Going against previous trends of increasing international enrollment at MSU, the Office of Admissions expects a decrease in international student enrollment, mainly from China, for the 2015-2016 school year, and though in-state enrollment has fluctuated greatly in the past few years, it will increase for 2015.
While it was originally reported in The New York Times that a number of universities, including MSU, will be cutting in-state enrollment slots and increasing out-of-state and international enrollment, Office of Admissions senior associate director C. Mike Cook said they are actually adding just under 200 spots.
Cook said the target for enrollment is 7,890 students for the incoming freshmen class, with about 2,200, or roughly 28 percent, being out-of-state and international students, similar to the 2014 - 2015 school year.
Admissions data reports that since 2008 around 80 percent of freshmen and transfer students at MSU come from Michigan, including 1,500 transfer students.
In 2008, MSU took in 5,927 in-state students, roughly 4.83 percent of the 123,576 Michigan graduates, Cook said. Though the numbers for next year are around 200 lower than that, the percentage of Michigan graduates MSU accepts has increased to 5.32 percent after the graduate pool has plummeted to 107,056.
In regard to the decline in applicants from China, Cook said there wasn't enough information to know if this would remain a trend for future years and that other institutions face fewer numbers of Chinese applications.
Though the numbers are unofficial, the growth of international students has almost tripled since 2007, when it was 367, Cook said, and last year it was 1,184. Enrollment is expected to be around 1,000 for international students for this school year and the difference will be made up by domestic, out-of-state enrollment.
This change from 2007 has given campus a different student demographic, Cook said.
"We're seeing more and more applications year after year," he said. "And a lot of that growth is out of state (and) international students... If you look at this campus over the past 10 years, we look much different than we did 10 years ago."
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