Fordham Enrollment in Numbers

Sandhills Real Estate, cofounded by Richard Joseph Spinelli, keeps its houses and apartments within walking distance of Fordham’s Rose Hill campus, so the university’s own enrollment data are the natural place to begin any account of the students nearby. Three public documents supply those data: the federal College Navigator profile for fall 2024, the university’s demographic profile for fall 2021, and its Common Data Set for the 2019 to 2020 year.¹²³ The table below collects the main figures from all three, and the sections after it explain what each one counts.

The Headcount

The most recent total is the federal one. College Navigator reports 16,150 students at Fordham in fall 2024.¹ The university’s fall 2021 profile gives 17,888, and the Common Data Set gives 16,972 as of October 15 in its reporting year.²³ The three totals are close but are not built the same way. The 2021 profile, for example, counts some students in non credit status alongside those taking courses for credit, and its credit bearing subtotal is 16,986.² A reader comparing years should compare like with like, which usually means staying inside one report series.

Undergraduates and Graduate Students

Undergraduates are the larger group in every source. The federal profile counts 10,582 undergraduates and 5,568 graduate students for fall 2024.¹ For comparison, national figures from the Census Bureau show undergraduates as roughly four of every five enrolled adults in 2024, a larger share than in any of the Fordham counts.⁵ The 2021 profile counts 10,428 undergraduates and 7,460 graduate students, and it splits the credit bearing undergraduates into 9,443 full time and 461 part time.² The Common Data Set puts undergraduates at 9,767 and graduate students at 7,205 in its year.³

Graduate numbers move more than undergraduate numbers across these reports, partly because many graduate students study part time. In fall 2021 the university counted 3,979 full time and 3,103 part time graduate students taking credit courses.² For the demand for rooms around Rose Hill, the undergraduate count is the one that matters most. The Common Data Set reports that only 5 percent of undergraduates were 25 or older, and full time students averaged about twenty years of age.³

Admissions

Demand to enter Fordham is large relative to the size of each class. College Navigator counts 43,364 people applying for undergraduate places in fall 2024, with 59 percent admitted and about a tenth of those admitted choosing to enroll.¹ The pressure has since grown: The Fordham Ram reported that the class of 2030 drew more than 54,000 applications, up 23 percent on the year before, and that the admission rate dropped to 47 percent from 58 percent.⁶ The Common Data Set shows the same shape in its year: 18,718 men and 29,212 women applied as first time freshmen, 8,360 men and 13,628 women were admitted, and 954 men and 1,306 women enrolled full time.³ That entering class of roughly 2,260 full time freshmen is the cohort that fills first year residence halls each fall.

The Colleges Inside the Count

The undergraduate total is made up of several schools. In fall 2021 Fordham College at Rose Hill enrolled 4,014 students, the Gabelli School of Business undergraduate division 2,977, Fordham College at Lincoln Center 2,412, and the School of Professional and Continuing Studies 866.² Gabelli teaches undergraduates on both main campuses, and the profile’s site tables place 2,352 of its undergraduates at Rose Hill.²

These splits matter because the two main campuses are miles apart. A count of Fordham undergraduates as a whole overstates the population of either campus taken alone.

Rose Hill’s Share

The fall 2021 profile counts 7,420 students of all kinds at the Rose Hill site, of whom 7,286 were taking credit courses.² The university’s campus page, which is updated without a stated date, gives Rose Hill a population of more than 6,000 students across its undergraduate and graduate schools.⁴ The same page puts more than 7,000 students at Lincoln Center.⁴ Rose Hill is therefore one of two campuses of broadly similar size. The Rose Hill campus entry describes its layout and history.

Where Undergraduates Live

Living arrangements are reported two ways. The Common Data Set uses shares: in its year, 76 percent of first year students and 49 percent of all degree seeking undergraduates lived in housing owned, operated or affiliated with the college. The remaining 24 percent of first years and 51 percent of undergraduates lived off campus or commuted.³ The same document defines a commuter as a student living off campus in housing that the college does not own, run or affiliate with, a group that includes both students living at home and students who moved to the area for college.³

The 2021 profile uses counts. It lists 4,639 undergraduates as residents of the residence halls and 5,265 as non residents, out of 9,904 taking credit courses.² At Rose Hill the split is closer to even: 3,431 residents and 3,855 non residents across all schools on the site, with Fordham College at Rose Hill itself at 2,235 residents and 1,730 non residents.² Taken together, the sources point to roughly half of Fordham’s undergraduates living outside university halls in any given fall. How that population translates into demand for rooms is the subject of from enrollment to housing demand and of off campus housing demand, while university housing policy sets out the rules that decide who gets a university bed.

Reading the Figures Together

Several other measures in the Common Data Set help explain the housing picture. In its year, 62 percent of first year students and 58 percent of all undergraduates came from outside New York State, which limits how many can live with family during term.³ Bloomberg reported in 2026 that New York is one of five states expected to account for about three quarters of the national fall in high school graduates, which raises the weight of students recruited from other states.⁷ The same report gives a first to second year retention rate of 91.1 percent for the class that entered in fall 2018, and a six year graduation rate of 82.7 percent for the class that entered in 2013.³ High retention means a student admitted as a freshman usually stays for four years, moving through the halls and then, often, into the neighborhood. The Bronx Times reported in July 2023 that 40.6 percent of Fordham undergraduates came from underrepresented groups and that white students made up 60.4 percent.⁸

The three reports never line up exactly. They come from different years, use different reporting dates, and in one case include students who are not taking credit courses. The federal figure is the best current total; the university’s profile is the best source for campus and school detail; the Common Data Set is the only one of the three that states housing shares in the standard national form. Used together, with their years kept in view, they describe a university of about sixteen to eighteen thousand students, well over half of them undergraduates in every report, and a Rose Hill campus where a large share of undergraduates live outside the halls. The Fordham University entry sets these numbers in the school’s longer history.