They’re well funded - and I think relatively well known - the old Kentucky Basketball coach Tubby Smith is an alum.
Their President is very aggressive - they’ve spent billions - so they’re definitely a real presence vs. a fly by night.
Just their very “chasing consumer ads” - they’re not the ones you see at halftime of a football game talking about a school…so yeah a whole different thing.
They call themselves the premier life skills university.
I gather that they cater to rich kids - but could be wrong. They don’t have a common data set that I could find.
We have schools advertising all the time around here. Many are the online schools (Governor’s, SNHU,) but there are others too like Montana State with a special program for Native
Americans in medical fields, Western Univ.
I do think it is very regional, just like we get ads to ‘Explore Nebraska’, ‘Visit NM’, ‘Tour Arkansas’ but rarely any ads for Ohio, Georgia, or even Florida.
A friend’s son went to High Point. Loved every minute of it. He is an athlete, so was a BMOC. He did have a lot of transfer offers but he stuck with HPU. Because of covid, he got an extra year for free.
I asked his little brother (only a sophomore) if he was going to go to HPU but he said no. He’s even a better player than his older brother, but has a lot of learning issues so his educational needs are different (and I think he’s hoping for a championship team).
My kids have gotten a ton of promotional materials from HPU. I wouldn’t think it is regional, too much, because we live in Massachusetts. I assumed perhaps they were getting them because they marked if they were interested in Christian organizations for their activities.
Their marketing material was misdirected at my kids though. They think the university looks creepy. They find the tagline “premiere life skills University“ silly, they want to know why they would pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to learn life skills (which they assume means things like doing your own laundry, taking care of your car, managing your finances). And, although our family takes our faith very seriously, they found the “God, country, family” or whatever it is too echoing of Christian Nationalism for their tastes.
We are in South Florida and get lots of marketing material from HPU for my D23 we got none for my S21.
Everything is pushing early Decision which we are not interested in.
We visited High Point last year. I think for a particular kind of student, it could be a great place. There’s a lot of hand-holding and emphasis on life skills. Academically, it comes across as a little mediocre. The campus is ridiculous and has something like 6 pools, a movie theater, and an ice skating rink. There’s a fine dining restaurant where students have to call (on the phone!) to make reservations and dress up. Internships, interview skills, and study abroad were all really emphasized. I would think that some kids would really benefit from this kind of environment.
Ultimately, what turned me off the most was the big push for Early Decision. There are all kind of benefits that ED students get, choosing classes and housing first etc. It feels to me like they create a have/have not situation where the rich kids get the best of everything and anyone needing scholarships or aid are second class citizens.
Maybe they are spending all their money on big ads and not all the individual post cards?
I thought the OP was talking about TV ads or things like the United Airlines ad. Schools that have D1 football or basketball get advertising when their teams play (there is often a 2-3 minute video about how academic the school is).
Ok, but Baylor is Baptist, BYU is LDS, Yeshiva is Jewish, and Liberty is evangelical of some sort. My point is only that private colleges are allowed to be religious.
They are advertising on CNBC - like every 20 minutes - which is where I was “surprised” as I know they are not an SNHU type school (online school).
But I know the president is high profile, they get high profile execs in residence (one my company hired as a speaker) and they just got a law school dean who is high profile (and controversial).
Their student profile isn’t bad. It’s normal. I’ve linked below.
US News ranks them #1 in Regional Colleges South - as a point of reference, Flagler is #2, and Florida Polytechnic (this is not Florida Tech) is #3.
US News says their “also applied” to is Elon (makes sense), JMU, UNC and U of SC.
They compete in the Big South - so Radford, Longwood, NC A&T, Hampton, Winthrop, UNC Asheville, etc.
I guess I’m perplexed by them…we did a drive through as we were nearby although my daughter had no interest other than knowing it was ‘nice’.
My DS is getting a lot more mail from schools than my DD did last year - and she is the better student. My DH works for a state university and he says that the upcoming Freshman cohort is smaller than previous years with a trend to decrease for several years. The school he works for is increasing mailings 5x over previous years.