By the Numbers: Recruitment Mid-year Check-in: The majors and projections

Our recruiting numbers for fall 2024 continue to change daily. Last week, we reported that for the college, we are up across the recruitment funnel for the fall 2024 incoming freshman class. That continues to be true this week.  Our largest increase continues to be in enrollment deposits, where we saw a 22.7% increase over last year. 

While all four of our majors are either up or flat, the results across the funnel for our majors are more mixed. 

Advertising and public relations

Advertising and public relations majors are seeing a substantial increase (22.7%) in the number of students who applied and who have deposited for fall 2024. However, data shows a decrease from fall 2023 in the number of students admitted to the program. Interestingly, the data shows that in fall 2023, more students were admitted to ADPR than applied. We are investigating this discrepancy. 

We still have room for improvement in ADPR. Last year, at this time, 45% of the students who applied to ADPR paid their enrollment deposits, while this year, only 39% have paid. Our spring yield efforts can help us improve our yield rate resulting in more ADPR students in fall 2024 and a larger increase in our incoming freshman class. 

Broadcasting

We are down in the early stages of the funnel in broadcasting, with a decline of 16% in applications and 18% in admitted students. We are flat in the number of students who have paid enrollment deposits at 13. Students can still apply to the university for admission in fall 2024. 

We can consider some additional application generation initiatives focused on broadcasting students for fall. Additionally, our yield efforts will be more important for this major as we need to convert a higher proportion of our admitted broadcasting students than last year to achieve our enrollment goals. 

Journalism

We are down in the number of students who applied in journalism, but up in the number of students admitted and the number of enrollment deposits paid. This could indicate that our recruitment efforts are doing a better job of targeting interested students than in the previous year. 

Yield efforts will continue to be important for this major, as we need to ensure that a higher proportion of students pay their enrollment deposit this year.

Sports Media and Communication

Unsurprisingly, we are up across the board in the sports media and communication major. This major has experienced increases across the recruitment funnel since its launch in 2017. The highest growth is currently in enrollment deposits paid, which is seeing a 30.5% increase over last year. 

Projecting our Fall 2024 class size

The timing of our applications, admissions and enrollment deposits varies from year to year. Data is available from 2019 to 2022 on the timing of the recruitment funnel. Using the average of these four years, we estimate the proportion of our total applications, admits and deposits that are complete for this year and use this figure to project where we will land for the year.

The four-year average proportion of applications that are completed by January is 84.1%. If we assume that the average will hold true for this year, and given our current number of applicants, 514, we can project that the total number of incoming freshmen who will apply to the college for fall 2024 will be 611.

Over the past five years, the college has averaged a 36% yield rate from admitted students to students who are enrolled on census day. 

Using this average, we can project that 36% of our fall 2024 admits will enroll, giving us an incoming freshman class size of 220 students. At this point in the recruitment process, we can expect to see a sizable increase in our incoming freshman class.