The Facts and Figures Behind Drexel’s Incoming Freshman Class

For the second year in a row, Drexel University is welcoming the largest incoming class of freshmen to date. That means that this year’s class of freshman is the biggest that the University has ever seen. As a whole, the new class is also very academically talented.

DrexelNow crunched the numbers* — and these students also differ a bit from last year’s freshman class in terms of location, ethnicity, GPA and SAT scores.

Here’s what you need to know about the new freshmen starting at Drexel:

Class size:

This year’s incoming class has … drum roll, please … more than 3,300 freshmen. That number is just a little bit higher than the more than 3,200 Dragons who began classes on campus last fall — but the 2018 class has about 1,000 more members than 2016’s incoming freshmen class of about 2,300 students. 

The yield rate, or percentage of admitted students who enroll, is at 14.8 percent currently. At this time last year, the yield rate was 14.9 percent.

Demographics:

These Dragons traveled to their new home in the City of Brotherly Love from 61 different countries. That’s four less than last year, but about 11 percent of this freshman class is still comprised of international students. The top five countries that sent the most students are India, Vietnam, China, Pakistan and Nigeria (the same as last year!).

From within the United States, freshmen arrived from 40 states (one less than last year) as well as Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands. About 74 percent of the Dragons came from the top five states that sent the most students: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Massachusetts (which were also the top five states last year!). And just like in 2017, about 13 percent of the students from Pennsylvania are from Philadelphia County.

About 11.8 percent of incoming students identified as underrepresented minorities. 5.4 percent identify as black or African American, 6.3 percent as Hispanic and less that 0.1 percent as native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. 21.7 percent of the class identify as Asian and 49.3 percent identify as Caucasian. All of these statistics differed no more than 1 percent from last year’s numbers in the same categories.

Lastly, 46.8 percent of the class is female and 53.2 is male.

Class Grades and Scores:

The average GPA for this year’s incoming class was 3.71, up 0.02 points from last year. As for the SAT scores, these freshmen received an average score of 1280 — an 18-point increase over last year.

BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY:

How much of the freshman class is Drexel Dragons? That’s the same as last year, and it needs no calculation: 100 percent of these students!

*All of these numbers are not final and are expected to fluctuate between the date of publication and the official end of the cycle six weeks after the beginning of the fall term. Except for, of course, the percentage of how many Dragons make up the freshman class!