The number of students set to attend the University of Wyoming may see an increase this fall, according to enrollment projections.
Sara Axelson, vice president for UW student affairs, said while official numbers will not be released until Sept. 14th of this year, a projected increase in incoming freshman as compared to last year, as well as steady transfer and retention projections indicate an increase in total students is likely.
“Overall, we expect that we’ll have probably a little bit over 13,000 students in the fall enrollment,” Axelson said.
However, there are still categories that need to be taken into account, including a number of transfer and international students, as well as late applicants, Axelson said.
“We need to also factor in – and I haven’t looked at this yet because we need a lot of the factors to play out – the junior class, the senior class and how many are registered and, ultimately, how many enroll and pay their fees,” Axelson said. “Then we’ll have an idea of just overall enrollment and where it’ll be. But, we anticipate freshmen growth as well as overall growth.”
The wait for official numbers until Sept. 14th, the 15th day of the fall semester, is due to fluctuations between drop and add rates, as well as with payment, Axelson said. However, even those numbers will not necessarily be concrete.
“Then we have the end-of-semester data, which is the culmination of everything that happens over the semester,” she said. “To give you an example, last fall, on the 15th day, we had 12,932 students. Then, at the end of the semester, it was 13,551. So, it fluctuates from about 800-1000 by the end of the semester.”
The 15th-day total of 12,932 students for the fall 2014 semester was a slight increase in comparison to that of the fall 2013 semester, according to a UW press release. Those 2013 numbers came in at 12,928 students.
The following spring, numbers saw another yearly increase, according to another UW press release. On the 15th day of the spring 2015 semester, 12,627 students were tallied, a 162-student increase over the spring 2014 semester.
“Our goal has always been slow but steady growth, because that’s what we can accommodate,” Axelson said. “If we ended up with exponential growth in enrollment–we don’t have the course capacity to support that. So this year, we had to watch that real closely because we knew we had about 100 more freshmen. You have to be able to make sure you have enough courses.”
Axelson attributed some of the gradual enrollment increases to a personal approach at student recruiting, as well as university efforts in student retention support.
“Strong enrollment indicates a robust environment,” Axelson said. “Our main priority is to serve students from Wyoming, but then also to attract students from out-of-state and internationally to add the diversity of what we’re trying to do in terms of undergraduate and graduate education. It’s really critical to be able to offer the variety of academic programs that we do. We need that balance of in-state and out-of-state students.”
