MSU exceeded enrollment goals.
Full-time student enrollment number for MSU increased by a record-breaking 925 students for fall 2024.
Midwestern successfully exceeded this year’s enrollment goals by 100 students and recorded a 17% increase since fall 2023.
The increase resulted in full occupancy in residence halls and 50% more sorority bids.
These results come after the school administration made significant efforts to improve its outreach to prospective students through social media and print communication.
“We’re very careful to increase the number of students we were communicating with and the number of times we were communicating with them and really focusing that message on the quality of education that they will receive,” MSU President Stacia Haynie said.
Haynie also mentioned the importance of offering students and their families more opportunities to visit campus and meet MSU’s faculty and staff, which helped establish early connections between future students and their professors.
Moving forward, MSU will focus on maintaining a similar momentum in its retention numbers.
Haynie explained that the primary factor that makes students leave MSU is financial hardship. She said that her administration incorporated early alerts that would help mediate communication between professors and higher staff to find students who are struggling and assist them.
“And some students were struggling, they didn’t have money for their books. Well, we have scholarships with the bookstore, so we were able to help those students and get them connected to resources so that you’re not trying to struggle through a class,” Haynie said.
Creating connections and building relationships are crucial factors that make the school attractive to incoming and returning students. This is possible due to MSU’s small size and the tight-knit community it provides.
“I like the size of MSU. I think if my school was any bigger, first of all I wouldn’t like walking around the whole campus, but it feels like here I have a community around me that’s here to support me,” engineering sophomore Sarah Mazaraki said.
One of the changes that MSU is planning on bringing to campus is reopening Pierce Hall to expand the on-campus housing capacity.
The residence hall closed down in fall 2022 due to low post-COVID enrollment numbers. Currently, Pierce is used to accommodate professors who have had to relocate their offices because of the ongoing renovations at Bolin Hall.
