After receiving a record number of applications, the University of Rhode Island exceeded its enrollment target for the incoming freshman class this fall.
The academic caliber of students on the Kingston campus is also on the rise with new students having arrived with strong grade point averages coming out of high school and some college credits already earned, Dean Libutti, the school’s associate vice president for enrollment management and student success said.
Everyone needs science. Science needs everyone.
The Amgen Foundation is guided by the belief that all students should have the opportunity…
Learn More
A total of 28,036 first-year applications were received in 2025, Libutti told the university’s Board of Trustees during a presentation Friday.
Ultimately, 3,431 of those students enrolled – a number above both the school’s original and revised goals for the size of its incoming freshman class, Libutti said. Last year, URI received 26,800 applications.
“That happens at a time when we are seeing declining high school demographics, so [it’s] really exciting to see,” Libutti said. “Our superpower is that our recruitment is actually a team sport by all divisions and people on campus.”
Overall, URI had 17,471 students this fall semester, made up of 15,045 undergrads and 2,426 grad students.
But a lack of housing on campus may cap further growth, Libutti warned. “We are at capacity at the undergraduate traditional level,” Libutti said.
The university announced Thursday that it had finalized a partnership with construction firm Gilbane to begin building three new residence halls which will increase the number of on-campus beds by more than 2,000. Construction is set to begin later in November, and the first residence hall could open in fall 2027.
In the meantime, however, graduate students living in the Graduate Village Apartments will need to be relocated, as the building is being torn down before its eventual replacement can be built, the Good Five Cent Cigar reported recently.
“Housing is so critical, as we obviously are planning for when we grow capacity, but we have to grow it in a responsible way,” said the board’s Chair Margo Cook during Friday’s meeting.
Ahead of the fall semester’s conclusion next month, Libutti gave his routine update on how the school’s admissions department is doing. URI had upped its undergraduate admissions target from 3,275 to 3,385 because of two factors – all in all, “a terrific year recruiting new undergraduate students,” Libutti said.
First, Libutti said, the university did not have to contend with the disastrous rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid like it did in 2024. The standardized, federal financial form was plagued with technical errors in 2024, and wrought chaos in admissions departments nationwide as schools and families alike depend on concrete financial aid offers to make enrollment decisions.
The second reason URI could exceed its initial hopes was because this year’s pool of applicants was particularly strong, Libutti said. He noted that the average GPA of the incoming freshman – which URI recalculates to account for differences among high schools – was 3.69 this year.
“When I started presenting this many years ago, that was actually a 3.08,” Libutti said. “Over one in two of our students starting this fall are bringing in earned college credit from high school. It shows their quality. It shows their commitment.”
Over 12% of students are graduating in less than four years, Libutti said, and 52% of students arrived on campus with existing college credit this year. The trend has been seen in other states like Connecticut and Georgia.
The school managed to reduce “summer melt” this year, a trend where students decide not to attend a school in the fall after initially signing on.
“Years ago, people would say they were coming to URI, but the number who would then no longer come used to be 12 and 13%,” Libutti said. “Our summer melt, thanks to a great team effort with academic affairs, student affairs and so many, was actually sitting just under 8%.”
Traditional applicant pool shrinking in Northeast
URI’s gains come amid an ongoing dearth of local high school graduates, Libutti said.
According to a 2024 report from the R.I. Office of the Postsecondary Commissioner, Rhode Island is expected to see a 12% drop in public high school graduates between academic years 2018–19 and 2031–32. That statistic is matched by an 18.9% increase since 2017 in residents aged 60 to 74, and the report notes that the “population appears to be shifting toward older adults.”
Birth rates have also fallen in Rhode Island in recent decades, by about 18% between 2002 and 2022, according to the 2024 Rhode Island KIDS COUNT Factbook.
Another 2024 projection from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education predicts an average 17% decline in high school graduates for northeastern states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire. “Only New Jersey will remain largely unaffected,” the report reads.
“We have just under 10,000 high school graduates,” Libutti said, citing the average number of Rhode Islanders who graduate high school in recent years. “Not all go on to college. We also know New England is a challenge based on the number of high school graduates and demographics.”
URI continues to attract more out-of-staters than Rhode Islanders, a trend that reliably held and rose across the 2010s. In 2009, only 38% of undergrad students were from out of state. While the balance seemed to tip ever so slightly this year, with Rhode Islanders comprising 50.1% of the entire student body, Libutti said over 60% of first-year students come from out-of-state. Midyear transfer students, mostly coming from within Rhode Island, skew the numbers in the opposite direction.
This year, Libutti’s presentation noted growth above 20% in applications from students in Maryland, Georgia, Tennessee, Illinois, Ohio, Colorado and Washington, D.C.
Still, the Ocean State’s flagship university is missing a few states from its nationwide portfolio of applicants. Last year, Libutti told the trustees that applications came from students from 47 states. Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota were the only states missing from the pool.
This year, Libutti told the trustees he’s still in search of a complete set. “I have to keep saying my joke, because someone has to help me with it: Anyone here with North or South Dakota connections, please see me afterwards. I’d love to hit the 50 next year,” he said.
Alexander Castro is a writer for Rhode Island Current.
