Greg Zaiser’s job as vice president of admissions and financial at Elon University has given him more than just a tangible income.
Earlier in his career, the Elon alumnus voyaged across the country with frequent trips out west. En route, he became an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan and now displays memorabilia from their 2011 World Series Championship in his office even though he isn’t from Missouri. As he and his staff compile statistics from the current freshman class, a notable trend of students hail from the West Coast — particularly California — and he credits that to Elon’s reach beginning to sprinkle more from sea to shining sea and beyond.
“The more time you spend in a territory, the more relationships you can build, the more students who attend the university or college, friends find out,” Zaiser said. “In terms of our applications, our applications have been growing moderately each year. We have found a 39 percent increase in students from the state of California in admissions.”
The Golden State is the 10th most represented state among the class of 2020. While North Carolina and Massachusetts continue to dominate the top spots on Elon’s State of Origins list, Zaiser said he was really pleased with California’s representation considering that the Office of Admissions only has one member in the West Coast. Brittany Werts Slaughter, also an Elon alumna, lives and works in California full time. She treks up and down the state and even ventures into Oregon and Washington as needed to recruit prospective students for four years. Zaiser said he intends to send more staff members to those areas to help Slaughter, but is incredibly pleased with her work considering she is singlehandedly inspiring students to fly three hours east for college.
“The fact that we have been able to invest in California for four full years, and we now have someone living out there, traveling the entire state in addition to Washington and the state of Oregon, she is very professional” he said.
Zaiser said the Elon in LA program is another igniter for more admissions in California, causing Elon’s reputation among students — particularly more in the School of Communications — to spread through word of mouth. While California’s stock rose, numerous other states that perennially have high representation at Elon either leveled off or sunk. Zaiser noted that the Class of 2020 was not kind to Illinois or Florida like it was in years past. Maryland also tagged off, but Zaiser said every year has its own ebb and flow and “what goes up, must come down.” He also said that while every state is represented, he and his staff want to continue to expand their reaches to intake as many students as possible from a variety of different backgrounds.
“We’d like to have as much diversity as possible, but it’s really hard to draw students from some of the states where the population is small,” Zaiser said. “If you take the population of the Dakotas compared to a student (population) from, say, Massachusetts or Texas, it’s very different, so it’s harder to draw the students from some of those states. But I really want to have all the states represented.”