BLACKSBURG -- The boyfriend carried the boxes. The dad hauled up the dorm-room rug. It looked like the typical move-in scene as Roanoke County's Kelsey Webb joined a record-setting freshman class this week at Virginia Tech.

Four months after the April 16 shootings, Mark Webb found himself moving his daughter into the fourth floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall -- where Seung-Hui Cho killed his first two victims April 16.

"It gave us a chill when we found out," he said about his daughter's room assignment. But by the time her clothes were in the drawers, "It felt pretty much like a regular move-in day."

The Cave Spring High graduate said she never wavered from her decision to attend Tech. "If anything, the way the students and the community came together afterwards gave you a sense of Tech not just being a place to go and learn, but it made it feel like home, too," Kelsey said. Her parents are Tech graduates, and her sister and boyfriend also attend the university.

Across the Tech campus, the anxiety that Webb and other parents experienced in the wake of the nation's worst campus shooting seemed to have faded. Amid boxes of linens and Target bags, parents and students seemed more preoccupied with room preparations and poignant goodbyes during this annual late-summer rite.

Most freshmen moved in Wednesday and Thursday, and many of the remaining students will arrive over the weekend before the start of classes Monday.

Fewer than 10 of the 12,848 high schoolers offered admission indicated that the shootings influenced their decision to attend college elsewhere -- including two students from Cho's native South Korea who wrote that they would feel too self-conscious to study comfortably at Tech.

"But dozens said seeing the strength of the students and the strength of the community did affect their decision to come," said Norrine Bailey Spencer, director of undergraduate admissions.

The freshman class has 5,215 students, compared with 5,176 last year.

"When it first happened, I thought, oh my gosh, I bet a lot of people are going to pull their kids," said Danielle Crawford, whose daughter Tina is also a freshman from Roanoke County. "But she said from the very beginning, 'No way, I'm still going.' "

Many parents, including Roanoke's Carol Brash, say they were encouraged by the emphasis on security at freshman orientation, including the new 24-hour locked-dorm policy, installation of a text-messaging alert system and classroom doors that lock from the inside. "This has taught a lot of schools some lessons about security and mental health and how to deal with situations like that."

Brash's daughter Caitlin chose Tech over James Madison and Radford universities, which also accepted her. "An incident like that is so random, it could happen anywhere," Brash said.

On the fourth floor of Cochrane Hall, David Hawkins and Helen Dooley of Bedford County had their youngest son's belongings stacked inside his room. It was the third time they had moved a son into Virginia Tech using a relative's borrowed truck.

Hawkins said repeatedly that they were leaving Stephen to arrange his own room -- only to find one more thing to help organize or put together.

Stephen Hawkins was in Blacksburg the weekend before the shootings, on a recruiting trip for Tech's swim team. He sent his letter of intent to attend Tech on April 17 "with no trepidation whatsoever."

"The students were so articulate and so very worldly beyond their years," David Hawkins said. "They were reasoned and generous and kind -- things that I could not be in that situation. I was incredibly mad."

Jim Gledhill, an Australian diplomat living in McLean, said he was hesitant at first about his son Cameron attending Tech, also on a swimming scholarship. "But the head swimming coach called us the very next day and assured us if we wanted support or to know what was going on that he would be available."

What makes him most nervous, he added, are recent efforts by a student group at George Mason University lobbying for the right to carry concealed weapons on campus.

"I just hope that doesn't happen here," he said. "That's anathema to me.

"That would make me want to get him out of here."