The fall 2023 Fifteenth-Day report counted 25,283 students on the Kent Campus, short of the 26,804 students reported by the fall 2019 Fifteenth-Day report.

The university’s highest enrollment in the last decade was fall 2016, which counted 29,105 students on the Kent Campus. The following semesters gradually decreased before a low of 25,077 in fall 2022.

Vice President for Enrollment Management Sean Broghammer said making application tests optional encourages more students to apply without needing time to take the SAT or ACT.

“The testing agencies were not available, dates were being moved, postponed,” he said. “Ultimately, we made a decision to go into suspend requesting a test score for fall 2020 and then we also worked that through for fall 2021 and beyond.”

Kent State and other universities waived several requirements during the college application process to attract more students during the pandemic. The most notable of these changes was making the application test optional. 

Broghammer said that standardized test scores were a barrier for students applying in the past and it was not as strong of an indicator for student success as a GPA.

“Relying more on a GPA has allowed students to feel like they have greater opportunity to attend Kent State than they did before,” he said.

A few colleges and universities such as the University of Georgia and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have resumed their standardized test-score requirement. However, public universities in Ohio will remain test-optional for their application process.

Michael Neenan is a reporter. Contact him at [email protected].