Overenrollment at Middlebury College.

In the pre-pandemic year 2018-2019, there were roughly 2,580 students on campus at Middlebury College in a given semester.

Additionally, while these students are not counted toward Middlebury's enrollment count, roughly 300 are studying abroad.

1 stick-figure = 50 students.

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Here's a box to hold those 2580 people. The box reprents the Middlebury College campus max capacity in a pre-pandemic year.

Fast forward to Spring of 2021, a year after settling into the pandemic.

There are 1,998 students studying on campus and 436 students studying remotely.

Spring 2021 is a little different, however. In addition to the 436 studying remotely, we also have:

• 323 students on a leave of absence who will return in Fall 2021
• 75 students who deferred from the class of 2024 to 2025
• 26 students studying abroad (compared to 300 on a 'typical' year)

Note: 606 students are about to graduate. These students will be replaced by 607 new first-years not shown here (this number does not include the 75 students who deferred a year; including these brings the class of 2025 total to 682).

Fast forward to the Fall of 2021: here are the 2,858 students on campus. Everyone who was away in the spring has now returned.

A common misconception about overenrollment is that the Admissions office admitted a larger-than-normal first-year class. That isn't true.

This fall, there are 682 first-year 'regular' students, which includes the 75 first-year students who deferred enrollment by a year.

This represents only about 50 more first-years than during a typical year. For instance, in fall 2018, there were 628 new first-years. Additionally, this fall's class size is still roughly 25% of the total student population currently on campus, which is what we might typically expect.

The box representing campus capacity is clearly overflowing. So what's causing 'over-enrollment' as we perceive it?

The first-year class isn't actually that much bigger than usual. On the other hand, there are only 99 students abroad (compared to the typical 300), the 323 students who took time off last semester due to the pandemic decided to return this fall, and 75 first-years deferred admission by a year.

These are some of the major factors in explaining this fall's 'overenrollment' at Middlebury.

A narrative visualization by John Cambefort and Sabrina Templeton.

Thank you to Professor Christopher Andrews for providing the base template for this scrolly-telling data piece.

Data was sourced from the Middlebury College Institutional Research and Admissions Offices. Thank you in particular to Nicole Curvin and Adela Langrock for all their help.

The code for this visualization is available here.