Loyola Marymount University’s 2021-22 academic year began today with in-person classes for more than 8,500 undergraduate and graduate students who returned to the Westchester and Playa Vista campuses following two and a half semesters of remote learning.
The Class of 2025 includes 1,700 first-year Lions – selected from a record 19,000 applicants – and 450 new transfer students, making up the university’s largest and most diverse entering class.
This year’s class of high-achieving first-year students earned an average GPA of 3.9. Black students make up 9 percent of first-year students, a 50 percent increase from fall 2020, and for the first time, Latino, Latina, and Latinx students make up 25 percent of first-years, a 25 percent increase. Nine percent of the first-year Lions are international students.
LMU will also enroll more than 800 new graduate students this academic year. Together, the new Lions represent 47 states and 63 countries, including the top-five senders of first-year students: China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and Kuwait.
LMU’s student body now represents all 50 states, the District of Columbia and 90 nations.
Today marks a significant change from Aug. 31, 2020, when LMU and colleges across the country began classes online due to the coronavirus pandemic. The university continues to follow state and county COVID-19 safety protocols, and requires that students and faculty and staff members are vaccinated and wear masks indoors to ensure the community’s safety and well-being.
Students on the Westchester campus will see the addition of new academic, performance and living spaces that took shape during the pandemic.
The Howard B. Fitzpatrick Pavilion, which will nurture the LMU School of Film and Television students’ digital learning experiences, will offer flexible classrooms, screening rooms, an immersive media lab, post-production studio, camera-directing stage, flexible motion-capture area and an 86-seat theater with 4k projection.
The open-air Drollinger Family Stage, a project underway on LMU’s upper campus, will serve as a home for live theatrical and dance events, music concerts, and public lectures.
Additionally, LMU has opened new on-campus residences, including a traditional-style, four-story building for first-year students, and a four-story, apartment-style complex for continuing students, providing on-campus housing for more than 600 undergraduates.
