ASU breaks multiple enrollment records as the fall semester begins

As fall classes get underway on Aug. 22, some 40,800 new students will join the Sun Devil family, including first-year, transfer and graduate students enrolled across ASU’s campuses, locations and online.

Nearly 1 in 4 students enrolled at Arizona State University at the start of the fall semester are new to the university.

Of the new cohort, 17,000 are incoming first-year students — and of those, 9,170 are Arizona residents, a university record. But it’s not just undergrads showing state pride: Incoming master’s students from Arizona total 3,150, a 19% increase compared with last fall.

In total, the university will be welcoming 18,100 new students from Arizona, an increase of 9% from the prior year.

On the West Valley campus, enrollment of new first-year, transfer and master’s students increased by 25%. To accommodate that growth, ASU is adding two new buildings, including the Casa del Valle residence hall, which opens this fall. It features 507 double-occupancy, suite-styled units; a social lounge; zen areas; study halls; a creation hub; and a landscaped courtyard.

“It’s built into our name — we are first and foremost here to serve the people of Arizona,” ASU President Michael M. Crow said. “Our university is dedicated to enabling student success, leveraging its place, being socially embedded and engaging globally, so while we are ‘one university in many places,’ ensuring that Arizonans have the knowledge and tools to build a bright future is fundamental to who we are. Our state has unbelievable potential for achievement, health and prosperity, and ASU is here to help make it happen.”

In a given year — counting unique enrollments across all sessions of fall, spring and summer — ASU enrolls more than 181,000 students. See more fall student highlights of the university’s new students on ASU News.

How does ASU count its students?

ASU offers multiple start dates for our students, with many of our online students joining in later sessions offered in the fall and spring semesters. True to our mission of measuring ourselves by whom we include, we have adjusted our total enrollment reporting to include all students who join us over the course of a year. In previous years, we reported the total count at the start of the fall semester, but this number increases throughout the year, thus failing to account for tens of thousands of ASU students.

 

Our 181,000 students is a total of all unique students who enrolled at ASU in the past academic year: fall 2023, spring 2024 and summer 2024.