After suffering lackluster enrollment last year, Xavier has placed an elevated importance on open houses and other ways to bring prospective students to the school. The turnout at the open houses was strong, especially at the November open house which historically had garnered little interest from prospective students. Overall, about 250 perspective students came, higher than the turnout for the previous years.

The open house overall went smoothly due to preparation and help from the students. This led to a smooth flow of people and allowed every prospective student to see anything they wanted to see. New this year were student and alumni panels, groups of students and alumni who were available to answer questions and give another prospective of Xavier on top of the tour guide’s perspective. A prospective student was also allowed to give himself a self-guided tour of the school as well. Most impressive to the prospective students were the current students at Xavier. They were looked upon as role models and were people the perspective students wanted to be like. The prospective students were also impressed by the personal feeling of Xavier, how the students make up the school and make it the way it is. The next open house in February will be different from the first two. It will be smaller and probably more of an information session though the details have not been ironed out.

Even though the open houses went well, there are still a few worrying signs about the size of next year’s freshman class. Xavier’s attempts to attract students through social media is through one video used for several years now. Also, since about seventy-five percent of perspective students who come to an open house enroll at Xavier, the math would lead Xavier to having an incoming class size of 188 students, not great but better than this year’s current class.