Colorado College welcomed 628 incoming members of the Class of 2025 and 26 transfer students in August 2021. Students participated in a range of orientation activities, including discussing the Common Read book, “No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black & Free in America” by Darnell Moore, and taking part in the service-oriented Priddy Trips.
The incoming class was selected from 10,969 applicants (the most in CC’s history) and had a 14% admit rate. For the eighth year in a row, more than a quarter of the incoming class self-identify as students of color (28%) and 7% are international students. In the last decade, the population of students of color and international students has increased by more than 60%, while 10% of this year’s incoming class are first in their families to attend college.
The class features 44 QuestBridge students, 29 gap-semester students, and 62 gap-year students. CC has been partnering with QuestBridge, a nonprofit organization that matches high-achieving, underserved students with opportunities in higher education, since 2013. The Northeast and West regions of the U.S. are equally represented, with 22.6 % of incoming students hailing from each of those areas; 19.3% of the incoming class comes from Colorado; 15.8% from the South; and 12.4% from the Midwest.
Additionally, 27% of the class participated in tutoring/mentoring in their communities, while more than 50% of students held a job during the past year, and 55% were involved in some type of service-oriented project.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic changed the educational landscape for most members of the class: 94% learned either completely virtually/ remotely or using some version of hybrid learning their senior year of high school. In addition, many helped to make life better for others during the pandemic. Among the incoming class are students who:
- Founded an organization that donated 10,000 masks to lower-resourced communities
- Started an online tutoring service for disadvantaged youth in “connectivity deserts”
- Established a food bank that reached more than 4,000 households
- Started a social media platform to connect isolated students during the lockdowns
- Worked in a mask factory in their hometown
- Taught themselves to code, then started a remote job as a software engineer developing software to track Coronavirus cases.
