Spring enrollment increases - The Rider Newspaper

As of last Tuesday, UTRGV’s preliminary numbers show 22,071 undergraduate and 3,623 graduate students are enrolled this semester, an increase of 29 and 116, respectively, compared to last spring.

There are 3,562 freshmen, 4,272 sophomores, 5,942 juniors and 8,295 seniors, according to Magdalena “Maggie” Hinojosa, vice president for Strategic Enrollment.

She said the most popular majors at UTRGV are biology, criminal justice, interdisciplinary studies, nursing and psychology. On average, undergraduates are enrolled in 12.7 credit hours.

Hinojosa said numbers tend to peak the fourth day of class, which is the last day to enroll.

“For spring, we’re always looking at being ahead from the prior spring, which I’m happy to report that we are at 26,809 students and we are trending above last year,” she said.

The vice president said the Strategic Enrollment office’s focus for the spring is transfer students because there are not many entering freshmen during the spring semester.

“In general, as an institution, as a whole, we all work together to recruit students to the university,” she said. “But spring is very different than fall, so the main focus of spring is continuing students, ensuring that students continue from fall to spring who have not graduated.”

Biology junior Leslie Juarez makes a payment for the Spring 2020 semester Tuesday at the Bursar’s Office in the Tower on the Brownsville campus. As of last Tuesday, there is an increase of 29 undergraduate and 116 graduate students at UTRGV compared to last spring. ROXANNA MIRANDA/THE RIDER

Hinojosa said she believes numbers increase or decrease, depending on the effort students and staff put forth.

“But there’s all sorts of factors that play a role in enrollment, so there isn’t just one thing that impacts the numbers,” she said. “It’s a true effort on everyone’s part.”

Parwinder Grewal, executive vice president for Research, Graduate Studies and New Program Development, said there are 3,623 students in the Graduate College, an increase of about 4% compared to Spring 2019.

About 3,150 are pursuing a master’s degree and 473 a doctorate.

According to Grewal, the Graduate College offers more than 55 master’s programs and five doctoral.

“There are several programs in the works that could start in the fall,” he said. “I would say around five new programs we will start in the fall.”

Grewal hopes to receive approval for Fall 2020 for the following graduate programs: applied statistics and data science, UX/UI design, higher education administration, art education, computational biology and bioinformatics and actuarial science.