Record-setting fall enrollment at McKendree University

LEBANON — A growing enrollment trend at McKendree University continues with the campus community seeing the largest incoming class in its 186-year history.

First-year enrollment at the Lebanon campus is up by 10 percent over last year’s record-setting class, with 430 freshmen and 140 transfer students.

There was also a 27 percent increase in students accepted into the university’s honors program.

Eighty-three percent of McKendree freshmen received an academic scholarship and half of them graduated in the upper 25 percent of their high school class.

While 75 percent of the new Bearcats have come from Illinois, others have arrived from 21 other states, as well as Australia, Canada, Chile, Germany, India, Ireland, Jamaica, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Panama and the United Kingdom.

Ninety-one percent of McKendree first-year students, and almost half of the transfers (46 percent) will live in campus housing this year — 1,100 in all. To accommodate this growth, additional apartments were built at the McKendree West complex on College Road. University housing also includes an apartment building on Hunter Street and several leased apartments on Perryman Street in Lebanon.