edu/GoSooner for links to the application and other important forms.

This past Thursday all of the new freshmen moved in to our residence halls. Our campus was very crowded! On this day we held our Freshmen Welcome Wagon event. For this event, many of our faculty and staff members assisted the freshmen (and their families!) with the move in. We also had snacks and drinks available for everyone. I hope this event helped to make the transition to college easier!
After a busy weekend of orientation and lots of “get to know each other” activities for our new students, today is the first day of class. The summer, as usual, went by too fast but we are looking forward to a great semester! Good luck to all of the new freshmen and have fun with all of the activities going on during Welcome Week. We are glad that you all of decided to make Austin Peay your home for the next four years!
Travel season starts this week for all us Admissions Counselors, so be sure to pay attention to when we will be visiting your area! Stop by our table and ask us about all of the new things that we have going on. Let’s Go Peay!

It’s about that time of year when campus starts coming back to life. There is a buzz of activity all over campus as students new and old begin to make their way back. I have always loved this time of year; it’s like there is something in the air that carries the promise of a fresh start…and makes me want to buy school supplies! I remember how excited I was for my first year at college…a new town, new people, and a new life chapter; however, I was also very nervous! I was worried that I wouldn’t make new friends (I went to school with the same people for 12 years!), I was worried that I would get lost, but most of all I was worried that I wouldn’t like college. My first semester was a bit of a struggle. It took me a couple of weeks to become adjusted to the pace of college and I pretty much felt lost my entire first semester. Looking back, I see how silly I was to think that I wouldn’t like college. I realize that college is not for everyone and there are some people who truly don’t succeed in college; however, I thought college was a blast! My four years at Austin Peay passed way to quickly. One great thing about college is that you have so much more freedom. You can’t abuse that freedom though! You do have to make yourself be responsible and go to class and get your work done. I learned way more than I ever did in high school, not necessarily because of the classes but because of the life experience. You learn alot just from being around people from different walks of life (this includes your professors!). So, my advice to Freshmen is this: Don’t worry! Everything will work out like it’s supposed to. You may love college and you may find out it’s not for you, but whatever you do, don’t give up when things get difficult! Stick with it and you just might be pleasantly surprised!

Things have been going full force around here! We are being kept very busy with lots of new prospective students! My fellow counselors and I recently traveled to Murfreesboro, TN for an Admissions Counselor Workshop. At this workshop we listened to presentations about giving effective campus tours and giving great customer service. At Austin Peay, to insure better customer service, we offer a tour evaluation that prospective students and their families can fill out post-tour. It really helps us to serve students better by hearing everyone’s feedback. We encourage everyone to fill out an evaluation so that we know what we are (or aren’t) doing right!
Also at the workshop, we got to play “Admissions Counselor Family Feud” in which we divided up into “families” and were asked trivia questions about the state of Tennessee (did you know that the ski slopes at OberGatlinburg is the largest artificial ski area in the world?). We were also able to catch up with other admissions counselors from around the state to talk about what changes are being made for fall as well as what others are doing regarding travel for this fall. We all had a great time and the family feud game got a little competitive!

To kick off the summer season, our Admissions staff attended an Enrollment Management meeting. During this meeting, we discussed how we can better serve our students and increase retention rates. The theme of this year’s meeting was “Greatest Hits”. Everyone who attended the meeting had to form small groups and write a song about working in Admissions. Each song written was put to the tune of a popular song. Some of the groups got really creative! Our group of Admissions Counselors wrote our song to the tune of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air T.V. theme song. We changed the words to be about traveling. Instead of “that’s how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air” we sang, “that’s how I became the princess of a Hampton Hotel”. (That is why we all have crowns on!) This meeting was a great way to end the school year and help us get ready for this coming fall!