About 1,400 prospective students registered to join the university’s first ever virtual tour of campus on April 3.

The number of students that were registered for the virtual event tripled the largest number of students the university has seen for a single campus visit experience. Of the students that registered to join, about half were high school juniors and about half were high school seniors, the rest were high school sophomores.

Due to current restrictions on numbers of people gathered and safety precautions in response to COVID-19, Leslie Hayes, director of campus visits, said they were trying to think of a way to recreate campus tour experiences and decided to do a virtual visit.

“When the virus hit we had two big visit days planned that were coming up after spring break pretty quickly,” Hayes said. “We had one Wildcat Preview day, which really targets pre-seniors and we had one admitted students day planned which really targets seniors.”

About 1050 students of the 1400 students registered joined in to view the virtual tour streamed through YouTube. Darci Armstrong, associate director of campus visits, said though it was difficult to know which specific students were tuned-in, they asked students to fill out a survey following the event. Each student that filled out a survey will receive a T-shirt.

The virtual tour was a two-hour event that included a greeting from Dr. Phil Schubert, president of the university, campus tour, a question and answer component and concluded with a Chapel experience.

“It looked a lot like those visit days looked,” Hayes said. “We don’t have another one on the calendar yet, but we are discussing the possibilities of that. We are looking to possibly add one in May.”

To get updates on new information regarding virtual campus visits, view a virtual campus tour and watch videos about different academic areas at the university, visit acu.edu/visits.