Westmont Magazine Meet the New Kids on Campus

The class of 2018 arrives at Westmont with impressive academic credentials and diverse backgrounds

In August, 445 new students started their Westmont careers: 379 in the class of 2018 and 66 transfers from other schools. The first-year students represent 29 states and include two National Merit Scholars. A third of them (127) are North American ethnic minorities.

“The entire class of first-year and transfer students is very diverse in general, not just ethnically diverse, but socio-economically diverse,” says Silvio Vazquez, Westmont dean of admission. “This reinforces the hard work of the college overall to make a Westmont education affordable and attainable.”

The average GPA of incoming first-year students is 3.8 with an average SAT (critical reading and math) score of 1170. The college offered academic merit scholarships to 284 first-year students ranging from $10,000-$15,000. Fifty-seven transfer students earned merit awards ranging from $7,000-$10,500.

“The transfer students are the strongest academically in recent history and geographically diverse as well,” Vazquez says. They transferred from such schools as Claremont McKenna College, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Seattle Pacific University, Scripps College, Colorado College, Georgia Gwinnett College, Wheaton College in Illinois and Iona College.

The eight international students come from Argentina, Germany, Jordan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Four Monroe Scholars, who have an average honors GPA of 4.54 and an average SAT of 1530 out of 1600, received full-tuition scholarships: Hugh Grant-Chapman of Goleta, Calif.; Leandra Marshall of Eureka, Nev.; Samuel Muthiah of Altadena, Calif.; and Hailey Wiper of Eugene, Ore.