‘Early fall’ enrollment surpasses fall

By: Ryan Soriano and Joshua Ceballos/PantherNOW Staff

 

University admissions will be flipped this year as more freshmen are enrolling in the summer rather than the fall.

As of the first day of summer B, June 18, 2018, there are 2810 first time in college freshman enrolled before add/drop according to Jody Glassman, the director of University Admissions. Glassman told Student Media that this change in enrollment comes both out of an initiative by FIU, and a desire by incoming freshmen.

For a long time, FIU did not enroll freshmen in the summer, according to Glassman. Students who applied would only be admitted in the fall until 2015 when the University opened up summer admissions and they found that there was a much greater amount of students who wanted to start early than was anticipated.

“A lot of the students who want to start in summer are those who were in dual enrollment in high school and they wanted to keep that momentum going, these are kids who really want an education,” said Glassman.

When the Pell Grant and Bright Futures awards became available for summer classes in recent years, Glassman said that the numbers of summer admission continued to increase, so much so that FIU has put more focus into the summer B semester for enrollment, calling it “early fall.”

For the 2018-2019 school year, the Office of Admissions has had projections suggesting that the early fall enrollment numbers will be greater than that of fall since July of 2017. Glassman said that Admissions plans one year ahead, and they are already planning and making predictions for 2019-2020.

This kind of enrollment pattern is not strange among Florida universities said Glassman, as other schools like the University of Florida see a large number of summer admission, but what makes this unique to FIU is the scale of the trend and the amount of activity in the summer.

“There’s a lot going on here in the summer, but it’s not as jam packed,” said Glassman. “If you go to some campuses in the summer it’s a ghost town, but almost all of our food services and residence halls are open. We’re a fully functioning university in the summer.”

This enrollment trend will help students to get acclimated to university life faster, said Glassman, and it can also help some students to graduate in four years.

“We can have students in the summer take a math class, so they have that little bit of extra, or so they can get that start and so they can jump into a calculus in the fall,” Glassman said. “Or they take a couple classes in the summer so that when they start in the fall instead of taking 15 hours, they can take 12 and focus more on that math class or that science class.”

Rebecca Kahn, a sophomore biology major, said the change may help incoming students if the courses are easy enough.

“I think that it will help them adjust more quickly, but as long as the classes aren’t too difficult. Summer B is short and the classes are longer and more condensed, so it may be harder for some.”

Glassman said that the University also chooses to enroll some students in summer due to their GPA’s or test scores coming out of high school, as getting started early might give them a chance to get into the groove of college before the pressure of fall. This goes in hand with the various “Admission Success Pathways” that the University has for students who need different strategies to graduate.

“Every single student who wants to earn a degree at FIU can earn a degree at FIU,” said Glassman.

 

Data for featured image received from University Admissions as of June 18, 2018.