Enrollment Projection Calculator

Each projected year keeps Retention Rate's share of the previous year's enrollment and carries it forward, so a higher Retention Rate means more students remain enrolled year over year before new students are added. Because that effect compounds across every year of the projection, even a modest increase in Retention Rate produces a noticeably larger gap in Projected Enrollment by Year 5 than by Year 1.

Retention Rate's own definition -- the share of students who return the following year -- already excludes anyone who leaves, graduates included, so Graduation Rate isn't subtracted a second time in full. Instead, only the share of Graduation Rate that exceeds what Retention Rate already accounts for as "not returning" removes additional students from the base each year; below that point, Graduation Rate and Retention Rate are describing overlapping departures, not two separate losses. It's still an independent lever in the opposite direction from Retention Rate once it's high enough to matter, which is why the two together can capture both sides of student turnover -- who leaves and who stays -- without double-counting the same students as gone twice.

Incoming Class Growth (%) compounds New Students / Year forward from Year 2 onward, so it has no effect on the very first projected year and only begins shaping the incoming-class size starting in Year 2. Its influence on Projected Enrollment grows larger the further out you project, which is why Projection Years is worth adjusting to see short- versus long-term impact separately.

Because the model compounds retention, graduation, and growth year over year, small assumption changes produce a small gap early on and a much larger one by the final year of Projection Years. Seeing Year 1, Year 3, and Year 5 side by side shows how quickly that gap widens, rather than only the single endpoint figure in Projected Enrollment.