MTSU produces more graduates than any other local university (close to 5,000 each year). One in every six college educated individuals in the greater Nashville area holds an MTSU degree.
We continue to work extremely hard to ensure that we are attracting the best and the brightest new undergraduate students from across the state of Tennessee and the region.
Our recruitment team, MT One Stop, advising staff, academic department chairs, deans, and faculty work very hard all year round to deliver results.
First, the good news: We have admitted more than 9,000 freshmen for Fall 2026!
The “enrollment cliff” we’ve prepared for over many enrollment cycles has arrived. The number of high school graduates in the country and in Tennessee will begin to decrease this year and will maintain a downward trend for the next few years. While schools in the middle Tennessee area won’t see as much of a decrease (and some may grow!), competition for those students will be fierce. Our focus for the spring term will continue to be yield— the percentage of admitted students who choose to enroll at a specific college or university.
Last year in the January President’s Newsletter, I reported that we would try an initiative to increase yield of our freshman admits, Admitted Student Day. While we hoped 500 students would take us up on the invitation to campus for a day of learning what it would be like to be a Blue Raider, almost 1,500 students attended the event.
In 2026, we will build on last year’s success and lessons learned, holding two Admitted Student events—one on Feb. 7 and another on Feb. 28. These events allow our academic colleges and programs to showcase their departments, resources, faculty, staff, and the work our current students are doing on campus. New admits get a glimpse of the opportunities that lie before them and get a real chance to experience how it will feel to be part of that academic community. We also will offer the ability to interact with support resources on campus such as MT One Stop, MTSU Housing, MT Dining, the Disability and Access Center, and the Charlie and Hazel Daniels Veterans and Military Family Center. Attendees will receive special perks, including early access to select their New to Blue orientation sessions before other students. Students also can pick up their Blue IDs on campus, if they upload their photos before the session.
Perhaps the most robust of our efforts to attract students is our annual, three-month True Blue Tour, which recently awarded more than $1 million in scholarships throughout the fall event schedule while attracting a host of excited prospective students and families learning about MTSU—and deciding whether it’s the right fit to continue their academic journeys. This year’s 15-stop tour, including two Nashville stops, took top campus administrators on the road to showcase all MTSU has to offer—more than 300 undergraduate and graduate majors and concentrations, nationally ranked student programming, and more than $2 billion invested in academic facilities over the last 20 years.
The $1,146,550 in scholarships awarded during the tour included 151 individual scholarships given to prospective students whose names were drawn at the evening student receptions, but the bulk of it—almost $983,000—was awarded to the 368 schools represented at the luncheons to allow high school guidance counselors and community college advisors to award to students at their schools as they deem appropriate!