Sweet Briar College Reports Progress in Fundraising and Enrollments

Sweet Briar College in Virginia, that had planned to close last year until alumnae came through with financial support to keep the college in business, reports that there will be 175 new students on campus this fall. This includes new first-year students, graduate students, transfers, and student who had been Sweet Briar students but enrolled at other institutions when the college announced it would close. Total enrollments are expected to be about 325 compared to 250 last semester.

The college received more than 1,000 applications for places in the class of 2020. This is the most applicants the college received college in 50 years. The college had hoped to enroll 200 first-year students this fall.

Sweet Briar also reports that it has raised $10.5 million over the past 10 months on top of the $12 million raised last year to keep the college from closing.

Phillip Stone, president of Sweet Briar College who has announced that he will step down at the end of the 2016-17 academic year, stated that “2016 was a rebuilding year. We took over a mostly shuttered institution and could not start recruiting a new class until September of 2015, six months later than other institutions. The fact that we will have a student body of this size in such a short time is one more Sweet Briar miracle.”