<p>I met someone at an accepted-student day at another college whose daughter was offered spring admission at the University of Rochester. My daughter was offered spring admission at SUNY Binghamton plus a place on the waiting list for fall, but within 2 weeks she was offered fall admission. No study abroad involved.</p>
<p>Pretty sure even less selective schools are doing this too. I think Michigan State has the largest freshman class of all time, yet I know kids that were told to go to a CC this fall and start in January. It’s a con as far as I’m concerned. The reported numbers are an attempt to con donors, the public, potential applicants that the student body is more intellectual than it really is. The less academically inclined students who get backdoored are still going to be in your classes for 3.5-5.5 years, they’re going to contribute to the reputation, etc. US News need to stop allowing this.</p>
<p>Well if that’s an issue, then all the public flagships with agreements to accept all students from feeder CCs with a certain gpa are doing it too…you have to be with those kids for at least two years also.</p>
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<p>Co-op income is exempt. <a href=“Why College Co-Op Programs Totally Rock”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/troyonink/2012/02/27/why-college-co-op-programs-totally-rock/</a></p>
<p>As much as it helps schools “rankings” to push lower scoring students into the spring term, I think for most schools it’s not about rankings but about tuition revenue. It’s the same reason for summer admits, to get more use out of available faculties (over the summer) and generate revenue. </p>
<p>Maize, are you really going to pick a college based on US News?</p>
<p>This is one more reason why all of these rankings need to be taken with a huge grain of salt. Colleges are finding ways to highlight the academically talented kids on campus and to downplay the ones who are below the bar. yawn.</p>
<p>SUNY Geneseo has been doing this for years…offering guaranteed Spring admission so they don’t have to count their test scores. </p>
<p>Agree with @blossom. If there is a system that is gameable and will bring benefits, it will be gamed. Welcome to the real world. Everyone is self-interested. That’s something that you should keep in mind when you look at any ranking or system or whatever.</p>
<p>BTW, all big publics (including premier flagships like UMich, Cal, UVa, UCLA, UT-Austin, UNC, etc.) take in a ton of CC and other transfers. As do Cornell & USC. A big percentage of Columbia’s undergrads are in their School of General Studies (which has a much higher acceptance rate), meant for non-trads, who still get to take the same classes as Columbia College and Columbia Engineering students. Harvard has its Extension School (different degree and usually mostly different classes, but people can get a Harvard University bachelors there). UPenn has LPS. Duke, WashU, Northwestern, and various other prestigious universities have similar programs.</p>
<p>I hope your sensibilities aren’t too shocked, @maize2018.</p>
<p>Finally, that’s why I prefer to look at outcomes-based rankings (I look at placement in to elite professional schools, “American leaders” produced, PhDs, and prestigious student awards won).</p>
<p>Well, NEU does seem to have improved dramatically in the years since it began its meteoric rise in the rankings. Their intentions might’ve been a bit cutthroat, but in the end there were newer facilities, better faculty and an enhanced sense of community, all of which I’m sure contributed to its shift from a commuter college to a well-regarded national university. </p>
<p>So good for them, I say. I graduated from HS this year and I’ve always thought of NEU as a school ranked solidly in the mid 50s to 60s. They seem to have come a long way and should be commended for it.</p>
<p>Wow. I didn’t realize the number of schools that were pushing “lower stats” kids to a spring start. Interesting how it’s so broadly based.</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan “Finally, that’s why I prefer to look at outcomes-based rankings (I look at placement in to elite professional schools, “American leaders” produced, PhDs, and prestigious student awards won).”</p>
<p>I suspect US News top 18 or so, the top 10 or so super selective LAS, and perhaps Berkeley and Rochester are your top 30?</p>
<p>IMO, us news puts far too much weight on students and not nearly enough weight on faculty.</p>
<p>I think that recruiting a bunch of Nobel laureate (and winners of other prestigious awards, publishers of multiple books, etc.) professors is a far better improver of educational quality than increasing the quality of the learners.</p>
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<p>Assuming you are not being facetious, what schools could afford to do this? Why the superendowed elite schools of course. Can’t let any upstarts get ahead! </p>
<p>@maize2018 :</p>
<p>Close. You could say that the top 18 research universities in USN minus WashU & Vandy (who’s quite unimpressive in outcomes-based rankings) but with Cal added + the top 8 LACs minus Carleton but with Wesleyan, Haverford, Barnard, and Oberlin added are the 28 schools that are most like the Ivies in outcomes.</p>
<p>Take a look here:
<a href=“Ivy-equivalents - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1682986-ivy-equivalents.html</a></p>
<p>There are many different reasons that students may be offered spring admissions, some of which have nothing to do with stats. It has to do with filling the universities’ agenda and allocation of resources. Maybe they want to achieve more balance in impacted departments or majors; maybe some students make the fall cut because they are offering what a given university needs to round out an athletic team or they help the university achieve greater geographic diversity or improve gender balance – and some students get deferred to the spring because the university just has more well-qualified applicants than they have room for. So they make a choice and offer spring admission to some students. </p>
<p>Yes, NEU says it was pushing some lower stat students to the spring, but that doesn’t mean that’s the rationale between other schools’ practices-- or even that it the sole criteria being applied at NEU. </p>
<p>@prezbucky - the nobel laureate professors aren’t necessarily good teachers. In fact, for many, the last thing they want to do is to be in a room full of undergrads . Having those luminaries on the faculty will help prop up the school’s rep, bring in research dollars, and be great news for graduate students in their departments – but it doesn’t do much to enhance the quality of the undergrad program.</p>
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<p>Or load balancing. If everyone starts in the fall, then the fall semester will be more heavily enrolled than the spring semester, since some students will graduate a semester early or late (resulting in one more fall semester than spring semester), and some of the students who drop out will do so after completing one more fall semester than spring semester. Enrolling the school to capacity in the fall semester means unused wasted capacity in the spring; enrolling the school to capacity in the spring semester means overflowing in the fall semester. Having some students start in the spring reduces the enrollment disparity. Gaming the USNWR ranking system is probably a convenient side effect, rather than the primary motivation.</p>
<p>Note that some schools have other means of load balancing. For example, consider Dartmouth’s D-Plan in this context.</p>
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<p>Actually, practices vary quite widely on this. In 2013, Michigan enrolled 6,176 freshmen and 873 transfers, so transfers represented 12.4% of newly enrolled undergraduates. That same year, UVA enrolled 3,516 freshmen and 671 transfers, so transfers represented 16.0% of newly enrolled undergraduates. UC Berkeley enrolled 4,706 freshmen and 2,241 transfers, so transfers represented 32.3% of newly enrolled undergraduates. That’s a pretty stark difference.</p>
<p>On the private side, Cornell enrolled 3,223 freshmen and 542 transfers, so transfers represented 14.4% of newly enrolled undergraduates. Northeastern enrolled 2,891 freshmen and 656 transfers, so transfers represented 19.1% of newly enrolled undergraduates. In contrast, Yale enrolled only 26 transfers and 1,359 freshmen, so transfers represented only 1.9% of newly enrolled undergraduates.</p>
<p>I have no problem whatsoever with admitting transfer students. Students who do well in their first couple of years at a CC or another college and want to upgrade to a better school or to one that better matches their needs and aspirations should have the opportunity to do so. (I’d actually fault the Ivies and other elite privates for foreclosing those kinds of opportunities). And there’s much to be admired in California’s system of allowing students to save money by doing two years at a CC with the prospect of being admitted to a UC if they do well. But the widely varying percentages of transfers on both the public side and the private side suggest the inanity of US News’ use of Fall semester enrolled freshman SAT/ACT scores as a metric of school strength. You’re just comparing apples to oranges.</p>
<p>Nor do I think this means the student body strength of schools with high percentages of transfers should be automatically discounted. I suspect, though I can’t prove it, that academic success in the first two years of college, even at a weaker institution, is a better predictor of academic success in the final two years of college than are standardized tests taken in HS. </p>
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<p>Not surprising, since the policy target is to have 60% upper division and 40% lower division students in the California public universities. For a campus with high retention and graduation rate like Berkeley, the math works out to be about 2 new frosh to 1 new transfer.</p>
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<p>And then there is Princeton, which admits no transfer students at all.</p>
<p>Outcome-based measures like prestigious awards are also not exactly a fair measure of a university’s quality. Look at the Rhodes, for examples, where the awards are massively dominated the Ivy league schools and Harvard in particular. There’s an “old boys club” to a lot of these fellowships. That’s not to say others can’t get them, but it’s not exactly a level playing field. The same goes for the investment banking companies that recruit almost exclusively from these “top” schools.</p>