Take a bow, St. Edward’s University—you deserve it.

The hilltop welcomed 757 incoming freshmen for the class of 2013, making it the largest in St. Edward’s 125-year history and 16 students more than last year’s total of 741.

Despite a feeble economy, the amount of financial aid St. Edward’s allotted to incoming freshmen certainly contributed to the number of students who wished to call themselves Hilltoppers. Eighty-nine percent of the class received financial aid for this academic year at an average of $14,447 per student.

Associate Vice President of Admissions Tracy Manier said St. Edward’s focused its recruitment strategy on clarifying the affordability of the school.

“We talked a lot [with perspective students] about affordability and the effective way in which St. Edward’s partners with students to make a private education affordable,” Manier said.

The benefit of calling St. Edward’s home is the true allure. When material worth plummets, the intrinsic value of experiences remains unchanged—and the experiences St. Edward’s provides to its students are priceless.

We attend a university where our professors can call on us by name, not ID number; where a support staff actively helps us with anything from acquiring healthy study habits to planning a semester in Seville; where the community environment around campus is perfectly juxtaposed with the expansive culture and vibrant life of our state’s capital city.

Semesters of two thousand-word essays, group projects and too many late nights and early mornings with our noses in textbooks have jaded us to this value, but we should consider ourselves lucky for the situation we have been endowed.

Let the record-setting freshman class be a symbol of our fortune. We are privileged to attend St. Edward’s University, a school that, above all, wants us to succeed. So let us thrive, achieve and prosper so that its wish is fulfilled.

The university that gives so much to us deserves a gift in return.