The University of Georgia welcomed its class of 2029 to campus on Wednesday as 6,200 first-year students descended upon campus in Athens for their first week of classes.

“We are excited to welcome the exceptional class of 2029 to the University of Georgia,”

President Jere W. Morehead said in a UGA TODAY story.

With the opening week underway, the university released its annual class statistics, which paint the class of 2029 in a positive light. The average high school GPA for the incoming freshman class was 4.17, with an average ACT score of 31 and an average SAT score of 1356. The group also includes over 200 Georgia valedictorians and salutatorians.

The class of 2029 is one of the highest-achieving classes in UGA’s history, according to UGA, and a diverse group from nearly every state, 15 countries, and 142 of Georgia’s 159 counties.

Addie Williams and Kadence McIntyre, both freshman biology majors from Jesup, Georgia, who attended Wayne County High School with a senior class of just over 300 students, said only nine of their classmates were accepted into UGA.

“I wasn’t confident at all,” Williams said. "I had so many backup options."

Williams added that her acceptance letter made her cry because she did not expect to get in. McIntyre joked that she didn't even want to open her envelope. Both freshmen held high school GPAs over 4.0 and took the maximum amount of AP classes offered at their high school.

Jaydin Mercer, a freshman health promotion major who graduated from Walton High School in Marietta, Georgia, said her application experience was a bit different. She said she took nine AP classes and her GPA was around 4.0. 

“I felt pretty good about it,” Mercer said. “Everybody was trying to get in, so I knew that if I did get deferred, I would still probably get in.”

Lynsey Miller, Avery Ambrogio, Sebastian Baggett and William Reed III are journalism majors in Reporting II.