The largest incoming class of cadets at the Coast Guard Academy in recent years began its military training Monday.

The Class of 2020 also features the largest percentage of women ever, at 38 percent. That number is much higher than female enrollment at the Naval Academy, the Military Academy at West Point and the Air Force Academy, according to the Associated Press. But those academies have a larger student body than the Coast Guard Academy.

The class includes 304 U.S. cadets and eight international cadets. Originally, 310 U.S. cadets were expected to report to the academy, but six dropped out.

The eight international cadets hail from Haiti, the Philippines, Mexico, Turkey, and the Federated States of Micronesia. It is the first time that the academy has accepted two Haitian students as part of its international cadet program. The academy's program was opened to Haitians in 2014, and in 2015, dozens applied for it.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of women first being admitted to U.S. service academies.

Michele Fitzpatrick, a member of the first academy class to include women, said she was the first woman to walk through the campus' main gates when the Class of 1980 first reported to the academy 40 years ago.

"Big mistake," Fitzpatrick said, laughing. She'd gotten up early, "not knowing any better," and arrived to the campus before most of her classmates.

"It just didn't dawn on me that going early would've meant having to be the first one everybody saw. And, you know, it was like, 'Oh now what do we do, we have a woman,'" she recalled.

This time, 115 female cadets walked through the main gates.

Superintendent Rear Adm. James Rendon, in addressing attendees, thanked Fitzpatrick, Susan Bibeau, also a member of the Class of 1980, and the other women in their class for "paving the way" for many Coast Guard cadets and officers "and, in particular, for paving the way for the 115 females that are part of the class of 2020."

One of those female cadets is Kate Ashbey of Waterford.

Ashbey was a member of New London High School's Naval Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program, which, she said, helped prepare her for swab summer, as did the Academy Introduction Mission program she went through last summer. The program provides rising high school seniors with a realistic picture of what it's like to be a member of the academy's corps of cadets.

"It's like everything I expected ... a lot of yelling, which is a given," Ashbey said.

She'd communicated with fellow NJROTC cadet Rebecca Weigel, who started at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point Monday.

"We said good luck, you know, you got this, you can do it," Ashbey said.

Ashbey's experience at the academy will be vastly different from that of Fitzpatrick, Bibeau, and their female classmates.

Fitzpatrick, now a contractor at the Coast Guard Research and Development Center, retired after 20 years in the Coast Guard at the rank of lieutenant commander. Bibeau, now a civilian employee in the academy's admissions department, retired with the rank of captain in 2010 after 30 years of service.

When they first arrived on campus, women were not allowed to serve on ships, and the Coast Guard had to get a waiver to allow them to go on the  barque Eagle, the academy's training vessel, on which swabs spend a week during the summer.

Bibeau and Fitzpatrick described the reaction to them and their female classmates arriving on campus as a mixed bag.

"The administration went out of its way to help our experience be as comparable to the men's as possible. I think the Coast Guard is the service that has done the best job of that," Fitzpatrick said. "On the other hand, there were men who didn't want us there. Some of them went out of their way to try to get us to leave."

And that was true as an officer, too, she said. In many of her tours, she was the first or only female.

On her first day at the academy, Bibeau had walked about 12 steps into the archway of Chase Hall, the cadets' barracks, when she was catcalled by a man above.

"That didn't define my experience, but it was the first peek under the curtain that things were going to be a little different," she said.

Bibeau was the academy's director of admissions for 10 years and said the composition of females in the class is "probably about where it normally ought to be given what the Coast Guard does. There are many, many opportunities open to women these days versus 40 years ago. It's a make-sense number."

She said she has a "high regard" for the female cadets coming through the academy these days.

"They're very athletic, well-rounded in ways that socially were not the norm 40 years ago," she said.

But, in many ways, reporting in day, or R-Day, which marks the start of the seven-week training program that new cadets go through called Swab Summer, was the same for Bibeau and Fitzpatrick as it was for today's cadets: a blur.

Cadets on Monday cycled through haircuts, uniform issue, drill practice and other administrative tasks. All the while, rising second-class cadets, or juniors, were yelling instructions at them to prepare them for performing well under stress.

Sixteen Connecticut cadets are part of the class, including Connor Brown of Groton, who also said the day was going as expected. The academy is like a second home to Brown, he said, as his father, Cmdr. Ted Brown, was stationed there as the planning officer. He is now stationed in New Hampshire.

Brown is joining a long list of family members, dating back 10 generations, he said, who have served in the military.