Buffalo, NY - At this time in January, New Year’s resolutions to find growth are typically struggling – if they haven’t been completely abandoned. But at Canisius University, welcoming one of the largest classes of incoming students in years is just the start.
New freshmen enrolling at the university in the spring are at the highest rate since 2012, with new first-year students up 75% over 2024 and 133% over 2023. The number of readmitted students (students who had been accepted, delayed their enrollment, then reapplied for admission) are up nearly 60% compared to previous years. Together with the number of incoming transfer students, which has held steady over the years, the university is welcoming 53 students starting in spring 2025, combining to be the largest group of total incoming students with a spring start since 2020, up nearly 30% overall.
“We’re starting to see more of a rebound after the pandemic and the issues with last year’s FAFSA rollout,” says Danielle Ianni, PhD, Canisius’ vice president for enrollment management. “Given the decline in the number of college-aged people overall, just maintaining would have been positive news. We knew when we set these growth goals that they were ambitious, but we achieved them.”
Helping to drive this growth is a new recruitment strategy that recognizes the needs and expectations of today's prospective college students.
“What students are looking for from college now is very different from what they were looking for five or 10 years ago,” Ianni says. In past generations, students who were interested in college tended to go straight out of high school, enrolling in the fall semester of the same year that they graduated. But today, more students are choosing to delay going to college by a semester or more, whether that’s to get work experience, save money or just enjoy time off after graduating high school.
“Measuring the number of students who enroll in college straight out of high school in the fall is quickly becoming an outdated metric of success,” Ianni says, “because it’s less reflective of what students are looking for.”
Canisius has deliberately adapted its recruitment strategy to meet that trend. Where there would have been a big push for prospective college students to enroll for fall during their senior year of high school, Canisius is adopting a longer view of the recruitment cycle, investing in targeted advertising and more personal outreach throughout the entire year. Part of that also means keeping in touch with prospective students who haven’t enrolled anywhere even after the fall semester’s deposit deadline.
“It’s really about adapting our process to meet students where they are in theirs, not expecting them to fit into ours,” Ianni says.
