Is anyone else concerned about the extra 600 freshman that have been enrolled for 2019-20? I got an email with a notification of how it will affect housing, but I’m wondering how it will affect course availability and class size, too.
I entered UMass back at another time when they’d overenrolled by several hundred students. In terms of housing, we had people living in the campus center hotel and in the dorm lounges for about the first few weeks of the first term, before the uni had a better idea of who was staying in the dorms - and then those folks were moved into regular rooms. In terms of the course availability, for the most popular classes, I didn’t notice any more difficulty in terms of actually getting classes than I experienced in other semesters. I was able to get into the classes I needed, and I don’t remember them being any larger than they would normally have been. In my experience, the main impact was on housing, not really on class size or availability. But of course, YMMV.
IMO, 600 extra freshmen enrolled - might yield an extra 400 once classes start, and in a campus with about 22,000 undergrads, shouldn’t impact things overly. But one of the things you can do is ask the uni itself, see how they think this will impact class sizes, etc.