Woodruff said the increase is "a great signal that our work in fostering a sense of belonging among our students is working." 

The number of students entering MSU in 2023 increased by almost a hundred from the previous school year, as 2022 had 9,620 freshman and transfer students. However, this is not MSU’s largest increase in entering class sizes. After the COVID-19 pandemic caused enrollment to drop from 8,527 to 8,192 in 2020, MSU’s 2021 enrollment increased to 9,028. 

Not only does MSU have its largest incoming class yet, but its total enrollment consists of 51,316 students, who hail from Michigan’s 83 counties, all 50 states and 130 countries. This is the most amount of students MSU has ever had at once.

While many four-year universities across the country struggle with low enrollment rates, how has MSU managed to escape the same fate? 

Vice Provost of Enrollment and Academic Strategic Planning Dave Weatherspoon said MSU began working toward class size growth in 2016. 

“We started this push for credible momentum so we would decrease our time to degree,” Weatherspoon said. “All these things are tied to what’s good for the student (and) student debt, so if you have 30 credits a year, then you are on schedule, (assuming) everything goes along as planned.”

Students can enter university with credits from Advanced Placement classes in high school. These classes have become more popular among Michigan high schoolers, which has lowered MSU’s average graduation rate to under the traditional four years. 

“We wanted to improve our graduation rates as well, and we have,” Weatherspoon said. “So the number of students that are graduating and the rate of speed that they’re graduating … we need to also replace those students and bring in more students.” 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic affecting high school testing periods, MSU became “test optional” in 2020, meaning they no longer require high schoolers to apply with their SAT or ACT scores. Weatherspoon noted that since putting this temporary measure into effect, MSU has seen an increase in applications.

While this change impacted all applicants, Weatherspoon said he had been surprised to see so many out-of-state students apply. 

The midwest’s under-18 population has been declining because of residents moving to other states in the past five decades, which decreases the amount of potential in-state students. Even so, three-quarters of MSU’s students are from Michigan, and MSU educates more Michiganders than any other Michigan university. 

While Weatherspoon said the amount of students for this year is “really close” to the number the admissions office projected, he noted that landing their desired class number relies on “a lot of factors.”

He believes one of the factors is getting potential students to campus. During the pandemic, many college campuses weren’t open to students touring, which is why MSU created Admitted Students Day in 2022.

This year, admitted students could visit campus on April 15 to learn more about their college of interest, attend a Breslin Center pep rally led by Interim President Teresa Woodruff and basketball coach Tom Izzo and then watch a football game in Spartan Stadium. 

“If we can get them to campus, then we know there’s a high likelihood that they will choose Michigan State,” Weatherspoon said. 

Weatherspoon said that racial and ethnic diversity among students has increased these past two years. This school year, though, enrollment rates differed among groups. 

From fall 2022 to 2023, the number of incoming Asian students decreased from 826 to 810, and the number of students of two or more races dropped from 478 to 427. However, the numbers of other minority students increased, such as Hispanic/Latinx students (600 to 656) and African American/Black students (549 to 612). 

As the student body population increases, MSU has had to make adjustments to accommodate more students.  

Weatherspoon said MSU aims to keep faculty sizes big enough to accommodate students at a 16:1 ratio, though he said tracking the number of professors can be difficult due to people coming and going. 

Large class sizes also impact housing. In summer 2022, Live On Residence Education and Housing Services had been preparing for a larger incoming class, but their dorms still reached a higher capacity than expected, MSU Residence Education and Housing Services Associate Director for Communications Bethany Balks said.

To open more space for first-year and second-year students, Live On services opened “transitional housing,” where some two-person dorms would house three students and four-person quad rooms would house five. In July 2022, 500 dorm rooms were set to be used this way, but by the first week of classes, MSU had just under 200 transitional housing rooms.

“We were able to get people into permanent assignments by the end of September of that year, if they chose to,” Balks said. “They did pay a reduced housing cost the entire time they were in transitional housing.” 

MSU also waived transfer students from the on-campus housing requirement.

Students who hadn’t signed the housing contract were encouraged to find off-campus housing, and those who had signed could get out of the contract without penalty. Third-year and and fourth-year students were not promised space in the residential halls. Age exceptions also changed: instead of needing to be 20 by the start of fall classes to live off campus, MSU now allows students who turn 20 by Jan. 1 of that upcoming year to apply. 

“I think there’s definitely been a commitment to continuous communication,” Balks said. “There was a little bit of that surprise element going into fall 2022, and we learned some things from that." 

Weatherspoon said the admissions office is currently evaluating how many students to admit for next school year. 

“We have to balance everything,” Weatherspoon said. “That means (figuring out) what capacity we have … in determining where we should be and if we’re meeting all the goals we have. … I can’t tell you that today’s number is going to be tomorrow’s number.”