Next year, Elon University will add 100 spots to its various fellows programs — raising cohort sizes.
Elon will accept over 300 fellows across eight programs for the 2024-25 academic year. The Business Fellows program will accept around 60 new fellows, compared to the 52 for the class of 2027 and 40 for the class of 2026. The increase is leaving current fellows worried about what it means for the programs.
Kate Rohan, a sophomore in the business fellows program, is concerned about the problems that she feels will come with the larger incoming class cohort.
“I don't feel like I have bonded with my cohort as well as I thought I would,” Rohan said, when talking about her cohort of 40 people.
All incoming fellows for the 2024-25 academic year are promised exclusive trips, a $7,500 scholarship, a global studies grant and exclusive classes for the cohort.
During the fall semester, Rohan served as TA for the class of 2027’s Elon 1010 course, which all 50 fellows were enrolled in. The class of 2028’s cohort will be split up into two different 1010 classes.
“I think that some of them won't even know each other next year,” Rohan said.
Professor Casey DiRienzo taught the principles of economics to the freshman fellows last semester. This was the first semester that she taught more than one section.
DiRienzo doesn't think that students should be worried about losing the “cohort feel” that Rohan is worried about. She said that even though the cohorts are larger she doesnt think this will hinder their ability to bond as a group.
“From what I see, the fellows tend to gather often in the atrium in the business school,” DiRienzo said.
An additional concern is the fellows programs losing their competitive nature, not only in the application process but within each cohort.
A class of 2027 business fellow, Paul Nunno, is concerned about the increase in people leading to a culture of relying on the higher performing students to carry the workload.
“Having too many people, you're like, ‘OK, why do I need to do work, when I know that these five people can just send all of us the work,” Nunno said.
Rohan still thinks the application process is still highly competitive, because of the amount of applicants the program gets.
Greg Zaiser, Elon admissions vice president for enrollment, said in a statement to Elon News Network students shouldn’t be worried about the increase in size leading to a decrease in competitiveness.
“Given over 3,000 applications for 335 seats, just 11% of students who apply to the fellows programs are fellows on campus,” Zaiser wrote.
However, according to Elon’s website in the 2023-24 academic year there were 317 fellows. Zaiser said that 100 more seats were added which would make it 417 not 335 for the 2024-25 academic year.
Each seat comes with a $7,500 scholarship. In the next academic year, $112,225 of scholarship money will be used for the fellows program. However, some fellows are disappointed that while they increased the amount of fellows they did not increase the amount each fellow gets. This comes after the recent news of a tuition increase.
“If it keeps increasing, then it's going to become very unbearable,” Nunno said regarding the increase.
While the scholarship still makes a noticeable difference in the overall tuition cost, Nunno’s concerned that as tuition increases the scholarship will begin to lose value. Rohan thinks that it would be a more meaningful investment if the scholarship amount was increased rather than the amount of fellows.
“I think that with less people you have a better program,” Rohan said.
When compared to a few of Elon’s peer institutes, Elon had the most fellows programs and the most number of fellows.
In the 2023-24 school year 1,677 freshmen were enrolled, 19% are in fellows programs,including honors fellows.
While most of Elons peer institutes don’t have fellows programs, UNC system schools like University North Carolina, Chapel Hill only accept around 30 students into their college fellows program.
However, contrary to students' worries, Zaiser and DiRienzo both expressed how they looked at the increase in an extremely positive light.
“The upside of expanding the cohorts is that it creates more opportunity for students and that’s always a good thing,” Zaiser wrote.
Dirienzo had similar remarks.
“This is an opportunity to bring more of that talent onto campus,” she said.
For a number of students there are unknowns of what an increase in the number of fellows will mean for them, and whether or not it will affect the opportunities they were promised.
Nunno expressed that he was shocked the sophomore trip to Dubai was approved for his class, considering the size. Rohan said there was some debate about whether or not the class of 2027’s trip would be to Dubai or Costa Rica.
“They're both great opportunities and free obviously, which is nice, but you cannot be told that you're going to Dubai and then end up going to Costa Rica,” Rohan said.
Rohan doesn't foresee any opportunities that were promised to her cohort being taken away but said she wouldn't be surprised if those promises changed for the future cohorts. Rohan thinks that there will definitely be some logistic changes to things such as the trip to Dubai.
“I could totally see something like that happening for the bigger cohorts,” Rohan said. “They have to split up. Elon 1010 into four separate classes and that's going to be give or take 20, but if you have to do that in a class setting, I can't imagine traveling 14 hours away on a plane and that being a successful trip.”
Zaiser wrote that current students should not be worried about losing any opportunities they were promised.
“We are focused on maintaining the quality of the experience and additional staff support has been added to help ensure the logistics of programs are coordinated and maintained,” Zaiser wrote.
The future of the fellow’s programs are unknown, Zaiser wrote that there are no plans to increase the number of seats available at this time but also Elon did not have an exact number they will eventually cap it at.
Zaiser also wrote that fellows have a higher retention rate and by accepting more they are increasing the overall retention rate. However, there is also a chance that because of the higher number of students there will be a higher number of students who will be dropped from the programs during their freshman year, Rohan said this was even evident in the class of 2027’s cohort.
“A lot of people are at risk of getting dropped or got worse grades and stuff like that,” Rohan said.
She said that she only remembers one person in her cohort being dropped from the program and thinks this is due to the larger size of the class of 2027’s cohort size.