CORRECTION

A story in the City & State section Wednesday mistakenly said the UNC system is considering but does not yet have a firm plan to raise minimum grade-point averages for admission to public universities. It does, and the UNC system's board will vote on it this week.

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The average SAT score for freshmen at N.C. Central University last fall was 842 -- an 18-point drop from the prior year and the largest decrease among UNC-system campuses.

NCCU was one of seven UNC campuses where average SAT scores declined in 2007. It is a campus in a furious battle to retain students, pouring resources into programs aimed at getting under-prepared freshmen onto campus, up to speed and back for their sophomore years.

"A drop of 18 points -- we don't feel that is a tremendous drop -- but we would like to keep our scores up," Provost Beverly Washington Jones said.

Just two other UNC-system schools saw double-digit SAT declines. Scores dropped 16 points at Winston-Salem State and 11 points at Fayetteville State. Scores rose at seven others. At two, UNC-Charlotte and Western Carolina, the average SAT score remained unchanged from 2006 to 2007.

Of the state's five public historically black universities, North Carolina A&T's freshmen scored best -- 888. Winston-Salem State's SAT average was 876; the averages at Fayetteville State and Elizabeth City State were both 846.

At UNC-Chapel Hill, the average topped 1,300 for the first time, hitting 1,302.

NCCU's average SAT score was only lower once in the last decade -- 834 in 2003. Still, Jones points to new retention data to indicate that improvements are in the offing. About 76 percent of freshmen who enrolled in fall 2006 returned this past fall, up six percentage points from the previous year.

"That's very good," she said. "But we'd like to see how those students do academically and how many we retain."

Jones cites initiatives such as NCCU's Aspiring Eagles program for that improvement. NCCU now requires that applicants with high school grade point averages below 2.5 or SAT scores below 680 successfully complete the summer program before enrolling as official NCCU university freshmen. It is an acknowledgement that some students arrive on campus without the proper math, reading, writing and test-taking skills.

Late last year, UNC system officials began floating the idea of tougher admissions standards. Though there is no clear proposal yet, one idea under consideration would raise the minimum grade point average for high school students who want to go to a UNC campus. It's unclear what that threshold would be, but data show that students who enter UNC campuses with a high school grade point average below a C don't fare well; only one-quarter earn a diploma within six years.

College administrators routinely insist the SAT score is just one of a variety of factors considered by admissions departments when evaluating applicants, but it does play a role. At NCCU and across the UNC system, plans are in place to ratchet up SAT minimums. At NCCU next fall, most students must have a 720 SAT score and a 2.3 grade point average to be considered for admission, and the SAT minimum will be higher for the nursing program and some other science disciplines.

Although high school students often worry about the SAT, other factors such as grades, study habits and level of maturity tend to be better indicators of a student's future success, said Chauncey Hatcher, a guidance counselor at Riverside High School in Durham.

"I know people who barely got into college, got in by the grace of God, and did fabulous," he said. "I don't think [the SAT] is a good predictor."