MADISON, Wis. -- The U.S. Census Bureau is looking to count everyone in the city, and that includes local college students who might be a little confused about where they get recorded.

The agency has answers about what students and their parents should do. The Census Bureau wants to record people where they live for the majority of the year. For many college students, that's on campus, and that means they'll have to fill out a form at school.

In downtown Madison on Wednesday, Census swag has caught the attention of many college students on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus who might have heard about the nationwide counting survey but don't know what to do next.

"We've never done it because we've always lived with our parents," freshman Ilana Wolstein said.

"I guess I was going to just wait and see. If something came, I would fill it out. If it didn't, I wouldn't worry about it. Otherwise, I'd assume that I would be counted at home," freshman Nick Chenoweth said.

The lack of information on campus is something officials with the Census Bureau and the city of Madison are trying to do something about in an effort to increase student participation.

"These campus areas, it was about in the 60 to 65 percent range, where the rest of the city was about 80 percent," City Planning Department official Brian Grady said.

Census workers are explaining to students that if they live off-campus in a house or apartment they will get a form in the mail and will have to fill out one form and include all their roommates. Dorms, however, will be different.

"We're going to do a mass e-mail to all the students. The RAs in the residence halls will start talking about the census at hall meetings they might have, or floor meetings, then on April 12 and 13, there's a special operation done for those housing students," Grady said.

The residents will find forms in their mailboxes and just have to return them to the dorm desk.

International students also are learning about the census forms. They, too, have to be counted.

"This is my first time because I've been here for two months so far, so I'm new to this," said Alvin Leow, who is originally from Malaysia.

"It doesn't seem like it will take too long," freshman Jana Orenstein said. "I'll probably just do it in between classes or something."

Students with questions about what to do can go to a census office set up in the Memorial Union from now until April 19.

Parents of college students will not mark their child as a permanent resident of the home if they're off at school but would instead mark the box indicating that their student lived there part of the time.