{"id":294584,"date":"2026-09-26T17:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T17:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/294584\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T17:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T17:32:09","slug":"lehigh-admitted-record-breaking-first-year-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/294584\/","title":{"rendered":"Lehigh admitted record-breaking first-year class"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The class of 2030 was a record-breaking admissions year for Lehigh\u2019s undergraduate enrollment.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Since the pandemic, Lehigh\u2019s first-year enrollment has been on the rise, following its <a href=\"https:\/\/www2.lehigh.edu\/our-future-our-lehigh\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">planned strategic enrollment growth.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Currently, there are 1,608 first-year students.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Lehigh uses the 10th day of class to assess the final numbers for the enrollment of the first-year class. Bruce Bunnick, director of admissions, said the target enrollment was 1,570 first-year students.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe increase is modest,\u201d Bunnick said. \u201cThat\u2019s about a 2.4% increase over the targeted number of students.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said this increase in students was on track with projections.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Bunnick said Lehigh\u2019s efforts to encourage accepted students to take the final step and enroll have paid off.<\/p>\n<p>With the enrollment increase, the university made changes to its housing arrangements for first-year students.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Michaela Criswell, Lehigh\u2019s associate director of housing services, added that this re-evaluation is common in college housing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s allowed us to be more thoughtful and strategic with the way that we\u2019re looking at our housing inventory \u2014 the stock that we have and what\u2019s available,\u201d Criswell said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Criswell said this year, there are 46 first-year students in Singleton and 36 first-year students in Brodhead.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In March, the housing team learned of the influx of first-year students leading them to reconfigure\u00a0 where first-years would be living.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On the first-year housing contract, students could indicate whether they were interested in living in the suite-style options of Singleton.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This survey allowed the housing services team to gauge interested\u00a0 students and place them in the suite-style housing.<\/p>\n<p>Criswell said her team was\u00a0 intentional with the spaces they put first-year students.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She said a key part of this intentionally was that these first-year students lived near dining options.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Brodhead has a dining hall in the building, and Singleton is near Hawks Nest and the University Center.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Criswell said another goal was to group first-years in each building, so\u00a0 they had peers in the same situation as them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For students living in Singleton, first-years are close to two other first-year dorms, Taylor and McClintic-Marshall.<\/p>\n<p>However, first-years living in Brodhead are much further from other first-year students.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>All offices involved said\u00a0 ensuring these first-year students still have a traditional dorm experience was important.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe really tried to plan, because the number was higher this year, how we could still make that first-year experience great even though they\u2019re not in a traditional first-year building,\u201d Chris Ottey, senior associate director for housing services, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ottey added that his team worked closely with the Office of Residence Life and the Office of First-Year Experience to figure out a conducive way to fit the increased number of first-year students among other students.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Due to first-years living in Singleton, sophomores who are typically housed in those residence halls had to move elsewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Criswell said sophomores were offered the opportunity to move to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.southsidecommonsbethlehem.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Southside Commons<\/a> at the same rate they\u2019d pay for Lehigh\u2019s on-campus housing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlmost every group we offered [Southside] to took us up on it,\u201d Criswell said. \u201cThen we were able to use some of those Singleton spaces again more intentionally for first-years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She added that no students in Brodhead were offered to move.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ottey noted that no students were forced to move \u2013 the shift was offered to students, and enough students were interested in the opportunity.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Bunnick said with this modest increase, the acceptance rate for this class was approximately 27%.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Bunnick said even with the increase in first-year students, the college admissions landscape for Lehigh, and across the country, remains competitive.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Looking ahead, Bunnick said the admissions team expects modest, yet manageable increases in first-year enrollment in the years to come.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He said the increase won\u2019t hinder students\u2019 academic and overall experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve managed to reach a point where we have come close to the initial strategic enrollment growth, and I think that we\u2019ll simply have to wait and see what the plan is for the coming year,\u201d Bunnick said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The class of 2030 was a record-breaking admissions year for Lehigh\u2019s undergraduate enrollment.\u00a0\u00a0 Since the pandemic, Lehigh\u2019s first-year&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[5877,4784,119,121,120,6223,4736,5878],"class_list":["post-294584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-4-minute-read","tag-administration","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-analysis","tag-housing","tag-student-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}