CINCINNATI -- The University of Cincinnati welcomes the largest enrollment in its history for the fourth year in a row with 45,000 Bearcats starting classes Monday morning.

This tops last year’s all-time high of 44,251 students. Estimates suggest that this year’s incoming class of 6,900 first-year students — up 8.9 percent from last year — is not only the university’s largest, but also among the smartest.

First-year students on UC’s Uptown Campus boast an average ACT score of 25.7 and SAT score of 1163, with an average high school GPA of 3.58, up from 3.471 in 2015. More than 1,500 of them are Cincinnatus Scholarship recipients.

The class, which is comprised of students from 33 states and 45 countries, also includes 55 National Merit/Achievement Scholarship recipients, up from 50 last year and nearing the target of 60 set for 2019.

“UC’s continued year-over-year growth is the result of a diversified enrollment strategy inclusive of growing the traditional direct-from-high school student, enhanced retention of the students we recruit, targeted distance learning programs and the quality delivery of graduate and professional school degrees,” said Caroline Miller, UC’s vice provost of Enrollment Management.

Changes on campus for the 2016-2017 academic year include renovated buildings and a program that loans iPads to first-generation college students and athletes. The fourth floor of the Langsam Library also started operating 24 hours a day on Sunday.

Nearly 500 students moved into the newly renovated Scioto Hall last week, the new and improved twin sister to Morgens Hall. After a two-year renovation, UC’s Teachers/Dyer Complex also welcomes back faculty, staff and students from UC’s College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services (CECH) and Information Technology.

In a new partnership with Women Helping Women (WHW), UC is adding an on-call confidential advocate to be available to campus survivors of gender-based violence, such as sexual assault, domestic violence or stalking. By Oct. 30, a full-time WHW advocate will be housed on campus in the Steger Student Life Center.

Interim Provost Peter Landgren says all UC campuses have grown and he believes the reasons are simple.

"(It's) the excellence of the programs when you think of the College of Business, which has just exploded with national rankings," Landgren said. "We're doing great work in our UC Library to make it a 24/7 facility. I think that word's getting out and people are coming here."