Dominican Welcomes Diverse, Accomplished Students

Dominican University of California begins the 2023-2024 academic year welcoming 368 diverse and academically accomplished first-year and transfer undergraduate students, a 19 percent increase from fall 2022. 

In addition, the University gained 207 graduate students for the fall 2023 semester, a 40 percent increase from fall 2022, with strong demand for master’s degree programs in education, business administration, business analytics, fine arts, counseling psychology, and art therapy. Dominican also has added several new graduate programs, including a doctoral program in occupational therapy and a master’s program in sport and performance psychology.

Dominican offers more than 60 undergraduate majors, minors and concentrations. For first-year undergraduates, the average high school GPA is 3.7. 

Dominican’s new first-year and transfer students come from throughout California, as well as more than a dozen states and nine countries. States represented include Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Nevada, Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Florida, Texas, Arizona, New York, and Oregon.  

The University gained 78 new first-year student-athletes. Dominican, a member of the Pacific West Conference, currently sponsors 13 NCAA sports. Earlier this year, Dominican was ranked in the top 10 schools nationally to receive the NCAA Presidents' Award for Academic Excellence. Dominican was the only NCAA Division II school in Northern California on this year’s list. It was the fifth consecutive year that Dominican Athletics has been honored with this award by the NCAA.

More than 170 of Dominican’s new undergraduates are the first in their family to attend college. The ethnicity of this year’s entering first-year class is: 36 percent Latinx, 28 percent Asian, 21 percent White, 7 percent African American, and 5 percent Multiethnic. 

Last year, Dominican earned a Minority Serving Institution (MSI) designation from the U.S. Department of Education. Under the broader MSI designation, Dominican has qualified specifically as both a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) and an Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI), with more than 25% of undergraduate students identifying as Latinx and more than 25% identifying as Asian American or Pacific Islander.

MSI designation underscores the university’s commitment to continuing to increase diversity at Dominican and to serving the needs of future students, particularly those from historically underserved populations.

“Having the official designation publicly confirms an identity — and an achievement — that is central to Dominican’s mission and our values,” President Nicola Pitchford noted when announcing the designation.

Fall 2023 enrollment numbers will be finalized on Census Day, Sept. 15.