The unexpectedly high yield of students in the class of 2015 has resulted in plenty of visible changes on campus: a mostly-tripled Fauver, new seating in Usdan, and additional classes. But what about behind the scenes, where the acceptances and rejections are made? The Office of Admission, like many other departments on campus, is adjusting its plans for the future in the wake of the spike in enrollment.

According to President Michael Roth, the University is aiming to return the class of 2016 to a size similar to previous years.

“It’s great that more students chose to come to Wesleyan than anyone could have predicted, and we want them to have a great experience,” he said. “But next year we will go back to the number we had anticipated, which is 745.”

How to achieve this target number, though, is a difficult science—something Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Nancy Hargrave Meislahn knows well.

“One of the things we’ll be working on all fall will be to better predict our yield for the spring,” she said. “What’s a trend, what’s an outlier? Is it a watershed moment? Have we turned a corner or do we want to average it out?”

While this year’s high yield will undoubtedly have some impact on the coming year’s acceptance rates, Meislahn emphasized that the Office of Admission is always careful not to establish a pattern of rotating large classes and small classes in an endless attempt to stabilize the size of the student body and does not intend to accept a smaller number of students next year to compensate for the large freshman class this year. Thus, the target size of 745 for next year’s class is consistent with the University’s plan to increase the classes of 2013 through 2017 by 30 students each, and will not return to the 715-person target of the class of 2012.

Meislahn was quick to point out that although the freshman class is unusually large, the actual increase in the number of new students on campus is not quite as dramatic.

“Last spring, we knew two weeks in advance [of the transfer acceptance date] that the yield on frosh offers had gone up, so we actually cut the transfer target in half,” she said. “The target became 30 fall transfers instead of 60, so there are only 30 additional students on campus.”

Nonetheless, Meislahn acknowledged that the spike in yield presents a fairly daunting challenge for adjusting the mathematical model the Office of Admissions uses to predict enrollment numbers.

“The class of 2015 is my 12th class at Wesleyan and only twice in those 12 years have we been overenrolled,” she said. “So on one hand, the model is broken, but on the other hand, how broken?”

The Office of Admission has already begun examining ways to determine how predictive the enrollment rate of this class is. According to Meislahn, a preliminary analysis of the yield within the class showed that yield has gone up across the board rather than in one particular group. Additionally, an early look at data about which schools students turned down to come to the University and which schools students chose over the University suggests that it is similar to past years. Meislahn has spoken to consultants, school counselors, and deans at other institutions, but she said that ultimately, no advice or data will make the decision for them.

“The decision of how many offers of admission to make in regular decision is quite a ways away, so we want all the intelligence we can gather,” she said. “But in terms of the calendar, there comes a day in early March when we have to call the ball.”