The St. Thomas strategic plan outlines the university’s goal to continually strive to be a more diverse and academically competitive university. This year’s student enrollment statistics show that it is moving forward to meet these goals.

Daniel Meyer, vice president of student enrollment management, said one of the main long-term goals for future enrollment is to raise the academic profile of incoming classes. This year was an opportunity to take a step toward that goal, since the first-year class came from the highest number of applications ever. The increase in applicants also tightened the admission rate to 73 percent – lower than past years.

“The class is strong from an academic perspective,” Meyers said. “They have the highest (average) GPA at a 3.6 and the highest (average) ACT at a 27. Both of those figures are the highest figures we’ve had in the 20 plus years we’ve been tracking things.”

Although academic prestige is on the rise, this year’s admissions saw a decrease in several areas. The total number of undergraduate students this year is 6,111, which the official St. Thomas census report shows is 129 students fewer than last year. Similarly, the total number of graduate students, 3,872, has gone down by 133 students since last year.

Expanding the diversity of St. Thomas students is another central goal for student enrollment, Meyer said. About 13 percent of the first-year class is made up of students of color. Overall, students of color make up 20.1 percent of all St. Thomas students. The amount of students of color has grown over five percent in the last five years, the census report shows.

Though five percent may not seem like much of a difference, Meyer believes steady progress is the key to achieving the goal.

“It’s like doing a marathon,” Meyer said. “You want to be slow and steady because slow and steady is going to get you to the end, and you’re going to have the results.”

Lori Friedman, the director of the Office of International Students and Scholars, said the enrollment of international students is also important because they bring new, diverse perspectives to the classroom and to other students.

“Our international students bring a different worldview,” Friedman said. “It really helps domestic, American St. Thomas students globalize their education through these different perspectives — through conversations, through understanding differences and similarities that we have with others in the world.”

This year, 545 international students are currently enrolled at St. Thomas overall coming from 65 different countries. Both numbers of students and countries they came from have slightly increased since last year, therefore slightly increasing the diversity on campus.

The top three countries of origin for international students, consistent with last year’s data, are Saudi Arabia, China and India.

However, this year St. Thomas has students from Jamaica, Grenada, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Last year, no students from these countries attended the university.

“We would like to see, over a ten year period, that every class gets a little bit better, every class we have greater diversity,” Meyer said.

Kassie Vivant can be reached at viva0001@stthomas.edu