Rochester’s 166th Class moved in this week, bringing 1,335 freshmen and more than 100 transfer students to the sunny and significantly reconstructed River Campus.
The Class is half men and half women. Fewer than half are White, non-Hispanic, making Rochester’s 5,300 undergraduates overall “minority-majority.” The oldest entering student is 38, and the youngest is 15.
Early Decision shattered records this year, as nearly one-third of the Class enters that way. Ten percent are recruited varsity athletes for Rochester’s 23 men’s and women’s teams.
Most noteworthy again is the expanding range of geographic diversity, a feature of Rochester that almost no US university or college can rival. More than one-fourth of new students charting their paths across Rochester’s “Global Village” crossed the US border from 90 other countries, with largest numbers from China, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, India, Mexico, Nigeria, South Korea, the UK, and Vietnam. Forty-three percent are coming from 48 other US states (plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico), and 30% are from New York State.
Incoming Rochester students bring significant accomplishments: they have helped to change Florida election laws, raised $2 million for cancer research, represented their home country in the Youth United Nations, earned all 141 badges in Scouting, published work in paleoanthropology, and generally succeeded as creative artists, entrepreneurs, activists, and researchers at levels exceeding on average any comparable number of college-bound students.
On campus, they’ll find brand-new dining facilities, a big hole behind a revamped Fauver Stadium where a new residence hall is rising, and rapid progress on the Wegman Building that will house both the new Goergen Data Sciences Institute and place the final frame around the Hajim Science and Engineering Quad.
Welcome to the Class of 2020!