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In admissions, there are 2 terms that sometimes cause confusion as people transpose their meanings: Admit vs. Enroll. These two terms are very different, but impact each other greatly. And apologies, as sometimes admissions people (like myself) assume people know the difference.
Enrollment is how many students actually end up attending (or starting at) the college for X term. Many colleges (such as UGA), start with an enrollment goal (for UGA, it is 5,800 freshman for Fall 2021) & then work from there-Housing, parking, class space all impact this number.
We then look at how many students we need to admit to make the enrollment target. We know not every student we admit will choose UGA, so we need to admit more students than our enrollment goal. As well, different groups of students make different decisions about where they enroll
At UGA, In-state students enroll at about a 50-54% rate historically (changes every year), & out-of-state students enroll at about an 18-20% rate. If we admit 100 students, the make up of those 100 really impacts enrollment. 100 In-state means 52ish students, 100 OOS means 19ish
Now expand that to 40,000 applicants, 14,000 or so admits, etc., and it gets complicated on how to actually enroll 5,800 (without going too far over or under!). This is why there are wait lists, worries over students canceling after a deposit, etc.
It's like having a party where you can only have a certain number attend due to the size of your house, food, etc. Your local friends will come, but your out-of-state friends might have a harder time due to travel, lodging, etc. How many people do you invite?
It's not magic, but it does get complicated. Colleges admit more students than they have space in the freshman (enrolled) class, and they use past data to determine how many admits will enroll. Then we might use a wait list to make small final adjustments. I hope this helps!
