Enrollment numbers are down by about a hundred students, but average ACT scores of incoming freshman and enrollment numbers in ACU’s graduate program are at a record high.

The university announced Wednesday a total enrollment of 4,728 students for the fall semester, with 3,806 undergraduate students and 922 graduate students.

Total enrollment was 4,838 students last fall and 4,984 students last spring.

The average ACT scores of this year’s freshman class is 24.7, compared to last year’s average of 23.2.

President Phil Schubert said ACU could have added more freshmen, but instead chose to tighten academic standards to form the most talented academic class in the history of ACU.

“Our 21st century vision calls for more stringent academic standards and a more talented – academically – student body,” Schubert said.

However, that standard presents the university with challenges when it comes to minority student enrollment. Buck James, associate vice president for enrollment, said that the average ACT score of an African-American student is below 20.

“We know across the nation that students from minority groups tend to do not as well on those kind of standardized test scores and so forth, so it does present some challenges for us,” James said. “One of the things we’ve been sure to do is to improve our admissions process and look at many factors – not just test scores, but to look at overall performance, difficulty of classes taken in high school, writing examples and other sorts of things to help us to get a broader picture on the incoming students.”

To maintain diversity in the student body while tightening academic standards, Schubert said the university must seek out minority students who are prepared to be successful.

He also said it was important for all incoming students to strive for success.

“It’s not just that we are wanting to improve or strengthen our academic standards – we want to ensure that students we are accepting into ACU are here to be successful,” Schubert said. “Our goal is to graduate students and put them into the world to make a difference. Obviously, we’re prohibited from doing that if they’re not prepared to be successful academically in the classroom.”