Liberty is the Evangelical Christian school founded by a popular televangelist – it’s the go-to school for many Evangelical families. I believe the regular full-time student population is around 15,000.
NYU and UCLA get so many applications because they are famously associated with New York and LA (and NYU. When they survey kids where they would most like to go to school – as opposed to where they consider the best or most elite – those two are always top because of that.
There are many factors there, but to name a few:
Other schools riding the wave above include American, GWU, USC, Emory, and to some extent even Emerson.
Liberty is an outlier for other reasons centering around its religious affiliation and political leaning.
For international applicants a major city (with direct international flights) is a major advantage. These are 18 year olds coming from half-way across the globe and complicated connections / shuttles etc. are concerning to the parents. I know of someone from middle-east who preferred NYU to UMich (Ann Arbor) entirely for this reason. Also, the campus experience that a place like UM offers isn’t something off-shore families can appreciate.
@opantha33m – I still think that kids from wealthy families look down upon going to public schools … especially when schools in NY, NJ, and Mass. aren’t that highly ranked
@citivas I think it is very dismissive to say imply “the only reason this or that school is so popular is because of the city it is in”. Um, location and environment can be integral parts to the educational experience. Los Angeles and NYC are two of the most vibrant and influential cities in the world, and UCLA and NYU are the flagship universities of those two cities.
NYU and UCLA are both undeniably popular, world class institutions. Period. No further explanations necessary.
@PengsPhils
Yes, that’s exactly why we looked at Northeastern…right in Boston! I just could not get him interested in going to school in the middle of nowhere. Once there the Co-op program and students really appealed to him so he applied.
Georgetown was another school that appealed to him. Again in a city.
@KTJordan78 LOL. I wasn’t being dismissive of them and I certainly didn’t say or imply it’s the only reason. I am an alum of UCLA, both undergrad and grad. And NYU is probably the second school I have the most connection with after UCLA for various reasons. And their reputations and rankings speak for themselves. My point was just to point out they are always top of the “student interest” polls and it’s not a coincidence that this is because they are in LA and NY – our two biggest cities that each attract 13MM+ people to their metro areas. They are magnets for interest in urban living for each coast. Of course they are popular because they are great schools, but location explains why in interest polls they place even above the Ivies, or why UCLA attracts more applicants than Berkeley, etc.
Liberty has big online presence.
Liberty also has biology/molecular biology department, which I found it to be kind of odd, as Jerry Falwell didn’t really believe the world is more than 6,000 years old?!
Since religious leanings in most cases limit the number of applications a school can drum up, i havent seen Georgetown mentioned in a discussion like that before. Is Georgetown hindered (probably not the right word) in the same way fordham and boston college are?
The spreadsheet I have is 3 or 4 years old. Drexel had around 50k applications. Basically they removed essays, recommendations and fees making their application easy and free to submit.
@Greymeer At that time, Drexel had a yield in the single digits. They must have made some type of change between fall 2014 (47k apps, 76% admit, 8% yield) and fall 2015 (28k apps, 74% admit, 12% yield)
Back in 2013, I started filling out an application for a student on Drexel’s website, and then the student changed his mind. No application fee was necessary then. Letters of rec were not submitted, and the transcript was only self-reported. ACT scores had been previously sent in by that student. The student did not sign off on this submission and it was never formally sent in – it was merely stored on his account. He did no essay.
To his surprise, the student was accepted with a 15k scholarship for a CS major. So perhaps that explains why they had so many applicants? Perhaps a lot of people who merely opened an account were considered applicants?
@psycholing Out of curiosity why were you filling out the application for the student? Is that a thing – people helping do student’s applications? I was aware in general that there were consultants to help advise on applications but I (naively perhaps) assumed that was just doing things like suggesting test taking strategies and helping with suggestions on essay topics or proof reading them or suggesting where good places to apply were, etc.
Here’s the increase in applications for some schools being discussed from this year to last:
Georgetown: 1500ish (6.7% increase)
BC: 2500ish (8.8% increase)
BU: 3500ish (6% increase)
Northeastern: 8000ish (14% increase)
USC: 8000ish (13.4% increase)
NYU: 8000ish (11.6% increase)
While I can’t confirm Fordham, and the school sizes are larger for the non-religiously affiliated, even the percentage increases are generally lower too. I wouldn’t be surprised if the affiliation was a factor. BU is the only one of the four I found data for that didn’t fit the hypothesis for this particular cycle.
Some others:
Tulane: 3000ish (9% increase)
Georgia Tech 4000ish (13.1% increase)
Emory: 4500ish (18.1% increase)
UChicago: 5000ish (15.5% increase)
I’m getting these from a google doc with 50 or so schools that I can’t link here but I’d be happy to add in any other schools per request. Long story short, compared with peer schools in cities or near cities, the increases do appear to be lower.
@citivas I believe @psycoling is taking about the gunk work of the application, not essays or any section that is not simply listing information. While students doing these probably is best, there can be confusing parts that can be helpful to have done or reviewed by an adult. I also assumed they were a parent not a counselor, though perhaps wrongly.
@citivas Yes @pengphils is correct it was just the informational items that I filled out. Kiddo had autism/extreme ADHD and was reluctant to initiate these types of “boring” detail oriented things, and so I started him off by doing the rote part. He was supposed to fill in the more substantive part such as extra curriculars, etc., but then he never did.
Why bother with all these expensive thick mailings to increase applications when all the colleges have to do is drop the supplemental essay requirements. Just one click on the Common App, and bam, submitted with no extra efforts (minus the fee of course). I wouldn’t put it past schools to do this to help their numbers you know (I’m looking at you UChicago).
Everyone says that like it’s a magic bullet, but two things are at play there:
I didn’t think folks paid any attention to the mailings either…that is until I started to read a bunch of posts here indicating that such mailings motivated dear Johnny to apply. As for whether the supplemental apps are actually read…ah, given the 6-8 minutes spent per application, not sure that’s capable.
@PengsPhils very interesting. USC?
Not only that, but offer EA, EDI and ED II in addition to RD. Why pretty soon, you won’t need RD, UC!