<p>
[quote]
The fact that nova is supporting uva the most, and not getting in their qualified students, seems slightly unfair. People are calling for the best in state students to get in, not the best X many students from designated regions of the state, but the best in the whole state.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Perhaps Peabody Hall should do away with athletic and racial preferences, as well?</p>
<p>soccerguy,</p>
<p>Thanks for your reply. You correctly point out that Virginia tax payers support the University via their state tax payments and this entitles them to preferential treatment in terms of the numbers offerred admission. I concur with this reasoning, but consider for a moment how this equation has changed over the last decade and what is expected in the future. </p>
<p>Historically, the State legislature provided 25-30% or more of the U's budget. However, with the squeeze on governmental coffers, this contribution has shrunk to only 8.5% in the current year. It is projected by many that this % will continue to decline (perhaps even to zero). It is a fact that the decreased level of state funding is a major factor behind the recently launched $3 billion capital campaign as the University moves incresingly toward becoming a self-funded institution. </p>
<p>Thus, my questions are:
1. Given the current (and prospectively declining) level of funding by the Virginia legislature, is it not legitimate to question the IS/OOS ratio?<br>
2. Should Virginians, who contribute but 8.5% of the school's budget be entitled to 67% of the places???<br>
3. Is the 67% target really in the school's best interests or is this just to satisfy the local politicians who (understandably) want to safeguard the spots for their constituents?
4. What is the proper mix of IS/OOS today? in five years? in ten years?
5. How should tuition rates (now 3x larger for OOS students) be changed in the future?</p>
<p>I am a native Virginian, now living out of state, who cares deeply about the University and where it is headed. My family has multi-generational ties to the University, has donated significant sums to the University for many years and has several members currently attending with more expected to apply over the next few years. I am fearful that the value of the brand and the diploma is being devalued by political considerations that cause the University to underachieve relative to its potential and its own stated goals. The current UVA administration states that its goal is to achieve a Top 15 ranking in the major college rankings that come out annually. To gain such status, the University will need to attract the best and brightest students and faculty. It is my view that the University has a large number of highly qualified OOS applicants who can add tremendously to the University (both academically, experientially, and financially) and potentially to the Old Dominion as well on a longer-term basis. </p>
<p>To some extent here on CC, I feel like a lone wolf crying out in the wilderness on this topic and I increasingly run the risk of being a one-note Johnny with my posts, but I do believe that upgrading the academic quality of the University's student body is essential if the U hopes to retain and improve its standing among America's top schools. I hope that others will also weigh in and that a robust and legitimate debate will evolve on this topic....</p>
<p>The 8.5% number is really not accurate as it includes the totally independent revenues of the hospitals which have little to do with the operation of the University. Many state schools operate the hospitals as a completey independent entitiy outside the school's budget. Also research funding which is mostly from Federal funds has increased substantially but also only plays a marginal role in the educational end of the school. If you pull those out of the budget and look only at the academic operations, state funding has a much larger share of the costs.</p>
<p>14.5%</a> of the academic division's budget comes from the state. </p>
<p>The</a> academic division includes graduate programs.</p>
<p>The</a> thread I linked to is no longer active and it was actually about Illinois, but the Virginia discussion on it was interesting. Nice to see you again, dajada!</p>
<p>According to an article that I found on the UVA web, </p>
<p><a href="http://www.virginia.edu/insideuva/bov.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.virginia.edu/insideuva/bov.html</a></p>
<p>the overall budget for the University is $1.97 billion, made up of:
$1.07 billion (54%) is dedicated to the Academic Division
$866 million (44%) to the Hospital
$30 million (2%) to UVA-Wise. </p>
<p>The revenue sources for the University (assuming that there are no deficits or surpluses in any area) are:
$866 million (44%) Health System Patient Revenue
$305 million (15.5%) Tuition & Fees (approximately $180 million is undergrad tuition and fees, of which roughly $64 million comes from IS students and $116 million comes from OOS students)
$277 million (14.1%) Grants & Contracts
$167.5 million (8.5%) State taxpayers
$154 million (7.8%) Endowment income & gifts (thank God for UVIMCO's terrific investment performance)
$148 million (7.5%) Auxiliary income
$49 million (2.5%) Other sources (federal sources??)</p>
<p>A couple of points
1. Barrons is correct that the 8.5% contribution by state taxpayers is calculated off of the entire University budget (hospital included). This is the baseline that has been used historically for evaluating the state's contribution. However, if you look at the numbers just for the Academic Division, the state contribution is 14.1% ($151mm/$1.07bn). It is not clear how much of this goes to undergraduate education as these numbers are commingled with the financial information for all of the University's colleges except for the Medical School.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>For undergraduate education, OOS students contribute almost twice as much in annual tuition & fees while having only half as many students.</p></li>
<li><p>As endowment income becomes an increasingly vital part of the U's operating budget, should any additional consideration be given to the geographic source of those funds? I have never seen any information that discloses the proportion of the endowment that has been created by OOS alumni. Conceivably this number is quite high as many major givers, eg, Paul Tudor Jones, live in NY or elsewhere outside the state of Virginia. </p></li>
<li><p>Beyond the finances, can the University realistically achieve its academic and Top 15 ranking goals with a student population that is drawn 2/3 from the state of Virginia?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The "profit" from OOS students is what helps balance the books at many of the top state schools including Michigan, Wisconsin, and Virginia. The OOS students now subsidize the instate and are critical to the overall finances. Some schools will readily admit this and others try to talk around it.</p>
<p>Just to let you know dajada07, I agree with you. I think UVa should increase OOS enrollment and also accept the best instate students regardless of geography. UVas law school provides a good model. The law school enrolls approximately 40% of its students from Virginia and is consistently ranked among the nations top ten law schools. In fact, the law school was third in the number of US Supreme Court clerks this year, behind Yale and Harvard. </p>
<p>I dont believe the law school could maintain its ranking if the state required residents to comprise two-thirds of its enrollment. The law school, however, does not take any funding from the state and charges its students higher tuition to compensate for the lack of state funding. I wish the undergraduate school could get the same deal.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the state takes a myopic view of UVa, instead of seeing the University as a worthwhile investment with tremendous potential to positively impact the states economy, it looks at the University as a funding problem. The state should also see out-of-state students as an asset as these students not only pay more in tuition, but they are also likely to stay in Virginia upon graduation and contribute to the states economy for years to come.</p>
<p>Or, UVA could maintain the 2/3 IS ratio (hello, it is a state school, not a private school...kids depend on state schools to be able to go somewhere that is financially feasble to them...if you start letting in 50/50 IS/OOS, then the IS kids have no where to go...thats why you pay taxes, so that you can have a college to go to with a cheaper price tag) and stop focusing on IS geography, because there are a ton of kids from NoVa and other areas that have higher scores/GPAs</p>
<p>OR</p>
<p>everyone could leave UVA alone, accept that this is the way they do things (just like you have to accept the things the President does), and try to understand that they are trying to find a middle ground, and feel priviledged to know about such a fine institution</p>
<p>"The state should also see out-of-state students as an asset as these students not only pay more in tuition, but they are also likely to stay in Virginia upon graduation and contribute to the state’s economy for years to come."
super.nova - thats why theres taxes...if you look at the amount of money brought in by taxes, you can cleary see that IS tuition + taxes = far greater than the money brought in by OOS kids...so bringing in more OOS kids wont really make much difference
also, i dont know if you've noticed this, but VA cannot plan for the future to save its life...look at the roads issue: everytime they FINALLY finish a project, already, it cant hold the needed capacity (ever taken the woodrow wilson bridge? even by the time they finish the current bridge project in 2011, i will bet you a million bucks that it wont be enough)...virginia is in a "how do we get money now??" mode, and they could care less about how many people UVA "could" bring into the state, but instead, need definent revenue sources</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I would like you to consider that just like you, kids born in different parts of VA are just like you, in that their parents have jobs and lives where they live as well. There a kids in schools that don't have the budget to offer all the AP classes, they don't have great science labs, etc, but these kids do the best with what they have. It certainly doesn't make them less intelligent if they haven't had the opportunities that you may have had in your education. </p>
<p>Do you not give UVA admissions any credit into determining who should be admitted based on much more than SATs and GPAs? If it was simply based on stats, a computer program could easily preform the function of the admissions department at a fraction of the cost. </p>
<p>I do wish you the best of luck in your future, and keep working hard!</p>
<p>
[quote]
if you start letting in 50/50 IS/OOS, then the IS kids have no where to go...thats why you pay taxes, so that you can have a college to go to with a cheaper price tag
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Shoebox--</p>
<p>I understand your argument. But, the state has other good schools for instate students to attend (they will have somewhere to go). Why not let one or two of the state's universities loose to become all that they can be? Why not allow UVa to bring the best and brightest students and professors that it can find to Charlottesville and see what happens? Maybe UVa could have the same impact on Charlottesville that Stanford has had on the Silicone Valley.</p>
<p>I too wish you the best of luck in transferring to UVa.</p>
<p>dajada:</p>
<p>Can UVA reach top 15 without allowing more OOS students in? Yes, if you're talking about the US News rankings. Student body quality and admissions rate accounts for only 15% of that ranking. With money, UVA can improve its faculty, build more classroom space and decrease class size, etc. Those are larger factors in the calculation.</p>
<p>For you NOVA and Fairfax County complainers:</p>
<p>I just have to laugh. I mean ... really. Here you have the best equipped and best funded high schools in the state, with stunning class options, and legion AP/IB and honors courses, and you want EVEN MORE!!!! I gotta admit, THAT's chutzpah!!!</p>
<p>I no longer live in Virginia, but I visited my Southside county in the past year. I have an old friend who works in the school district. He told me that 70% of the kids in one high school are considered "at risk." They can't find a physics teacher who will move there for the money they can afford to pay. The chemistry labs in both high schools have only two hoods, and those are both made of wood and breakable glass and are from the 1950s era. The average class size in elementary school is the same as when I was a kid ... around 37 kids per teacher. </p>
<p>And here you want ... MORE! MORE FOR ME!!!! GIVE ME MORE ADVANTAGES!!!!</p>
<p>I see you guys (or gals as the case may be) running a race in which you're given 21-speed racing bicycles and other kids are forced to run with 20 lb. balls attached by chains to their ankles. And when you get to the finish line, you look back on those kids in shackles and say, "Look Mommy and Daddy! I WON!!! Look at me!!! Look at me!!!</p>
<p>
[quote]
And here you want ... MORE! MORE FOR ME!!!! GIVE ME MORE ADVANTAGES!!!!</p>
<p>I see you guys (or gals as the case may be) running a race in which you're given 21-speed racing bicycles and other kids are forced to run with 20 lb. balls attached by chains to their ankles. And when you get to the finish line, you look back on those kids in shackles and say, "Look Mommy and Daddy! I WON!!! Look at me!!! Look at me!!!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Tarhunt—</p>
<p>That’s one bitter way of looking at the big picture, another way might be that Northern Virginia high school students are working very, very hard in a much more competitive environment and are probably much better prepared for college when they get there. Competing in a school where 70% of the students are at risk is quite different than competing at most Northern Virginia high Schools. The students in both regions are not in control of their circumstances, however, you should not minimize the efforts of those who work very hard and give up so much in an attempt to become competitive college applicants. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Area Students Lead Country in AP, IB Tests Taken
College-Level Exams Increase</p>
<p>By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 7, 2006; A01</p>
<p>Arlington County high school senior Phyllis Petronello called the workload of her college-level program "insane." But the region's students are plunging into such academic madness at a greater rate than students anywhere in the country, a Washington Post survey has found.</p>
<p>The Post's annual survey of public high schools in the District and 21 area cities and counties found that 110,244 college-level tests were given in the spring, a 69 percent increase since 2002.</p>
<p>The survey also showed that 70 percent of Washington area high schools reached a benchmark known as the Post Challenge Index: They give as many or more college-level tests each year as they have graduating seniors. Only about 5 percent of high schools nationwide reach that target. Most of the tests are Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate examinations.</p>
<p>The Post survey, coupled with national data collected this year for Newsweek magazine's "America's Best High Schools" list, shows that the Washington region has a higher concentration of schools than any other U.S. metropolitan area that meets the Challenge Index benchmark.</p>
<p>Fueling the surge in the Washington area, especially in Northern Virginia, is a move by many schools to pay the fees for all AP and IB students to take the tests.</p>
<p>"I don't know of any area of the country in which the concentration of AP exam-taking is so high, or where the concentration of districts paying for the AP on behalf of their students is so great," said Trevor Packer, executive director of the AP program for the College Board.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>super.nova</p>
<p>Oh!! Oh my GOODNESS!!!! You're just KILLIN' me!!! Whoo! Man!!! Gotta stop laughing or my ribs will never recover. Oh man. </p>
<p>Whew.</p>
<p>That's better.</p>
<p>You see being in Fairfax County as a burden, right? Not as a privilege? OK. Whatever. </p>
<p>So, if I'm an admissions officer at UVA, this is the way I'm supposed to look at things, right?</p>
<p>AD OFF #1: I have this kid from Soutwest Virginia who took every tough course available to him, worked two jobs to support his disabled and single mother, got As and Bs, and has SATI scores of 1280. </p>
<p>AD OFF #2: How's the verbal score?</p>
<p>AD OFF #1: 610</p>
<p>AD OFF #2: That's pretty low.</p>
<p>AD OFF #1: Yeah, but he has a single parent who only got as far as the fourth grade. He didn't grow up in a vocabulary-rich environment. And, frankly, I know the school system. 610 is really, really high for them.</p>
<p>AD OFF #2: I see a lot of Bs on this transcript.</p>
<p>AD OFF #1: Well, the kid worked one job from 4 to 8, then a night guard job from 9 to 2 a.m.</p>
<p>AD OFF #2: Don't see many ECs.</p>
<p>AD OFF #1: He worked 9 hours a day. When would he have time?</p>
<p>AD OFF #2: I see your point, but look at this kid from FCPS by the name of super.nova. He has a SATI score of 1340, and all As and Bs, but he took a lot of AP courses.</p>
<p>AD OFF #1: ECs?</p>
<p>AD OFF #2: Equestrian and trips abroad every summer.</p>
<p>AD OFF #1: Well, I sure like those horseback riders and those kids who've broadened themselves by going overseas.</p>
<p>AD OFF #2: Me too.</p>
<p>AD OFF #1: (slaps his head) What was I thinking? How could I possibly have been thinking of admitting this kid from the southwest? How could I POSSIBLY have forgotten the first rule of college admissions?</p>
<p>AD OFF #2: Yep. If they didn't pick the right parents, we don't want 'em!</p>
<p>AD OFF #1: Thanks for keeping me from making a terrible, terrible mistake.</p>
<p>AD OFF #2: Hey, what are friends for?</p>
<p>Ahh, gotta love a Southern Virginian's clueless stereotyping of the North.</p>
<p>Tarhunt </p>
<p>I personally do not believe that the college admissions office is the proper place to address all of the inequities in life. Honestly, the admissions personnel cannot solve the problems relating to the disparity in K-12 education by admitting under-qualified students. In fact, when they do admit such students, there is a risk that they are setting them up for failure, as they may become discouraged and drop out. On the other hand, those students may perform much better at a less competitive university. I am a proponent of letting UVa choose the most competitive class possible, although, I am the first to admit that that will probably never happen.</p>
<p>Take care and try to contain your bitterness. </p>
<p>You were way low on my SAT score by the way.</p>
<p>Tar - im sorry, but my first reaction to that post was "you idiot"...and i almost resisted the urge to say that...but i didnt...oops</p>
<p>you think kids in NoVa don't work? don't have ailing parents? Maybe you should take a trip there....
I worked, 15 hours a week, in addition to two season of varsity sports, two clubs (both with leadership posistions), tutored for math honor society once a week, math club meetings once a week, tutored a neighbor 2 hours each monday, tutored elem. school 2.5 hours each saturday morning, AND still did homework for 5 APs...i tried to be involved in my family every once in awhile too...
now, you're saying that because the poor kid's mother couldnt speak well, HE was bad at it to? thats like saying because my dad is a flaming jerk half the time is a good enough excuse for me to be the same way (my mom uses that phrase on me all the time hahah)? should i write in my essays "well im a good kid even though my dad is a jerk sometimes" and they should admit me? furthermore, my parents didnt go to college, and while they arnt non-intelligent, they dont have the same caliber of education im recieving, yet im still in a top-ranked college
also, there were 30-35 students in my elementary school classes too...my brother who just got out of 6th grade had 31..whats your point? its elem. school...however, my high school AP Calc class had 32 students in it and the other class had 31 because they didnt have enough teachers to move around sched. to make another class...can you even begin to imagine how tough that is on the students and the teachers?
so don't try to say we have an easy life...we have 500+ kids in our class that we're competeing against to become that top 10% that top schools crave...we have to have ridiculous after-school lives to give ourseleves the extra edge over the 100-200 other 3.7s...</p>
<p>on another note, my mom survived Inflammatory Breast Cancer...it was the worst year of my life, period, and it has seriously messed me up since because whenever something goes wrong with her, that year flashes through my mind, in addition to the fact 4 people with it she's met have died...what makes it even better is the survival rate hovers around 25-30% right now (which is lower than UVAs admission rate to put it into context), and if it relapses, that chance is cut in half...and if you want to be a real prick and try to battle me over this one, google it (i'll even spell it out for you: I-n-f-l-a-m-a-t-o-r-y B-r-e-a-s-t C-a-n-c-e-r, or IBC)...so dont sit here and blame kid's failures on parent's weaknesses/illnesses</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
are probably much better prepared for college when they get there
[/QUOTE]
I'm disappointed by a comment like this. Are some Northern Virginians completely unaware of the powerhouse schools in other parts of the state? When students go to summer programs and academic competitions, do they not see students from other regions?</p>
<p>Fairfax County Public Schools are wonderful, but I think there are plenty of strong schools in other areas. For years when I was at a highly selective school in Boston, I looked forward to my Virginia trip because there were great kids at every single stop I made. I won't name my two favorite schools ;), but they were in Lynchburg and Richmond.</p>
<p>I think the issue shouldn't be so much NoVA vs the rest of VA but IS vs OOS. </p>
<p>I believe that the OOS percentage should decrease. UNC-Chapel Hill is restricted to <18% OOS yet its rankings are comporable to UVa's. Southern Virginians have paid their Virginia State taxes just like the Arlington and FFX folks. OOSers have not. They do not have as much investment in the Commonwealth as do we Virginians.</p>
<p><em>gasp</em> My alma mater isn't one of your faves, Dean J? :( Oh well, us Jefferson kids seem to do alright when it comes to UVA admissions anyways. ;)</p>