The University of Wyoming is anticipating the largest freshman class in its 130-year history this fall.

The university is estimating 1,730 freshman could possibly be enrolling at UW this semester. Mary Aguayo, interim associate vice provost for enrollment management and Transfer Success Center director,  said UW reached this estimate using class registration and student confirmations and that some students, such as international students, may still be registering.

“We can’t know for sure until the census day, which is the 15th day of classes after drop and add is completed, exactly how large the class is,” Aguayo said. “But I think it will definitely be over 1,700, anywhere in that number is realistic to expect.”

Aguayo said while the university is expecting the largest freshman class it has ever seen, the overall enrollment at UW will remain relatively stable. Aguayo said this is because the university also just graduated its largest class ever this year.

”We are delighted about that as well,” Aguayo said. “But we are not expecting our overall enrollment to be up despite these larger incoming classes because we are graduating so many more students.”

However, Aguayo said the overall number of students at UW will be growing in the future.

“This is absolutely part of a larger strategy to grow the enrollment and help as many Wyoming students come to the University of Wyoming, whether it’s directly out of high school or coming to us as a transfer student or as an adult student,” Aguayo said.

The effort to increase enrollment, Aguayo said, was spearheaded by UW President Laurie Nichols and UW Provost Kate Miller.

“I credit our leadership with Provost Kate Miller and President Laurie Nichols at really helping the students in the state see the kinds of opportunities that they can have here,” Aguayo said. “And we in admissions, financial aid and the registrar have been working hard to make sure students know about those opportunities and that we are really processing them quickly and helping them along every step of their journey to become new students.”

To accommodate the large class, the university is making sure it is meeting the needs of all the incoming students. Aguayo said one of the ways the university is preparing for the unusually large class is expanding in-demand freshman courses to fit more students.

“A good example of that is calculus, we just had all of our calculus seats fill up, so we were able to add an additional section of calculus, so that we are able to accommodate all of the students that need that class.”

Weekly meetings of department heads, advisors and academic administrators, Aguayo said, are looking at course availability and making decisions based on the needs of the incoming students.

“I think we’ve never had a better and more streamlined approach to course registration than we have had this summer because of all this intentional effort with awareness of the large incoming class.”

Student move-in day at the university begins at 7 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 28. Classes will begin on Wednesday, Aug. 30.

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