Temple University welcomes to campus its newest students for the start of a new academic year. This academically accomplished group, totaling roughly 7,400 students, hails from 47 countries, 40 U.S. states and five continents.

A few of them are perfect additions to Temple’s Class of 2023. Ten first-year students have 23 letters combined in their first and last names, and three others have home addresses of 2023.

Final facts and figures on Temple’s newest freshmen and transfer students will be available in mid-September. (All numbers included here are through Aug. 5, 2019, and based on the most recently available data.) 

Here are 23 fun facts about the Class of 2023:

1. Temple received 36,070 first-year student applications for the Class of 2023.
2. The number of registered first-year students in Temple’s Class of 2023 is approximately 5,000.
3. The number of registered new transfer students is approximately 2,400.
4. The average first-year student in this class’ high school GPA is 3.55.
5. The number of first-year students in Temple’s Honors Program is 526.
6. The average first-year student in this class’ SAT score is 1240.
7. The number of high schools represented by Class of 2023 freshmen is 1,289.
8. First-year and transfer students come from 40 countries.
9. The greatest distance traveled by a first-year student (from her hometown of Phuket, Thailand, to Temple University) is 9,111 miles.
10. The most common high school alma maters among Class of 2023 first-year students are Philadelphia’s Central High School and Lansdale’s North Penn High School (78 students each).
11. First-year students and transfers come from 50 Pennsylvania counties.
12. First-year students and transfer students represent 40 states, plus Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.
13. The oldest new, incoming student is 61 years old.
14. The youngest registered new student is 16 years old.
15. There are 24 sets of twins among first-year students and transfers.
16. Matthew (42) and Olivia (43) are the most common first names among this year’s first-year students.
17. The most common last names among this class’ students are Patel (51) and Smith (30).
18. Ten first-year students have 23 letters in their first and last names combined, making them perfect additions to the Class of 2023.
19. Twenty-one first-year students share the birthday of Dec. 13 with Temple President Richard M. Englert.
20. Nineteen students share the birthday of Feb. 15 with Temple founder Russell Conwell.
21. Five students have the word “owl” or “Temple” in their last names.
22. The most popular major among the incoming class is biology (363 students).
23. Two first-year students hail from Temple, Pennsylvania.

—Christopher A. Vito