Concerning first semester abroad: Do the stats of those students count in to the freshmen class? I thought those students were registered as full time freshmen and not as transfers. I have no ties to Northeastern but I always thought that the reason they do this is the massive coop system they run so they have a lot of movement and empty seats spring time. I was viewing this tactic more as maximizing capacity than gaming the system.
Answering my own question
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/3/
@hanna they actually have 3.6 in the TTP guide, but they tell engineering TTP applicants 3.8 at their meetings in the summer, so as mentioned, it can differ by school. But 3.6 is the lower threshold they put in print.
WOW – so the 3.8 is expected of first-semester freshmen taking an engineering core?
That kind of performance is pretty rare, even for a well-prepared kid at community college. And remember that USC is asking this of kids whose HS credentials didn’t make the cut. This has to be primarily a way to gently reject legacies or other special groups, not a way to admit sophomores.
@Hanna, USC does take in a ton of transfers, though.
They may just want to make sure that the TPP transfers meet the same standards as the regular transfers.
The Northeastern NUIn program does not harm other colleges’ retention and graduation rates which the Cornell guaranteed transfer option does harm. Also, I assume these Cornell transfers’ stats were not quite up to the stats that Cornell submits to USNews.
However, 3.8 is probably the ballpark of what is needed for a transfer student to get into an engineering major at UCLA or UCB, which USC probably think of as peer competition, even though all three schools admit substantial numbers of transfer students.
No. They are not enrolled. They are considered spring admits; therefore, their scores are not counted in the entering fall class, which is what counts for the rankings.
Other programs that I know of:
-University of Maryland, College Park – Freshman Connect
-Middlebury – Febs
I’d love to get a list going.
The list might be long. I know UMass Amherst offers Spring admission to wait list students and that Colby College has first semester abroad program. There was a long thread about the Colby program just few weeks ago.
Interesting that Northeastern gets a lot of grief here on CC for its NUIn program (and that Boston Magazine article that everyone has read) yet is seems that a lot of colleges have a variation on that type of alternative admission option, including some very prestigious schools e.g. Cornell.
Notre Dame has the Gateway program, where 30-40 (?) kids do their freshman year at Holy Cross across the street before transferring. This approach is a little different than the others, because all the kids are starting at the same school, taking core classes together, they get to take one class at Notre Dame as freshmen, and they can participate in Notre Dame clubs etc as freshman. So they come in as sophomores very comfortable with the campus, and with a group of friends.
^^^But their stats do not show in ND’s freshman stats.
@brantly I’m not sure that is true about Middlebury. I’m not saying you are wrong (because I don’t know), but I believe the Febs are considered, for statistical purposes, part of the freshman class. Even more perplexing would be the admit rate for transfer applicants, if Febs were considered transfers. From what I understand, the transfer acceptance rate at Midd is often in the single digits.
^^the rules for the Common Data Set are clear: those enrolled students as of Sept/Oct…and since the Febs are not enrolled yet, their data is excluded. But unlikely that they are considered Transfers.
@urbanslaughter They are not transfers. They are February admits. Their scores are not counted as part of the freshman class. Only students enrolled in the fall are counted in the statistics.
Just for comparison’s sake, guaranteed transfers are a pretty big phenomenon in the law school admissions world, too. This is transparently understood as a way to admit students whose LSAT scores won’t look good for the USNews rankings.