The number of prospective undergraduate students applying to Fordham continues to grow, as the University received 45,843 applicants for the Class of 2022 as of Jan. 21, compared to 44,693 last year.

Of that number, 20,949 students applied for Early Decision/Early Action, a five percent increase from last year, which at the time was largest early applicant pool in University history, said John W. Buckley, associate vice president for undergraduate enrollment.

Buckley said the growth in the early pool included strong gains from students in California, where 1,477 applied this year, as compared to 1,271 last year, and Texas, where 588 applied, compared to 514 last year. Both are markets that the University has been actively cultivating in recent years.

The numbers also indicate that the shift toward more students filing early is continuing, he said.

“You’d like to believe that those who are applying early are more keenly interested in the university and, at the same time, they tend to be students who are also well prepared,” Buckley said.

“It’s nice to have the opportunity to work with these students earlier in the cycle. You can then strongly encourage them to visit campus and dive into the rich information we have on the website.”

The 11,289 early applicants who applied to Fordham and successfully passed through the selection process are academically talented. The mean GPA for the early admits is just shy of 3.8 (on a 4.0 scale) and their mean testing stands at 1405, a 13-point increase over last year.

As a sign of Fordham’s emergence as a truly global institution, for the third consecutive cycle, more than 6,000 international students have applied for admission to the Class of 2022.