Cal Poly Pomona Welcomes Diverse Class of New Students

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Students in Dorothia Viale's IGE 120 class, Consciousness and Community, take part in a speed dating activity as they learn more about their classmates on the first day of classes at Cal Poly Pomona.
Students in Dorothia Viale’s IGE 120 class, Consciousness and Community, take part in a speed dating activity as they learn more about their classmates on the first day of classes at Cal Poly Pomona.

This fall, Call Poly Pomona welcomes approximately 7,385 entering students from 32 states and 71 countries. They will join almost 17,700 continuing students.

The new students include approximately 3,760 first-year students; 3,127 transfer students and almost 500 graduate students. The entering class includes 275 international students. Slightly more than 30 percent will be the first in their families to attend a university. Another 21 percent, who have parents who graduated community college, will be the first in their families to embark on a university degree program.

If you’d like to know our students better, perhaps this will help. In the entering class, the most popular female name is Samantha (42 students), and rounding out the top five names are Jessica (38), Ashley (36), Jennifer (31) and Michelle (31). Among men, the five most commons names all belong to more than 50 students a piece: Daniel (59), Andrew (55), Matthew (52), David (52) and Christopher (51). The name Michael just missed the top five with “only” 50 students.

New freshman students had the opportunity to move onto campus and participate in Welcome Week events starting last Sunday. Continuing students living on campus began moving into their residence halls today. Classes start on Thursday, Sept. 21 and BroncoFusion, the big concert celebrating the beginning of the academic year, is on Friday, Sept. 22.