According to preliminary first-day figures from the University of Missouri, freshman student enrollment at the University of Missouri increased 16.1% compared to last year, with 6,243 students in the incoming class.
The number of transfer students is also up by about 7%, at 1,238.
Before classes started Monday, some students expressed concerns about their classrooms, dining halls and parking garages being too crowded. Once the semester started, some students said their lecture hall classes were standing room only.
“I just came from chem one, and we had the entire lecture hall filled up. We had some people standing. It was just very, very crowded,” said freshman mechanical engineering student Jason Cabra.
Though he is a freshman, Cabra lives in an off-campus apartment, UCentre, that the university contracted to make room for overflow freshman students.
A 4-bedroom, 4-bathroom apartment in UCentre costs $12,995 for MU students per semester. By comparison, the average single suite on campus cost $10,092 in 2023 and a traditional double room was priced around $6,500.
Cabra said he is okay with paying more to stay at the apartment complex because it offers amenities he wouldn’t typically find in a residence hall.
“I have my own bathroom. We have a balcony. It's a really good place to live if you enjoy your own personal area,” Cabra said.
To accommodate the bigger freshman class, MU Residential Life also opened the former Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority house on Rollins Street for student living. A sign -- improvised by turning a previous sign around and printing “Mizzou On Rollins” on its backside -- stands outside of the house, held down by sandbags and zip ties. According to an email sent to students, the new housing option was made available to students on July 31 and requests to live there closed August 4.
In some halls, Residential Life converted study rooms and traditional dorms by adding extra beds and rolling metal racks to serve as closets.
Freshman William Westermann, who lives in a community-style double room that was modified to fit three people, said his dorm was too cramped for his roommates’ needs, forcing them to make bunk beds.
“I was kind of just surprised how much like tight it was before we started rearranging everything. We just decided to do some things just to make it a little bit more walkable and manageable,” Westermann said.
Similar changes were made last fall to accommodate a similarly large freshman class, and in January MU broke its record for freshman undergraduate applications for the 2024-25 academic year.
A university spokesperson was not available for comment at the time of publication.
