UWT draws the biggest freshman class in its history

The University of Washington Tacoma this year will welcome 702 freshmen, the largest first-year class in its history, driven in part by a record-setting number of in-state and out-of-state students who applied last fall, and then accepted offers of admission.

UW’s Seattle campus also expects a record-setting number of freshmen. The UW Bothell branch is on target for a slightly smaller freshman class.

The UW’s growth overall is running counter to a national trend. Across the United States, the number of students pursing a bachelor’s degree has been on the decline in recent years, although most of Washington’s public colleges and universities have seen slight upticks in growth.

“The university is rolling,” said Philip Ballinger, the university’s associate vice provost for enrollment management. “Seattle is a dynamic city and the Pacific Northwest is an attractive place to be. “It’s all coming together in a marvelous way.”

At UWT, in-state students make up about 93 percent of the freshman class.

On the Seattle campus, about 4,450 of the freshmen, or 63 percent, will be Washington residents. They make up a smaller percentage of the class because the class itself is so large — five years ago, in 2014, Washington residents made up 67 percent of the freshman class.

At the main campus, a little more than 54 percent of in-state students who applied were admitted this spring. That’s lower than in previous years, when the number was closer to 60 percent, and it’s because of the “unusually robust growth” in applications from Washington residents, Ballinger said.

The UW received 13,108 applications from in-state students – an increase of nearly 6 percent from the previous year.

There’s a common misconception that the UW admits as few as 5 or 10 percent of in-state students who apply, UW President Ana Mari Cauce told the UW Regents during a meeting last week. The reality, she said, is that more than half get in.

Despite concerns that the number of international students would drop because of the Trump administration’s travel ban and its strict policy on immigrants, the UW has seen a relatively small decline in applications from foreign students in the last two years.

The 1,150 international students who accepted an admission offer to the Seattle campus is almost identical to the number who came to the UW as freshmen last year.

The Seattle campus also expects to enroll 1,500 transfer students this fall, about 87 percent of whom will come from the state’s community and technical colleges.

UW Bothell expects to enroll 831 freshmen with about 93 percent of the class being in-state students. Administrators decided to slow growth in Bothell because the campus is nearly out of space, said Steve Syverson, assistant vice chancellor for enrollment management at Bothell.