Spring 2025 Enrollment and Admissions
MTSU experienced a second consecutive year of enrollment growth in 2024, recording a 1.7% year-over- year increase in its Fall 2024 semester census.
MTSU’s student population of 20,488 for 2024–25 included a slight increase in new freshmen—which is on top of a record increase in this category the previous year.
Results like these don’t happen by sitting back and waiting for the students to come, or even by just doing what we have done in the past.
Our recruitment team, MT One Stop, advising staff, academic department chairs, deans, and faculty work hard all year round to deliver these results.
For many years, our focus in undergraduate admissions was simply on increasing the number of applicants. However, the trend in student recruitment over the past decade has been for students to apply to more and more institutions, which naturally meant more applicants. In Tennessee, for Fall 2024, high school seniors submitted applications to an average of six to eight institutions.
MTSU has achieved rising enrollment numbers (amid national declines) by adjusting our attention to emphasize a focus on yield of admitted students. To that end, we will be pursuing numerous additional measures in 2025 in an attempt to increase yield even more.
For instance, we will hold our first Admitted Student Day on Feb. 22. The focus of the event will be to give students a taste of life as a Blue Raider. Students will choose from rotating sessions with essential offices such as MT One Stop, the Center for Student Involvement and Leadership, Student Success, Study Abroad, and the Disability and Access Center. There also will be dedicated time with each student’s academic college to provide an overview of the academic opportunities and resources available at MTSU. Additionally, this session will serve as preparation for their orientation in the summer.
Attendees will receive special advantages, including the chance to sign up for an orientation session before anyone else and pick up their student IDs. Lunch vouchers will be provided, and the future students will receive up to three tickets each to cheer on the MTSU men’s basketball team as it faces Sam Houston that afternoon—an exciting way to show their Blue Raider pride!
In another move to affect yield and address the belonging needs of our incoming class for Fall 2025, we are rebranding the orientation program under a new name, New to Blue Orientation! The full rebranding is a move to a more MTSU-themed orientation program. As part of New to Blue Orientation, students complete an online component in preparation for the on-campus part of orientation. The orientation staff, under the leadership of Gina Poff, is working with instructional designers to create a D2L course required before orientation sessions with a progression module outline. Checklists and important information will be covered to acclimate new students with policies, procedures, resources, and deadline dates before they come to campus—all to prepare them for college life at MTSU.
As always, a big part of our overall student recruitment effort is our annual True Blue Tour, a three-month, three-state, 13-city recruitment effort to draw new students to our Murfreesboro campus.
In conclusion, we continue to work extremely hard to ensure that we are attracting the best and the brightest new undergraduate students from across the state of Tennessee and the region. And when I get a chance to personally meet these prospective students, I am confident in telling them that if they come to MTSU, they will get the attention of faculty and staff that they will need to be successful in college.
The President's Annual Report
