University officials expect this fall’s incoming freshman class to top several previous statistical benchmarks after the school received a record number of applications this past year.
Out of more than 28,000 freshmen applications submitted to the school, MSU’s Office of Admissions has made formal admissions offers to more than 20,000 students. School officials expect to receive about 7,800 official commitments for this fall semester, a figure which would outpace last year’s incoming class of 7,174 students.
Typically, MSU makes admissions offers to about 18,000 students, and fewer than half accept the offer.
“That’s probably the highest admissions number we’ve had over the past five or ten years, and it’s going to be reflected in the size of the class,” said Mike Cook, the office’s senior associate director.
Out-of-state applications also jumped by more than 10 percent during the school’s application period, on top of an increase in the number of international student applicants.
“It is probably the most diverse applicant pool we’ve ever had at MSU,” said Jim Cotter, the school’s director of admissions. “There are some folks coming to us with some incredible experiences.”
On average, most members of this year’s incoming class carry mid- to high-level GPAs and mid-level ACT scores.
Across the past several years, acceptance rates among all students have remained relatively constant, and admissions officials expect the school’s male-to-female ratio to remain about the same despite the jump in class size. In this year’s admissions class, Cook said females slightly outnumber males.
In light of the unusually high number of anticipated incoming students, the university has yet to determine whether they will accept transfer applications for this spring semester.
The move is dependent both on the number of students who accept admissions offers for this fall as well as the number of previously admitted transfer students who accept offers to attend the school in the spring.
About 400 or 500 students already are expected to join MSU for the spring 2012 semester, a number that admissions officials maintain is consistent with other years.
“We really do need to wait until the dust clears, until we can see how the decision shakes out,” Cotter said.
Cotter and other officials anticipate the university once again will receive a record number of applicants in 2012, a figure that could trend upward of 30,000 individual submitted applications.
As interest in attending the school grows, MSU Alumni Association Executive Director Scott Westerman said the school’s visibility across the country also grows.
“The popularity of MSU and its growth has made it much easier for us to tell the Spartan story,” Westerman said. “As I travel, the MSU brand has certainly got a much higher level of awareness than I’ve ever seen it before.”
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