We're excited to welcome Iowa’s incoming class this fall — at 5,208, it is the third largest in university history. It is also one of the highest-achieving, with an average high school grade-point average of 3.83, matching last year’s record.

This year, 2,813 students in the incoming first-year class are Iowa residents. The class represents 92 of Iowa’s 99 counties, 45 U.S. states and territories, and 46 countries. They come from a total of 1,145 high schools, with the farthest one in the U.S. located in Kailua, Hawaii, and some 811 incoming students (16%) are from rural areas. Additionally, about 19% of the class (1,003) identify as first-generation students, and more than half (2,822) arrived on campus with transfer college credit.

In a speech delivered during Convocation, Claire Gannon, a speech and hearing sciences major from Clarendon Hills, Illinois, urged her fellow first-year peers to be true to themselves while also being open to joining a new family: “Let go of the expectations that this new chapter holds, buy into this experience, and be your true self. We have opportunities knocking at our doors, and in order to find the right ones for us, we must be our most authentic selves.”