According to new university data, Floridians make up about 94 percent of the student population at Florida Atlantic.

Kelsie Weekes, the media relations manager for academic life at FAU, said that of the 29,940 students that attended FAU in fall of 2015, 28,100 were Florida residents.

In in the previous fall, 28,451 of 30,374 students claimed residency in Florida, a 1.2 percent decrease from 2014 to 2015.

New York state placed second in total enrolment with 306 students, followed by New Jersey with 292 students. Pennsylvania and Illinois round out the top five with 126 and 100 students respectively.

Wyoming and Montana were the states with the smallest number of students, with one student each enrolled at FAU during last year.

Weekes said that the data provided is preliminary and will be in official in December.

The report also states that by county, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade make up 15,332 of 19,470 undergraduate Florida residents admitted to FAU.

Northern Florida counties like Baker and Bradford County saw student admission to FAU increase from two to three students and two to five students respectively according to the FAU’s Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Analytics.

Places like Calhoun County, located in northwest Florida, saw no students admitted to FAU for the past two years.

Around campus, student opinion reflects these thoughts with some slight variation.

“I think Florida, New York, New Jersey, Georgia and Alabama would make up most of the student population’s home state,” said junior biology major Joanne Mathias.

Connor Walcott, a sophomore studying English, said in his mind Georgia and South Carolina make up the top five alongside Florida, New York and New Jersey.

Georgia was one of the states most mentioned by students. However, it only has about 77 students currently attending classes at FAU.

Texas and Connecticut have more with 87 students coming from each state.

Dan Johnston, the assistant director of admissions at FAU, said that there are several reasons why students come from the northeast.

“Often you’ll have student’s parents or relatives move down to South Florida and that becomes a deciding factor when making a decision to come to FAU. It also helps that it’s warm almost year round and there’s similar culture here.”

In the case of Illinois, Johnston said that although there isn’t a close connection with Illinois like that of the northeast states, going to the university fairs in the winter helps with recruitment.

“We’ve increased our recruiting efforts in states like New York and New Jersey,” Johnston said. “A majority of our out-of-state recruiting team goes to the mid-Atlantic and northeast for potential students.”

Nate Nkumbu is a contributing writer with the University Press. For information regarding this or other stories, email [email protected] or tweet him @FoureyedNate.