With increased enrollment in animal sciences and limited class sizes, demographics of sophomore-level specie-specific courses vary by age and student background. Upperclassmen would be expected to outperform underclassmen due to more collegiate experience and more curriculum background. The effects of student demographics and year in school on class performance were evaluated in a sophomore-level introductory dairy cattle science course. In the fall of 2016 ANS 235 Dairy Cattle Science, student demographics of the 108 enrolled students were sophomores (n = 25), juniors (n = 53), and seniors (n = 30). Of those, 85 were female and 23 males with less than half (n = 32) of the class from a farm background. Each participant completed a 21-question survey pertaining to both demographic and agricultural involvement growing up (4-H, FFA and/or a high school agriculture course). Students also completed a 10 question pre-test on the first day of class and students answered the same 10 pre-test questions incorporated into their final cumulative exam. Progress between pre- and post-test questions and overall course grade were used to evaluate student performance. Least-squared means and the differences between least-squared means were calculated using the PROC MIXED procedure in SAS. Sophomore and junior status students out performed (P ≤ 0.01) seniors by more than 6.39%. Male seniors earned the lowest final grade (P < 0.01) and showed the least improvement (P ≤ 0.04) between pre- and post-test questions compared with all other gender/classification combinations. Surprisingly, no differences (P = 0.26) were found in overall course grade for those students who took an agriculture course in high school (n = 56) compared with those who did not (n = 52). Involvement in 4-H and FFA had no effect (P ≥ 0.51) on the students’ overall course grade. However, female students who grew up on a farm (n = 20) had an increased (P ≤ 0.01) overall performance in the course compared with females who grew up in an urban area. Additionally, female farm students had greater (P ≤ 0.02) performance than males (n = 12) who grew up on a farm at the end of the semester. New methods may need to be implemented in sophomore-level specie-specific production courses to engage certain demographics.