<p>Serious question – Does this mean I can add it to my son’s safety school list for next year?
I’ve been there and I think it’s a great school. Kind of the MD version of William and Mary from what I can tell.</p>
<p>I agree, it is a great little school, and actually I think it is a pretty good deal for the tuition. It is the in-state public honors college in Maryland. We are OOS and visited it for D2 before we had a good handle on her test scores – I think it would have been good for D1, actually, but we had not heard of it. I noticed it was on the “Space Available” list that just came out, and thought, “Well, if I had a kid who hadn’t found a spot this spring, that would be a good choice!”. I would have been happy to allow D2 to leave it on her list as a safety, too, and it was on the list pretty far into her process.</p>
<p>I do think they had a problem after a big storm a year or two ago with mold in a dorm… had to put the kids up on a cruise ship parked in the river by campus! My strongest memory of the campus is that it felt almost like a summer camp – I think because they have a strong sailing program (great boat house!) and the cafeteria has a (modern) summer-camp feeling.</p>
<p>Yes, their ‘5th highest’ tuition among publics looks pretty reasonable to me, but then we are in CA and our UCs have gone from fantabulous value to ‘ouch’ in less than a decade. </p>
<p>This MD public LAC sounds appealing and unique. Hope they can sort things out.</p>
<p>What begins? Is one college having problems filling a class some sort of trend? I mean it may well be, but it’s still too early to tell. St. Mary’s does feel like a summer camp and my D loved it when we visited, but it is a small public college in a small state with other choices for residents that are not in the middle of nowhere (UMD with 25K undergraduates). St. Mary’s problems may not transfer anywhere else.</p>
<p>Admissions at St. Mary’s have become increasingly selective which means that many in-state students who would have applied only a few years ago no longer even bother. They head directly to Towson/Salisbury/Frostburg, or to one of the private LACs in the state or nearby parts of VA, WV, and PA.</p>
<p>1) will the government keep it afloat “at any cost”
2) will it adapt to the needs of the tax payers
3) will market forces do what needs to be done</p>
<p>A public college is a government program by another name. If the public does not want it (record low enrollment), then the program should be allowed to have a peaceful end, or change to meet the needs of the public.</p>
<p>Or… they will adapt their acceptance standards next year, accept more students, and if they get the same yield… then they will have a full class again. They also may have an upturn in applications next year if in-state students realize that they might get accepted after all.</p>
<p>It sounds like a wonderful school. If I were in MD I would prefer my kids to go there over UMD. Perhaps they just aren’t publicizing it properly?</p>
<p>Maybe part of the problem is the name. It sounds like a Catholic women’s college.</p>
<p>The few students from my DD school that goes to St. Mary’s loves it. My DD would probably not consider it because of the location. She would prefer UMD-CP or Georgetown.</p>
<p>Also, I’m seeing about 10% of the seniors in DD school going to Montgomery College (CC) and transferring to MD or another school after two years. I think this is a very smart move for those who are undecided or ineligible for any FA.</p>
<p>My oldest applied and was accepted there. It is a wonderful school. But back then it was also a great deal. They got featured as one of the best deals and the next thing we knew the price had sky rocketed. The same has happened with a number of VA schools and other OOS schools that used to be great deals for OOSers as well as instaters. I remember when College of Charleston jacked up their OOS rates, because a friend of mine had a DD there and got hit pretty hard by that move as she had a set of twins and a singleton in college at the same time, and the reasonable cost of that school was a factor in it being one of the choices for her DD. I know that a lot of the VA schools that were heavy on the lists for OOSers are now going off the list because the cost is making it just not worthwhile. </p>
<p>It’s a precarious balance, trying to price ones school to get the most money and still get the most students. St Mary’s apparently did not do a good job this way.</p>
<p>St Mary’s may be an anomaly–perhaps as a public honors LAC its situational presses are unique. But demographics alone will be working against college enrollment in the near future, so, yes, I suspect such problems may well become a trend. How significant a trend–and how well schools adapt–remains to be seen.</p>
<p>This is just a personal observation, but I am seeing more kids looking for name recognition, and finding it in the flag ship school, mainly due to the sports programs of these schools. Someone in the picture helping the student with a college search has to be pretty danged pro active to find some of the hidden gems like St Mary’s. The reality is that the number of college aged kids going off to college from hs has gone down drastically in the last 5 years, and this is going to hit some schools very hard. I know a number of kids who would have been better off at St Mary’s over UMD College Park but you could never convince them or their parents. It’s the name recogntion factor. My college kid wouldn’t consider it for the same reason in part, and also because he liked the big sports scense school . He applied to UMd-CP, but St Mary’s did not even make the list. Nor will it for his brother.</p>
<p>Daughter also applied there and was accepted with great $. She chose a christian private college in PA instead. We loved St. Marys - I think she would have been very happy there. I believe the students looking at University of Maryland will probably not be interested in St. Mary’s - totally different atmosphere, for sure.</p>
<p>I thought it was in the W&Mary category too, Golfather. My son who applied to St Mary’s applied to W&M as well. Not to UVA, not to UMD, in fact, not to any state flagship rah rah type schools which my younger kids are attracted to.</p>
<p>I really liked St Mary’s and would have been glad for my son to have gone there. Might have been a better choice for him too But it’s $40K+ now for OOSers.</p>
<p>cpt, I agree with you. I also think there have been many of these small private colleges reaching to “high” frankly. I think some of these colleges just should have “stuck” to their mission of educating college ready kids at a reasonable price, but instead there was this constant need to try to get “better students” and raising prices in line with even more selective colleges. Doesn’t work in the long run. Hope College in Michigan is a great example of a small niche college that has been consistently growing, is priced reasonably and keeping tuition in check and accepts good students who don’t want a huge school atmosphere. At 3600 students or whatever they are at they have done very well for themselves in a tumultuous college environment the last decade and the grads are very well regarded by regional employers. I’ve been watching them for a number of years now and it’s quite impressive. I’m sure there are many others that I’m just not as aware of. I know my older son’s college is growing…there were around 1800 kids when he started and it close to 2500 now. Tuition increases were about 3% per year and the alumni give generously so finances are strong. Some of these smaller colleges are not on people’s radar screens and it’s a shame because they are solid little colleges both financially and in terms of educational value. </p>
<p>I told a good friend about St. Mary’s a few years ago - her D sailed competitively so I suggested Hobart William Smith, St. Mary’s and Lake Forest. The D ended up attending Lake Forest and will graduate next year. Her parents felt it was the most bang for buck…but St. Mary’s was a close second.</p>
<p>The tuition is out of whack for other in-state public Maryland colleges. Also, didn’t UMD College Park have a tuition freeze for a few years that recently was lifted? So maybe the in-staters just don’t see value here and would rather attend College Park or Towson, and someone has already posted they are losing OOStaters too as St. Mary’s is expensive for OOS.</p>
<p>If what the OP is alluding to by “And so it begins…” is a groundswell of previously-too-high-priced colleges that will drop their collective pants on tuition costs, or open their merit aid coffers wide…uhh, I don’t think it’s gonna happen like that.</p>
<p>I believe it’s going to be a much slower process, almost imperceptible at times. The top private rejects (because of grades or finances) have already, in the last 3-5 years, backfilled into state flagships, as has been noted above. That makes the higher number of state flagship rejects channel down into state non-flagships or state directionals. </p>
<p>Lost in this re-gerrymandering are the 2nd & 3rd tier privates, some of them very good colleges indeed, but also some of them way too high-priced for what the current market will bear. The creative ones in this group will pro-actively market themselves as desirable in a way they never had to before, pinpoint geographic low-hanging fruit for generous merit aid, and stay on their feet, maybe even improve their overall demographics.</p>
<p>The stagnant ones, however, are pretty much doomed because this thing ain’t turning around anytime soon. Value in education is the new reality, and it may take a good ten years to be able to see real, definitive change.</p>