UVA welcomes the Class of 2024

During a historic year with a global health crisis, UVA’s Class of 2024 is making history itself with the highest number ever of minority students and first-generation students. Some 37 percent of full-time first-year students are in racial minorities, up from 35 percent in 2019. First-generation students, who are the first in their family to attend college, comprise almost 14 percent of the class, up from 13 percent last year.

“With all the years I’ve been doing this, this was the most challenging, by far, other than the year we enrolled a really outstanding class after Unite the Right,” the 2017 rally that brought neo-Nazis to Grounds, Dean of Admission Gregory W. Roberts (Darden ’17) said in early October. “This is the class that I’m most proud of, and I’m most proud of our team for hanging in there.”

As the pandemic presented uncertainty in the spring, admission staff juggled new challenges, including moving events online and managing double the number of students who pulled out of UVA or chose to take a gap year. That total rose to 300 in 2020.

“We had to monitor deposits and enrollment very carefully for a much longer period of time than we normally do,” Roberts said. “But we were very pleased that the class came in exactly on target.” 

3,785

Incoming Students

515

First-generation college students

317

From low-income households

‘Other’ includes 0.05% American Indian or Alaskan Native and 0.08% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. Students’ racial and ethnic information is reported by UVA in accordance to guidelines set by the U.S. Dept. of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. Any student who reported more than one race was counted in the multi-race category; the 5.5 percent of first-year students who did so include 2.5 percent who identified as African American as one of the races.

1396

Average SAT score

 

Source: UVA Office of Institutional Assessment and Studies; data as of Sept. 21, 2020