Illinois to get harder for residents; Parents outraged!!

<p>according to college board only 38% of applicants are admitted to UVA.
As a state school this is simply unacceptable! Even with good GPA and good SAT scores it's a crap shoot for a student from Va to get in.</p>

<p>UVA 38% accepted</p>

<p>Penn State 62% accepted
U of Delaware 47%
U of Conn 51%
U of SC 68%
Uof Tenn 74%
Ohio State 74%</p>

<p>and all the SUNY's in NY state.</p>

<p>UVA is trying to go Private in order to... you guessed it...make money.</p>

<p>"Because the state caps U-V-A’s tuition level…the only method for increasing tuition is through the Charter University plan… which reduces much of the state’s control over UVA and gives the school greater financial independence."</p>

<p>and here is this article from 2003....</p>

<p><a href="http://www.baconsrebellion.com/Issues03/01-13/Public_ivys.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.baconsrebellion.com/Issues03/01-13/Public_ivys.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Why sound an alarm? Increasingly, we hear talk of “privatization,” both from Charlottesville and Williamsburg – widely understood as loosening or even cutting historic ties between those two schools and state government.</p>

<p>The rumblings about privatization thus far have been mainly talk. State financial support for the two institutions, while declining, remains above the 10 percent threshold. Excluding the UVa Hospital, next year’s UVa budget will include 13.4 percent state funding; the figure at W&M will be 19 percent. Yet the talk persists</p>

<p>Also much of the building $$$ comes from the state. That adds at least $50M a year to UVA.</p>

<p>Re UVA, I am trying to understand the arguments that bronte and others are making. If the state of Virginia is contributing a relatively small amount of the money (13% in your figures and I have recently understood that number to be 8%), then why should that entitle Virginia residents to 67% of the places in each entering class? That cost/benefit ratio seems more than a bit overweighted to instate students and this is further accentuated when one also factors in that the instate tuition cost is only 1/3 that of outofstate. </p>

<p>Please understand that the admit rates that you reference are for the ENTIRE class of applicants. If you break it down, the accept rates differ dramatically (51% for Virginia residents and 30% for non-Virginians). Do you feel that these levels are more acceptable? In addition, you compare our acceptance rates with several other institutions, but none of these can hold a candle to the excellent academic reputation of the University. My own conclusion is that the degree of exclusivity that UVA practices has been a major contributor to our fine reputation. Do you really believe that UVA should be comparable to UT, USC, PSU, etc? </p>

<p>Probably our differences of opinion come down to what role we would want the University to play. I think you want the University to be available to most (if not all) Virginia high school students who achieve good grades and good SAT scores. Am I reading you right? Personally, I believe that there are many fine college alternatives elsewhere in the state (eg, JMU, Va Tech, VCU, etc.). I would like to see the University of Virginia try to compete at the very highest levels of academia (including more effectively against private schools like Princeton and Duke). IMO, as a public or private institution, this cannot be achieved with a 67% requirement for Virginia students.</p>

<p>
[QUOTE]
UVA 38% accepted
Penn State 62% accepted
U of Delaware 47%
U of Conn 51%
U of SC 68%
Uof Tenn 74%
Ohio State 74%

[/QUOTE]
This little list needs some data about class size. 49% of UVA classes are less than 20 students. Add academic reputation to the mix and you're comparing apples and oranges.</p>

<p>A higher admit rate would mean massive classes. I guess we could throw TAs in front of all the 100 level courses to take care of part of that problem, but that won't help student learning, satisfaction or our academic reputation. Hiring more faculty will be a bit of an issue since our salaries aren't competitive (this is one of the areas we lose "points" in for US News). </p>

<p>
[QUOTE]

UVA is trying to go Private in order to... you guessed it...make money.

[/QUOTE]
I adore UVA and I love being a Virginian. However, having come here from an elite, private engineering school, I've had my share of frustration with the way things work here. Our legislators are very smart, but the fact is that they aren't educators. By their very nature, some of their decisions are made with politics, not education, in mind.</p>

<p>The admit rates I've seen posted are a tad off. We haven't completely finished crunching that number (some students don't seem concerned with that May 1 deadline), but when I have it ready, I'll post it.</p>

<p>Curious if UIUC gives an admissions edge to certain regions of the state, say downstate, versus Chicago suburbs. For UVA NOVA kids are at a disadvantage stats-wise compared to the rest of Virginia, so does Illinois have the same deal?</p>

<p>Other state universities manage to have small classes, why not Virginia?</p>

<p>every school we visited, has about the same class size 20-30 for most with maybe 1 or two lecture classes the entire 4 years... NYU, Va Tech, George Mason, James Madison, Penn State, SUNY Stony Brook, to name a few. and by the the junior year when they're in their major the classes could be as few as 10 ( for engineering )</p>

<p>Isn't this about UVA and other like schools creating a shallow status mentality? </p>

<p>20 years ago UVA was a typical state school that accepted just about anyone. </p>

<p>the education was just as good then as it is now, only no status was associated with it. as soon as they made admissions appeal to intellectual snobs, suddenly UVA is the status symbol of all of NoVa.</p>

<p>a college education should not be a shallow status symbol like a designer handbag or a mercedes. I fear that parents and their kids are falling into this trap set up by the colleges. If it's hard to get in, and my kid does, then my kid is special..( what crud)</p>

<p>the women at the uva admissions blog even talks about kids hiring people to write their essays! what does this teach the kids? is that not considered cheating anymore? is everyone so insecure that they have to have 'the right college" sticker on their car? Or bragging rights at dinner parties? Will the kids that attend these schools feel superior to those who did not? why is a school better simply because their admission policy is a crap shoot?</p>

<p>and as far as their academic reputation, UVA is only big news in Va.</p>

<p>It's not where you go to school , it's what you do with your education.</p>

<p>and as The state school, UVA should have better than a 38% acceptance policy
and they shouldn't have quota's by county.</p>

<p>Kids from the better Chicago suburbs would say UI favors downstate kids with lesser credentials and inferior competition.</p>

<p>Bronte, your post mirrors the style and structure of a disjointed rant posted on my blog about the very topic of private admission consultants. I have NEVER encouraged the hiring of these people in any way. As my last line in my post about private counselors said "an application that's been massaged and cleaned up by a third party shouldn't just have one person's name on it". I said that I wasn't sure I could always tell when an essay had been edited by one of these consulting firms.</p>

<p>Over 16,000 applications come into UVA for 3,100 spots in the incoming class. We have an embarrassment of riches on our hands. We owe our students the best academic experience we can provide and I don't think what you're suggesting (growing the class) is possible at this time with the resources we have. Maybe if the state was kicking in more than 8% (and the alumni participation rate was more than 27%!), we could bring on more faculty, build another residence hall or two, and handle more students.</p>

<p>By the way, if we have quotas, they forgot to tell me about them! I know people will continue to believe the rumors regardless of what I say, so I'll cease trying to change your mind.</p>

<p>Apologies to the Illinois folks for the UVA tangent on their thread. By the way, we're all making money for College Confidential (a private college consulting group) by posting here...they make money on this board by having Google Ads at the top.</p>

<p>Dean J.</p>

<p>so sorry you don't like my writing style or my opinion. You asked a question on your blog about what reader thought of hiring consultants, I gave my opinion. My "rant" on your blog was respectful of you. I'm sorry that you can not give me the same consideration. The tone of your reply to my post is not at all called for. I'm sorry if my opinion on the state of college admission hit a nerve.</p>

<p>and UVA receives 13% from the state, not 8.</p>

<p>please do not think that I am sour grapes because I assure you I am not.My D did not think UVA was a fit for her when we visited.</p>

<p>My issue is with the way college admissions is being conducted at many universities. Don't beleive me? just read the messages on this website!</p>

<p>I am a big supporter of state schools-- went to one, husband teaches at one, S2 likely to attend one. However, I don't really understand this outrage over schools accepting OOS students when such a small percentage of the funding actually comes from the states.</p>

<p>The CC board saw fit to put UC Berkeley, UCLA, UNC Chapel Hill and UVa as top national universities. Arbitrary selection perhaps but it's a starting point.</p>

<p>What is the IS/OOS ratio for each of these school?</p>

<p>1onemoremom,
IMO, the outrage is the assumption from many taxpayers that the states are funding the state schools either fully, or funding most of it. There is then a sense of entitlement. People do not want their child squeezed out of an instate seat, for an out of state student. I am not speaking about Illinois, but state schools in general.</p>

<p>Did a quick google check for Berkeley</p>

<p>2004 admitted students: 87% instate; 11% out of state; 2% international</p>

<p>There was a big flap over Berkeley admissions a couple of years ago, over the John Moores report. My recollection was that there was a bigger outcry over kids with "lower stats" being admitted to Berkeley than with the number of OOS/I kids (who usually have pretty high stats) being offered a spot at Berkeley.</p>

<p>I guess I was responding to bronte, who clearly has an idea of funding levels and certainly sounds outraged.</p>

<p>The alumni organization of our state school system (the largest in the country) is working hard to educate members about funding issues and to encourage them to get in touch with their congressmen. Raising awareness has to be the best way to improve the situation and also to help prevent some of these misconceptions.</p>

<p>I don't think anyone think OOS have it "easier" than IS students in terms of applications. The issue is that OOS are taking seats away from fully qualified IS applicants in certain states.</p>

<p>bronte, it's unrealistic to expect UVA to keep expanding to let in everyone instate who wants to go. There are a lot of colleges in VA that you can get a good education at. You keep referencing UVA's acceptance rate, would you be surprised to learn that W&M's is lower? Should W&M increase from 5600 undergrads to 15,000 while UVA increases from 12,000 to 26,000? Where is the money for all of this going to come from? Should VTech increase to 40,000? Where does it stop? Do you really think you can get as much attention from the professor at PSU or GMU as UVA? It's great that PSU and GMU can function well as colleges with so many students, but do you think if UVA had that many students that it would still be as good as UVA is? I'm not knocking GMU or PSU, but UVA is one of the best schools in the country.</p>

<p>And rest assured that W&M's new President is very strong on remaining public. You might also be interested in the new governor's plan to create a new college, to make a college education a reality for more students in VA, while VA's top schools still lack the funding they deserve from the state.</p>

<p>dajada07 hit it right on the nail - made every point i was going to</p>

<p>From this morning's Chicago Tribune:</p>

<p>"U. of I. admission plan flunks out
Uproar kills proposal to limit state students"</p>

<p><a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0605160200may16,1,4083650.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0605160200may16,1,4083650.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Interesting post, soccerguy. I just found out the other day that CNU was originally founded by W&M (similar to UVA @ Wise). Looks like we all want to increase opportunities for in-state students.
[QUOTE]
and UVA receives 13% from the state, not 8.

[/QUOTE]
I just verified the numbers. Around 7% of the school's budget comes from the state. If you added in the UVA medical center's budget and state funding, you'd get to 12%.</p>

<p>soccerguy,</p>

<p>It's not just UVA, its W&M, VA tech, James Madison. I single out UVA because it is our titled state school.</p>

<p>UVA initiated the charter got the other top schools to align and has been blackmailing the state for a few years now. Do some research on the charter.</p>

<p>UVA can certainly expand, they have plenty of money and the state would give them more if they wanted to accept it. But they do not. They want to act like a private school on state money, as a matter of fact, they are heading to private and the state is paying them to do it.</p>

<p>A 38% acceptance rate and an admission policy that makes admittance a crap shoot is a disgrace for a public state school. ( IMO )</p>

<p>I do not agree with you that the education at UVA would worsen if the acceptance rate went up to 50%. Other state schools manage to give their students a great education even though their admission rate is above 50%.</p>

<p>13.4% of 1 billion is not small change.....</p>

<p>from <a href="http://www.virginia.edu/budget/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.virginia.edu/budget/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The operrating budgets for July 1, 2005-June 30, 2006, for all divisions of the University of Virginia total $1.9 billion. Of the total budget, $1040.8 million relates to the Academic Division, $812.6 million to the Medical Center, and $26.6 million to the University of Virginia's College at Wise. Highlights of the 2005-2006 budget:</p>

<p>Major Sources of funds for the University are:
- Patient Revenues 43.2%
- Grants & Contracts 16.0%
- Tuition & Fees 15.0%
- Auxiliary Enterprises 8.9%</p>

<ul>
<li><p>State General Fund Appropriation 8.1%</p></li>
<li><p>Gifts & Endowment 7.1%</p></li>
<li><p>Other 1.7% </p></li>
</ul>

<p>The Academic Division operating budget increased $59.8 million, or 6.1 percent. </p>

<p>Major Sources of funds for the Academic Division are:
- Grants & Contracts 28.8%
- Tuition & Fees 26.6%
- Auxiliary Enterprises 15.4% </p>

<ul>
<li><p>State General Fund Appropriations 13.4%**</p></li>
<li><p>Gifts & Endowments 12.7%</p></li>
<li><p>Other 3.1% </p></li>
</ul>

<p>The Medical Center's operating budget increased by $77.5 million or 10.5 percent.</p>

<p>The College at Wise's operating budget increased by $1.6 million or 6.4 percent.</p>