Last year Le Moyne welcomed the biggest class in history with a staggering 685 students. And while the college intends to continue bringing in slightly larger first-year classes than before, the class of 2019 just missed the top spot with about 650 freshmen coming to campus.

Over the past few years admissions has seen an overwhelming number of applicants interested in Le Moyne. Each year, more and more of those applicants are accepted and chose to attend the college. But many current students wonder why Le Moyne is letting in such big numbers, bringing into question admissions’ standards: Is Le Moyne lowering the bar to accept more students?

According to President Linda LeMura the answer is, “Absolutely not.”

In fact, the class of 2019 has the highest average ACT scores and high school GPA that Le Moyne has seen in the past six years.

LeMura credits such an increased interest in Le Moyne because of new marketing tactics, innovative programs developed by faculty, and growth in the Madden School of Business and the sciences.

There’s nothing better than a bunch of enthusiastic freshmen to boost Le Moyne’s ego — except for a hefty endowment, of course. But with the influx of incoming students there’s always a list of concerns: housing, parking, and class size.

To their dismay, many freshmen found themselves cramped in converted rooms [three people in a double or four people in a triple] last fall, but President Linda LeMura assured that would not be the case this year.

“We tried our best to accommodate everyone within the existing housing structure, and actually have fewer students in converted rooms this fall than last,” said LeMura. “For those who are in converted rooms, we selected rooms that were the biggest rooms possible. Although there were some concerns about using converted rooms, last year there were a number of students who chose to stay in those rooms even after we offered to move them.”

Those converted room are located in all freshmen dorms: Dablon, Nelligan and St. Mary’s. And with so many students in freshman dorms, comes many cars in many — sorry, one parking lot. Though Le Moyne doesn’t recommend Freshmen bringing their cars on campus, it happens every year. As a result Parking Lot E is overflowing with cars on a regular basis.

However, luckily for you freshmen, Le Moyne has decided to rearrange parking this year. Faculty and staff parking have been moved from the D-Lot, which will allow sophomores living in Dablon, Foery and Nelligan to park behind the buildings again. Meaning there will be more room everywhere for you and your cars.

Besides its location, size and campus, one of the most enticing features of Le Moyne is its small class sizes; which allow more personalized attention from faculty. With the recent increase in class sizes there is a shared fear among students that they may lose their individual attention, but LeMura said class size will not be affected.

“Even with the recent increase in class sizes, we have been able to keep our 13:1 student to faculty ratio. We have been able to do this by monitoring how large classes are and, when necessary, adding new sections when they are needed,” said LeMura.

Le Moyne is reshaping itself to accommodate the incoming class, and all those to come after it. And although the class of 2019 in No. 2 in class size, your freshman year at Le Moyne is sure to make No. 1 on your list.