BLACKSBURG -- Virginia Tech is getting slightly more selective, white and female, and more geographically diverse, according to unoffical numbers released this week for the class of 2010.

The 5,139 freshmen who will be taking their first class at Tech in two weeks hail from 49 states and 36 countries -- nine states and nine countries more than last year.

The group of students comes from the largest applicant pool in Virginia Tech history.

The 19,406 students who applied were 568 more than the previous record set in 2001. Accordingly, the university offered enrollment to only 66 percent of prospective students, about 2 to 4 percentage points less than it typically offers.

Although Tech had to deny admission to more students than in the past, the average grade-point average and SAT scores of this year's class differed only slightly from last year.

"We were thrilled with the number of applications and with the quality, so we look for great things," said Director of Admissions Norrine Bailey Spencer.

White students continue to be an overwhelming majority at the school, and are probably even a greater majority in the freshman class than the 73.6 percent of students who identified themselves as white.

That's because 11.5 percent of incoming freshmen indicated "none of the above," when asked to give their racial or ethnic background on their application.

That makes the "none of the above" group the second-largest in the class and is indicative of a movement by applicants nationwide who feel that not belonging to a minority group will hurt their chances of admission.

Applications for next year's freshman class at Tech won't have the "none of the above" option, and that may cut down on the 11.5 percent figure, Spencer said. They can still choose not to answer the question, however.

While the percentage of black students in the freshman class is virtually unchanged from last year, it's still below the percentage of black students on the campus as a whole.

That's because of a drop-off after 346 black freshmen enrolled at Tech in 2002 and 309 in 2003.

The following year, after the university's governing board eliminated and then reinstituted affirmative action at Tech, that number fell to 173 and has not reached 200 the past two years.

The result is that the number of black students graduating from Tech each year outnumbers the number in the incoming class.

"We very much regret the drop and are trying very hard to restore it," Spencer said.

Men make up about 55 percent of the incoming class, bucking a national trend in which about 57 percent of college students are women.

But the gender gap among incoming Tech freshmen is smaller than at the university as a whole.

Tech's focus on engineering helped make last fall's student body about 59 percent male. Only 17.5 percent of engineering undergraduates nationally are women, and Tech's incoming class in its college of engineering is 15 percent women.

Women make up 57 percent of the incoming freshman class at the University of Virginia. UVa's engineering school, less than one-third the size of Tech's, is 31 percent female.

Dean of Admissions Jack Blackburn said UVa's engineering school has always had a good portion of women compared to national figures, but the 31 percent surprised him.

He thinks it's a positive development.

"In an engineering program, sometimes women bring a different perspective in how to make something work," he said.

"The primary thing is just a different point of view that people might bring if they are women."

UVa freshmen have an average SAT of 1322, and an average GPA of 4.07. Sixty-five percent are in-state students.

Numbers for Tech and UVa freshmen are preliminary and the state's official count of entering freshmen won't be made until the second week of classes.

Radford University spokesman Rob Tucker said the university doesn't release freshman class figures until the numbers are official.

Virginia Tech class of 2010

Last year’s freshman class numbers are in parentheses

Total students: 5,139 (4,999)*

Average SAT score: 1201 (1203)

Average GPA: 3.74 (3.72)

Percent in-state: 70.5 (70)

Percent female: 45 (44)

Percent white: 73.6 (73)

Percent black: 3.7 (3.4)

Percent Asian: 8 (7.5)

Percent Hispanic: 2.9 (2.8)

Percent “none of the above”: 11.5 (12.6)

*Class of 2010 as of Monday; class of 2009 as of second week of class last fall