Record Enrollment At DePaul For Second Year
CHICAGO (STMW) - DePaul University's fall enrollment has surpassed 25,000 for the second straight year, the school has announced.
The all-time record enrollment ensures that DePaul continues to be the largest Catholic university in the nation and the largest private, nonprofit university in the Midwest, a release from the school said.
This fall, DePaul enrolled 25,145 students, up 73 students from last year's record total, the release said. The largest increase was charted in DePaul's masters'-level programs, which showed a 2.8 percent increase to 8,017 graduate students.
DePaul's undergraduate enrollment remained steady at 16,052. The new freshman class was purposely smaller this year than last year, and at 2,241 students, exceeded the budgeted goal by 2 percent. In addition, 1,596 new transfer students enrolled this fall. These successful new student enrollments complemented DePaul's best-ever first-year retention rate of 87 percent from last year's freshman class.
The academic profile of new students improved substantially, according to the release. The average high school GPA for new freshmen was at an all-time high of 3.5, and the proportion of high-performing students on the ACT and SAT increased. In addition, Chicago Public School graduates accounted for 14 percent of entering freshmen. More than one-third (36 percent) of freshmen are the first in their families to attend college and 40 percent of all freshmen are students of color, with one out of four being African-American or Hispanic-Latino.
Also of note in DePaul's enrollment success is this year's class of entering students in the College of Law. The law school enrolled 1,076 students, with the 308 new full-time and part-time students coming from 100 colleges and universities in 36 states. The students have a record high undergraduate GPA of 3.5 and a record average LSAT score of 160.
DePaul also realized an increased demand for its online courses. Credit hours in online courses have increased by 13 percent over last year, the release said. Online courses now comprise 5 percent of DePaul's total credit hours.
