With a new year comes new growth at Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) as spring enrollment continues its upward trend. Preliminary numbers from the college’s enrollment management office place GGC’s student enrollment at 11,115, which is up 4% from this time last year.

“GGC has experienced enrollment growth for five consecutive semesters,” said Michael Poll, GGC’s vice president for enrollment management. “That’s good news for GGC.”

Poll said new student admission applications for the fall 2024 semester are currently running 6% ahead of fall 2023, which is an all-time high. Poll says he expects the trend to continue.

“If you combine the new student application increases with gains we’ve been seeing in retention, there’s no reason to believe we won’t continue this enrollment growth,” he said.

GGC’s retention rate, which measures the percentage of students who returned to the college from the previous year, has seen steady growth. Sixty-seven percent of first-year students returned to GGC for their second year in 2022. That retention number rose to 69% in 2023. The percentage of second-year students who returned to the college for a third year jumped to 50% in fall 2023, up from 43% the prior year.

Poll credits the upward trend in admissions to several strategies. The college’s Instant Decision Day events, where GGC admissions counselors provide on-the-spot admission decisions to eligible high-school seniors, have been expanded. 

“Now, our goal is to offer that program twice a year – once in the fall and once in the spring – to all Gwinnett County public high schools,” he said.

Other recruitment strategies include expanded visits by the GGC admissions team to all five states that border Georgia, including Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. GGC offers a waiver to high school students in Georgia’s bordering states that allow them to attend the college as in-state students, paying in-state tuition.

“We are so fortunate to be in a position where we're seeing growth, where a lot of our colleagues in other intuitions around the state and across the country are not seeing that,” Poll said, “But we’re not taking it for granted. We want to continue that upward momentum.”