SCS Will Welcome Largest First-Year Class This Fall Women Once Again Make Up Almost Half of Incoming Students

Byron SpiceWednesday, June 28, 2017

Andrew Widdowson (CS 2005), chair of the SCS Alumni Advisory Board, welcomed the class of 2020 to CMU at Google Pittsburgh last fall. This year's incoming class is 24 percent larger but is still about 50 percent women.

The School of Computer Science is preparing for its largest-ever incoming class of first-years this fall, with 206 students currently committed, continuing the school's efforts to meet the world's growing demand for computer scientists by increasing its undergraduate enrollment.

The class represents a 24 percent increase over the size of last year's first-year class of 166, which was a record at the time. The increase also reflects this fall's launch of a new undergraduate degree in computational biology.

For the second year in a row, almost half of the new students (49 percent) are women. Achieving gender diversity of computer science students — a problem that plagues computer science programs across the country and in many parts of the world — continues to be an important SCS goal. The school has long been a leader in this area, focusing on creating a culture that accepts and supports students of all backgrounds.

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Byron Spice | 412-268-9068 | bspice@cs.cmu.edu