The first-year class of the Fall 2023 semester is the second largest first-time first-year class, with a total of 1,526 students. 1,485 of those students are students from the United States, while the rest are international students.
2018 still holds the record for the largest first-time first-year class, with 1,640 students.
First-time first-year students differentiate the incoming class from the new transfer students.
First-Year Admissions Associate Director Bryan Gates spoke about the current and future initiatives of the admissions office.
“A lot of the growth this year was in Minnesota, so there’s obviously a local representation that’s pretty relevant, which we’ve had as a long part of St. Thomas history,” Gates said.
This is evident with 74% of the first-time first-year class from the metropolitan area. These statistics come from the Office of Student Data directed by Sushant Kohler.
“Some of the more public-facing changes that are happening at St.Thomas, going D1, growing in size, growing in campus footprint, the development of the buildings around campus” has created a demand for St. Thomas, Gates said.
This is the first time the admissions office has a representative located outside Minnesota. Ben Seifert, the admissions representative, is recruiting and living full-time in Chicago. This allows Seifert “to be even more present to all the prospective students and get to know the community,” Gates said. The admissions office is also trying to get around the country more and is “starting to travel to new places like Texas and more time in California.”
Director of Admissions Kristen Hatfield speaks on the effectiveness of St. Thomas getting its name out there locally and nationally with community-based organizations connecting to national school counselors.
Admissions “tries to do as much outreach to connect with the people who are connected with the high school students,” Hatfield said.
In regards to the future, the admissions office is starting a national advisory board.
“We’ll bring about 15 counselors to campus and we’ll consult with them throughout the course of the year,” Hatfield said. “This is one thing we are really really excited for.”
The Fall 2023 class hasn’t just made an impact in regard to its size as the domestic first-time first-year of 1,485 students has the highest percentage of BIPOC students at 32%.
This Fall 2023 also houses the largest class from Dougherty Family College, with 155 students.
Admissions plans for next year’s first-time first-year class to be slightly larger than the current class. Hatfield said that St. Thomas has “goals to continue to increase slightly to cap off within the next couple of years.”
Hatfield said that the university is taking a multifaceted approach to building a national presence.
“It will take time, but we are making progress,” Hatfield said. ”Which is exciting.”
Admissions is taking steps to continue to represent St. Thomas nationally and locally, but as the school continues to grow, Residence Life is continuously working to house students, with the two-year live-in requirement.
“We are having conversations and we’re doing a review and assessment on do we add more beds to campus at some point in the near future,” Residence Life Associate Dean Aaron Macke said. “Plans are not made, but we are reviewing projections for first-year cohort sizes.”
In December, rising juniors and seniors will be given a lottery selection time to enter into the on-campus housing portal. Typically around 300 juniors and seniors decide that they want to continue living on campus, and go in and self-select during this time.
After this time, Macke says that spring residence life monitors “the incoming first-year class, what kind of deposits we are getting, is it going to be another relatively large class?”
“We’ll monitor retention from the first-year to second-year,” Macke said.
Macke said it is a “day-to-day management of projections versus relative demand versus who’s required to live on.”
Macke spoke positively about the two-year live-in requirement and said it builds camaraderie and community, allowing students closer access to support and resources. According to Macke, it also allows St. Thomas to do more intentional programming.
Macke acknowledged the fear students might have had in the past, before the residency requirement.
“I might not have a bed in my second year and now I got to go try and navigate an off-campus rental market, figure out what’s in the market, figure out how to do a lease, deal with landlords and I have only been at school for a month and a half to two months” but now with the two-year requirement they are “more relaxed that whole first-year,” Macke said. However, Macke acknowledged that there are concerns with the living requirement.
“One of the things we are bumping into is our second-year spaces aren’t all new,” Macke said.
There is an “investment every summer, we got to make sure we are getting particularly into second-year spaces and giving them some maintenance and some refresh and bringing them up to certain standards students expect,” Macke said.
Last summer some time was spent in Murray, “going through the halls that are not new and they are mostly second-year spaces and trying to get those up to different standards in terms of amenities, fixtures, painting, flooring and updating LED lights.”
Macke said there are plans for next summer to focus on Murray and Grace and do some painting in Flynn and Morrison.
Just like admissions, Residence Life is taking a rounded approach to reviewing on-campus housing. Facilities management, Residence Life and senior administration will work together to assess and review the on-campus housing as St. Thomas continues to move forward.
It is an “institutional goal right now from our president and our board on down, to really assess and look at bed capacity and what we want going forward,” Macke said.
Madeline Mussay can be reached at muss3440@stthomas.edu.