Updated as of 11:02 a.m. on Sept. 17 to include video.
Correction: The original version of this article used the term freshman in reference to first-time college students, but the data reported from the Registrar's report includes first-time college students and first-time students at Elon University. Elon News Network regrets this error.
The Office of the Registrar released its fall 2024 report Sept. 12, which revealed a 7.4% decrease in first-year enrollment with 1,719 students in the class of 2028. The last time first-year enrollment was below this number was in 2021. Last year, the class of 2027 accounted for 1,857 students.
In the report, first-year students are broken down into first-time college students and first-time Elon students.
The report includes data on student admissions; religious tradition demographics; county, state and country breakdowns; and enrollment by major.
Notably, total undergraduate enrollment increased by only 50 students from 6,402 in fall 2023 to 6,452 in fall 2024.
Finance is once again the university’s top major for the 8th year in a row, just ahead of psychology, marketing, strategic communications and business analytics — respectively.
Nursing and accounting both breached the top ten majors, with nursing making the top 10 for the first time ever in 9th place. Accounting ranked 10th place, which it hasn’t done since 2019.
According to this fall’s report, nursing majors account for 222 undergraduate students — a roughly 38.8% increase compared to fall 2023. When the School of Health Sciences established its nursing major in 2021, nursing accounted for 47 students.
Within the last year, accounting saw a 35.7% increase in enrollment with 209 students. The last time accounting sat in the top 10 was in 2019 with 197 students.
While the top five religions — Catholic, other Christian, Jewish, None and Agnostic, in that order — have not changed over the last year, the Catholic population on campus decreased by over 10% from 1,411 in 2023 to 1,267 in 2024. Elon’s Jewish population also slightly increased, going from 642 to 674 for a 5% increase.
Elon’s enrollment by state saw very little change, with roughly 26% of students originating from North Carolina, nearly 10% from Massachusetts, approximately 7.5% from New Jersey and New York and 6.5% from Virginia.
According to the report, enrollment of international students decreased 22.9% compared to last year. China continued to be the most represented with 17 students enrolled. Last year, 54 foreign countries were represented at Elon compared to 52 in this year’s enrollment.