The academic quality of West Virginia University’s entering freshman class continues to improve, sustaining a trend that has seen entering students’ average high school grade-point average rise 4 percent since 2010.

There are 4,782 freshmen entering WVU in fall 2015, according to numbers released today by the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission. Their average GPA was 3.45, an increase from the 3.32 of the 5,034 freshmen who entered in fall of 2010.

“I am delighted, but not surprised, by the caliber of the students we are attracting to West Virginia University,” said Provost Joyce McConnell. “We are committed to serving the whole student, offering an exceptional education and tremendous opportunities outside of the classroom. It’s wonderful to see more and more talented students becoming Mountaineers.”

The overall ACT score of the new class was 24.00, up from 23.6 of 2010’s.

Last year’s freshman class of 4,868 had an average GPA of 3.42, and composite ACT score of 23.8.

The retention rate also improved almost 2 percentage points from 2014 to 2015, up from 77 percent to 78.8 percent. President Gordon Gee has said he would like to see that number grow to 90 percent over the next several years.

WVU’s total enrollment for fall 2015, including divisional campuses of Potomac State College and WVU Institute of Technology, is 31,514, a decrease from last year’s 31,976.

The breakdown:

• Main Campus, Morgantown: 28,776 this year, compared to 29,175 last year.
• Potomac State, Keyser: 1,475, compared to 1,540.
• WVU Tech, Montgomery: 1,263, compared to 1,261

Potomac State’s freshman class is 588; WVU Tech’s is 268.

-WVU-

jb/11/05/15

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