By Katie Farkas
The continuing uncertainty of the past year and a half is not stopping the class of 2025 from breaking enrollment records at Adelphi University. Melissa Bellantonio, senior associate director of admissions and interim director of undergraduate admissions, said that although enrollment for the coming fall semester is still in progress, “we are currently seeing an increase in undergraduate student enrollment overall, for both domestic and international populations. We are thrilled to be welcoming our largest first-year class to Adelphi this fall after reviewing a record number of applications.” As of this writing, the incoming undergraduate enrollment is at 1,336 and trending upward.
According to a recent email from James J. Perrino, Adelphi’s executive vice president of finance and operations, total university enrollment is projected at 7,387 students for this coming semester. “With the exception of a significant dip in 2015, enrollment over the last two decades has been above 7,500, peaking at 8,146 students in 2018,” the email said.
Perrino added that despite the record number of first-year students, total university enrollment will not yet return to pre-pandemic levels. He said this is because one of the school’s largest-ever classes graduated from Adelphi in the 2020-’21 academic year and first-year enrollment in 2020 was only 996 due to various impacts of the pandemic. “And we are currently seeing fewer transfers and an uncertain number of international students also due to the impacts of the pandemic.”
On the other hand, there has been a growing interest in majors such as nursing, biology, health sciences, psychology and business in the past year, said Bellantonio. “Many students have shared personal stories about why they are interested in going into health-related fields due to the impacts of Covid.”
The incoming classes of 2023 and 2024 both averaged around 1,000 students, with the class of 2024 having almost 150 fewer due to “some students delaying the start of their college careers because of the pandemic, a national trend,” said Todd Wilson, Adelphi’s strategic communications director. “But the fall 2021 first-year class is looking strong.”
Although the fall semester experience might not quite be back to normal, Adelphi’s incoming class of 2025 is looking forward to starting their college career.
First-year physics major Edward Jansen, said, “Though I plan to pursue a career in STEM, the classics are deeply important to me. Adelphi, especially through the Honors College, appeared to me as a school that balances its science programs with a liberal arts education.”
According to Tess Helgeson, a first-year nursing student, “The moment I knew that I was committing to Adelphi was when my mom and I flew out to visit the school. It is a train ride away from NYC and has a recognizable nursing program.
“Taking the train from where we were staying in Brooklyn to Mineola helped us get the perspective of the area; a small town close to a big city and a very tight-knit community. After our tour, I knew that Adelphi was where I wanted to go to school because of the experiences and how alumni talk so fondly about it,” Helgeson said.
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