Preliminary enrolments at the ninth school peaked at 2610, with final enrolments, after some attrition, reaching a record 2364.
By yesterday, 2760 preliminary enrolments had already come in for the 10th school, which starts early next month. 'It's a very, very strong response, very heartening," school director Dr Claire Matthewson said yesterday.
Eventual final enrolment figures were always somewhat lower than initial numbers for various reasons, including some students opting to take fewer papers.
However, even allowing for this reduction, next year's final student roll would clearly be well up on this year, she said.
The school enables people to obtain academic credit for a wide range of courses by undertaking intensive study for about six weeks.
Equivalent courses conducted later in the university year run for about 13 weeks.
A paper on forensic biology, involving Prof Jules Kieser, was once again the school's most popular paper, with 123 applications received, well up on the previous school.
Several other papers, including in law, statistics and commerce, had attracted more than 90 enrolments.
While demand for some previously popular papers had continued to grow, others which had attracted a smaller following were also well up, with enrolments roughly doubling in some theatre, botany and German papers.
Favourable comment from the growing number of former students had helped boost attendance at the school, and the country's economic downturn might also have helped, she said.
Difficulties in finding summer holiday work might have resulted in some students opting to spend their summer constructively by taking school papers.
The school, which began as an experiment in 2001 with just 23 papers and 700 students, had become increasingly well known and earlier this year had been officially recognised as an "integral, albeit special" part of the university's teaching and learning programme, she said.