To the best of my knowledge we have the highest % of Presbyterians of any Presbyterian seminary. This is a significant shift from even 12 years ago when we were close to 60% PCUSA/40% United Methodist. The embargo of Methodist students in the distance program and the UM/Global Methodist split has clearly hurt. That said, our dominance of the PC(USA) distance market may be short lived as our sibling schools are pressed to enter this field.
The efforts of Beth, Samuel, and others to build bridges with presbyteries can only help as the number of potential PCUSA students continues to decline. Given current political developments in the PC(USA) the number of applicants may take a significant hit in the next couple of years. Nurturing new markets among smaller Presbyterian denominations (ECO, EPC) and creating specific programs or tracks for them would allow us to expand our markets and student numbers. Likewise the efforts to improve and grow our CLP programs as the need for CLPs expands is directly in line with our mission, helps the church, and may well feed into degree programs as it did when we first launched this program over twenty years ago.
So ... our recruitment practices and admissions policies of late are seeking to respond to the dramatically changed and changing markets in the Presbyterian world and will need to continue to do so at a rapid pace as we seek to distinguish ourselves in mission and program from the better endowed PCUSA schools with which we compete.