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Enrollment Update

Colleagues,

I thought you might be interested in the preliminary data from the official student registration file. Please understand that these data will be reviewed for the next two weeks to assure that they are accurate. However, any changes should be very small.

Preliminary analysis shows a total headcount enrollment of 7,562, up from 7,033 last year. This is by far the highest enrollment in the school’s history. The freshman class is up 22 percent from 1224 last year to 1494 this year. The average SAT is 1023 (again, this might vary a point as clean up continues). Although there are no official data from the UNC system as of this writing, it is expected that the growth in the freshman class will be three or more times the growth in freshmen in the system as a whole.

In addition to substantial growth in the undergraduate population, graduate programs also enrolled significantly more students with a total of 1474. Nearly all graduate enrollment growth was among residential students in Asheville and Cullowhee.

Western’s growth was primarily in traditional resident credit students here and in Asheville. More than 400 new students were in this category. Distance education also grew by approximately 120 students to 612 registrants. Nearly all of this growth was at the undergraduate level.

Please remember that exact enrollment data will not be available for two or three weeks. However, these preliminary data should not change much as the cleanup process continues.

I will keep you informed as we have additional information.

Have a great semester.

John