<p>Here's the official news release and as expected there's a huge incoming class of first years, 708 to be exact!</p>
<p>News</a> Office</p>
<p>Wow! That’s a big class! It’s going to be cozy this year.</p>
<p>Interesting profiles on some of the new students.</p>
<p>How large is an average class?</p>
<p>It seems to vary from year to year but the target is around 640 or so. The “yield,” or number of accepts who opted to attend Smith, was higher than expected thus the higher class number. Of course there are sometimes people who change their mind during the summer so it could be slightly less come September 1st.</p>
<p>I’m really pleased to see that Smith is continuing its efforts to bring women from Afghanistan to study. I was privileged to know one of the two Afghan women who graduated with the class of 2009 (I think we were the first class to have students from Afghanistan, post-2001), they were amazing examples of what Smith can do for a person’s development. She was so shy and quiet her first year, and by the time we graduated, she was our student speaker at Ivy Day and had the whole Quad in tears. She was really amazing. She had sacrificed so much to get to graduation, it really made me at least appreciate that diploma all the more, knowing how fortunate I was to get it.</p>