The University of California, Merced has posted an all-time high in enrollment once again in this, its eighth academic year.
UC Merced announced a 2012-13 enrollment of 5,760 undergraduate and graduate students, up nearly 11 percent from a year ago.
The campus’ meteoric growth since opening led the university to restrict undergraduate enrollment for the first time ever, though graduate enrollment remains open. Regardless, undergraduate freshman enrollment grew 3.6 percent, to 1,495. Transfer student enrollment decreased by 25 percent, due to a change in admissions criteria.
First-generation freshman students rose as well, up from 60 percent in 2011 to 65.5 percent in 2012. The top five undergraduate majors are biological sciences, psychology, mechanical engineering, management, and computer science and engineering.
A massive 99 percent of the new freshman class are from California. Students from the San Joaquin Valley total 31.2 percent of undergraduates, with 27.8 percent from the Los Angeles area and 21.2 percent from the San Francisco Bay Area.
UC Merced will be home to 329 graduate students this year, up 26.5 percent from a year ago. The campus is now 6 percent graduate students, still a bit shy of the campus’s goal of 10 percent grad students by 2020.