As NSU’s office of undergraduate admissions are receiving the final number of accepted students who will attend NSU next year, dean Anthony DeNapoli is confident they are on track for NSU’s Vision 2020.
Vision 2020 is a mission that the university created to be recognized by accrediting agencies, the academic community and the general public as a premier, private, not-for-profit university of quality and distinction that engages all students and produces alumni who serve with integrity in their lives, fields of study and resulting careers by the year 2020.
Part of that mission involves that the next college recruiting season, the incoming class of 2024 will include 2,020 students.With this in mind, NSU’s office of undergraduate admissions are hoping that this year’s incoming class of 2023 will be a sign of what to expect from the class of 2024 in terms of recruitment and other parameters to ensure they meet their goal.
According to Anthony DeNapoli, dean of undergraduate admissions and international affairs, comparing this week to last year’s statistics at this time, NSU is up 30 percent in committed students and a 25 percent increase in admitted students. In total, there are about 13,367 students who applied to be apart of the incoming freshman class. However, these numbers will change and continue to change until they are finalized in early May. This year NSU expects that this incoming class will be about 1,575 students.
“We are seeing that students are choosing NSU over other top schools they’ve applied to. This is because of NSU’s reputation, our premier programs like the dual admission program and our ability to be thinking and looking towards the future while preserving our core values as a university,” said DeNapoli.
One of the reasons that students are choosing NSU has to do with the recruitment practices of the university. NSU advertises locally and holds special programs for incoming students in hot spot locations across the country for admitted students among other programs for parents and high school counselors.
“We held our nineteenth Shark Celebration, which gives students a chance in hot spot locations across the country to attend a reception and celebrate their acceptance to the university as well as solidify plans and placement into NSU. We hold Fintastic Fridays on campus which gives the local community a chance to see the university through tours and expanded site visits similar to a miniature open house. We hold a parent night for the tri-county area and most recently, this past wednesday night, we held a Broward Scholars reception for students in our local area. All of these programs give admitted and interested students a chance to see all that NSU has to offer,” said DeNapoli.
As the school adds more students to it’s undergraduate population, some students are concerned that it may be too much to handle, even with the new facilities and space for incoming students.
“In terms of dorms, there is enough space because of [Mako Hall] but I think that the number and size of classes need to be increased because more and more students are attending NSU each year. It wouldn’t be fair if they kept classes the way they are currently because not everyone would be able to sign up to take the classes they need,” said Gitanjali Varma, sophomore psychology major.
According to DeNapoli, this will not be a problem as he explained that as the university grows they will make it a priority to keep class sizes small so that students can benefit from the one on one attention that students are receiving currently at the university.
“As the university grows we want to try and stay at about 6,000 undergraduate students and maintain that number because as it stands currently, that is what the university can maintain with the facilities and academic priority it would like to achieve,” said DeNapoli.
