For the university’s sixth consecutive year of record enrollment, ACU welcomed 6,219 students for the fall semester.
This new record is an increase of 4.6% over the last year. Enrollment increased by more than 19% over the last five years.
“We had over 6,000 students admitted to ACU and had over 11,000 apply,” said Tamara Long, vice president for enrollment and student engagement. “There is strong demand and interest.”
The fall enrollment includes 1,021 new freshmen, from both the Abilene campus and ACU Dallas. From this new freshman class, there are 25 valedictorians and salutatorians, five National Merit Finalists and 39 international students, according to a press release from the office of Phil Schubert, the president of the university.
The top programs of interest for this freshman class include business, nursing, kinesiology, psychology, engineering, communication sciences and disorders, occupational therapy and marriage and family therapy.
“The majority of that growth has come in our online programs which I am very proud of the work that is taking place in Dallas, both at the undergraduate as well as the graduate level,” said Schubert.
The numbers of the students at ACU are:
- Total enrollment: 6,219
- Undergraduate students: 4,196
- Graduate students: 2,023
- Abilene campus: 3,535
- ACU Dallas: 2,684
- International students: 201
- Ethnic diversity of the student body: 46.3%
This year also marked a record for retention, the university’s goal is 85% retention and the university made it in at 80% retention. This goal is constantly being analyzed and changes are being made to ensure that students stay and receive higher education at ACU.
“It is a part of managing the input as well as the way we support our students while they are here,” Schubert said. “If they are not retaining and graduating, then we are not fulfilling our mission here.”
There are multiple factors that go into the numbers that ACU achieves every year. With different marketing strategies and struggles that the university faces, one of them being the effects of the pandemic.
“We are still riding the waves of the pandemic in terms of the post-pandemic realities for college going and high school students going away from home and even visiting colleges in the college search process,” Long said. “We still have not returned to pre-pandemic visit volume to campus which is the number one way a student makes a college choice. Those are factors that we have to overcome.”
The university is making progress towards enrollment on both campuses as well as retention, but the leadership understands that there will be different challenges that present themselves as the semesters go forward.
