A feather in the cap for my alma mater: high profile OOS freshman Sasha Obama is reportedly attending freshman orientation at the University of Michigan, accompanied by the Secret Service. No official confirmation from either the university or the Obamas, but this was long rumored after she posted on Instagram some months ago that she’d be joining several of her friends there. The Obamas are a highly education-oriented family. Both Barack and Michelle have multiple Ivy League degrees, and they sent both girls to the prestigious University of Chicago Lab School and Sidwell Friends School in DC, a favorite of the Washington elite. Big sister Malia is beginning her third year at Harvard, and Sasha was reportedly accepted at Yale. I don’t think Barack and Michelle would approve of Michigan unless they were convinced she could get a first-rate education there.
UNR frosh admission requirements are listed at https://www.unr.edu/admissions/undergraduate/freshman/requirements . Cost estimates are given at https://www.unr.edu/financial-aid/cost-estimates/undergraduate-student-budgets .
Talk about buzz-kill. I totally respect the need for security for as long as necessary, but man I’d sure try to find ways to ditch the detail. hahahahaha
It’s perhaps worth considering that some schools’ OOS appeal is primarily regional, while at others it’s more national.
There’s a lot of talk at Wisconsin about “Coasties v. 'Sconnies”, but there aren’t actually that many undergrads from coastal states. In one recent year, 57% of the OOS freshmen at Wisconsin were from immediately adjacent states (Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, and Michigan), with Minnesota (30%) and Illinois (24%) alone contributing 54%—and because the Minnesotans get tuition reciprocity, they don’t pay a premium to attend. The next largest contributors were coastal. New York and California each supplied 5% of OOS freshmen or 2% of the entering class, followed by New Jersey with 2.5% of OOS freshmen and 1% of the entering class.
Contrast that with Michigan where only 7% of the OOS freshmen came from the immediately adjacent states of Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin. That rises to 19% if you add Illinois, which technically borders Michigan somewhere out in the middle of Lake Michigan and in any event is relatively nearby. The largest OOS contributor to Michigan’s freshman class was New York with 15% of OOS freshmen and 7% of the entering class, followed by California with 14% of OOS freshmen and 6% of the class. Illinois was third with 12% of the entering OOS freshmen and 5% of the entering class, followed by New Jersey, Ohio, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania in that order.
I don’t know where these stats for UW Madison are coming from. The last number of years around 10% of UW Madison students are Minnesota residents who receive reciprocity. Here are the hard stats from last fall
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2018/09/26/uw-madisons-freshman-class-decidedly-more-out-state/1422809002/
53% in state, 28% percent out of state, 8.5% international (10% Minnesota). I have a kid that just launched to UW Madison from Minnesota. From what we’ve seen the MN admissions to Madison have become more difficult the last years. And there have been whisperings of ending that reciprocity agreement. It makes sense that Madison would want to serve WI residents first and that many MN residents would apply due to reciprocity. Every kid I know attending UW Madison this fall from Minnesota is an academic high flyer that had reasonable stats to apply just about anywhere and had some financial constraints. Including my own kid. Even though U of MN and UW Madison stats are similar as published, I don’t think they reflect what you need to get in as a reciprocity student. And as this news link states, out of state/international admits are trending up at Madison. I doubt Madison substantially cares if out of state (full) tuition is paid from CA or from IL. I do suspect admissions is trending more difficult from IL based on the shifting numbers.
When comparing somewhere like UW Madison and Michigan Ann Arbor, I think you also need to note that the average income of a Michigan Family is 158K. The average income of a UW Madison family is 95K. More families are willing and able to pay high bucks for their kid to attend Michigan and admissions at Michigan are closer to those of a high buck private. It’s not coincidence when these school’s family incomes are high. Admissions knows how to filter apps to get them there. You can search on “school name average family income” to get this info on any school out there. NY times has a bunch of data out there for each school. Madison has set a high priority on serving it’s own population and being affordable for that population.
Oh - just found registrar’s enrollment reports show where students are from. Map on the last page of the link PDF. Looks like IL enrollment at Madison is similar to MN . Last year’s ACT scores 25-75% were 27-32.
https://registrar.wisc.edu/enrollment-reports/
The data I cited are from the Chronicle of Higher Education which gets them from the IPEDS data reported to the U.S. Department of Education by the colleges themselves. The figure I cited is broadly consistent with yours: I said 30% of OOS freshmen at UW-Madison in 2014 were from Minnesota. You cited a newspaper article from the fall of 2018 that said 10% of the entering students that year were from Minnesota and 28% were OOS. But those numbers make sense only if they’re excluding the Minnesotans from the 28% OOS total (because 53.3% in-state plus 10.2% from Minnesota plus 28% OOS plus 8.5% international = 100%). That would put the Minnesotans at 28.27% of the OOS students (including Minnesotans)–pretty gosh darn close to the 30% I cited for a different year, and the article expressly states that UW Madison is aggressively recruiting higher-paying OOS students, so it makes sense that there’s been a slight uptick in non-Minnesotan OOS freshmen and a slightly declining fractional share of reciprocity-paying Minnesotans in the OOS total.
Michigan says they’re need- blind in admissions and I have no reason to doubt them. Their “filter” is simply that historically they haven’t offered much need-based FA to OOS students, so low- and moderate-income OOS admits mostly elect to go elsewhere. That high-income skew for OOS students is likely to change somewhat. The Regents have adopted a goal of meeting full need for all students, in-state and OOS. They’ve met full need for in-state students for a while now, and a recent successfully completed $5 billion capital campaign should help them toward that goal with OOS students, though they’re not full there yet.
However, a need-blind school could have admission and FA practices that favor correlates of high income families. For example:
- Greater weight on test scores relative to grades.
- Greater weight on expensive extracurriculars (e.g. high SES expensive sports) relative to some others (e.g. working to help support one’s family).
- Greater number of application items (e.g. SAT subject tests, recommendations, CSS Profile) to keep track of. In high SES high schools, counselors are more on top of reminding students about these things so that they can get them done on time.
- CSS Noncustodial Profile screens out FA-needy students with uncooperative divorced parents.
- Use of recommendations favors those in high schools where teachers and counselors are experienced in writing them.
So as an observation of this discussion. I know no family from Chicagoland area that has sent their kid to Alabama without the merit. But to Alabamas credit the kids going there like Absolutely love Alabama. They are telling their high school underclassmen and now there seems to be this “buzz” about Alabama being this great school. Also Alabama seemed to line up internships and opportunities with the normal big names, Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon etc. I know a. Few recent graduates that got great jobs after graduating (engineering).
I also read somewhere that a lot of their funds are coming from the football program. If this is true then many schools should be able to do this or lower tuition (never gonna happen) for their instate schools.
Like Michigan could offer lower tuition for their instate kids using this method.
As far as meeting OOS need for Michigan, they have stepped up this program. I don’t think it’s clearly 100% need but getting there. This has been a pleasant surprise in the last 3-4 years. I hear many families getting something like $20-35,000 OOS for financial aid, Michigan Grant (financial award). They have the endowment to do more but it’s a great start.
Being an Alabama resident, I have been following this trend for a few years. I do believe most of the OOS students do have some form of scholarship bringing their tuition down to at least the price of in state tuition. University of South Carolina does something very similar. Paying full OOS tuition to go to Alabama is just insane. I can’t think of a program they have that would be worth that. Many kids come for the football culture, but I still believe most of them have some sort of scholarship.
Yes and no. Michigan does have a huge $11 billion endowment, but just as at other schools, the endowment isn’t just a giant slush fund they can use however they please. Most of it is dedicated to particular purposes, e.g., endowed faculty chairs, medical research, support for specific schools or programs within the university, etc.
And as at all schools, the university seeks to preserve most of its endowment assets while taking an annual payout to support current-year operations, thus ensuring the endowment can continue to support the university’s operations for years to come. To achieve that, the university takes a 4.% payout each year, calculated on the basis of a 7-year rolling average of endowment assets. That provides year-to-year predictability and smooths out the ups and downs of the market. As a consequence, the endowment now generates somewhere around $440 million annually (i.e., less than 4.5% of $11 billion because it’s based on an average of the last 7 years, not just current-year assets). This goes to support an annual operating budget of nearly $9 billion.
Audit Blasts Penn State on Out-of-State Students
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/06/23/audit-blasts-penn-state-out-state-students
Inside a Flagship’s Shift Beyond In-State Admissions
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2017/06/26/state-audit-provides-inside-look-penn-states-rapid-growth-out-state
Auditor General DePasquale Says Penn State Shows Some Progress Since Sandusky Scandal; Background Checks Still Missing, Tuition Growth Outrageous
https://www.paauditor.gov/press-releases/auditor-general-depasquale-says-penn-state-shows-some-progress-since-sandusky-scandal-background-checks-still-missing-tuition-growth-outrageous
To make matters worse for PA residents…PSU has a a $3 billion endowment
Penn State endowment returns 7.8% for fiscal year
https://www.pionline.com/article/20181011/ONLINE/181019966/penn-state-endowment-returns-7-8-for-fiscal-year
@bclintonk. Michigan raised like $5.billion to be used for OOS grants /financial aid amongst other items. If Alabama can use funds from the football team to give away 4 year rides I assume Michigan can do something similar. Costs have got out of hand. It seems the pricing goes up. Larger aid awards are used as an offset. It would make more sense to me to list lower the tuition. Of course it’s just not as simple as that and I get that.
Alabama gives away very few free rides these days. They quite literally require a perfect unweighted GPA AND a perfect SAT or ACT for a full ride. And honestly, if they’ve managed to almost double their student population in 10 years and drastically increase their student quality at a time when many institutions are struggling to fill classes, that says amazing things about them.
Note that Alabama has cut back on the scholarship offered to out-of-state applicants with 3.5 HS GPA and 32 ACT; it is now an amount about $4,000 less than full tuition.
https://scholarships.ua.edu/freshman/out-of-state/
The scholarship for out-of-state applicants with 4.0 HS GPA and 36 ACT is value of full tuition, plus one year of housing, plus some smaller amounts for other things, not a full ride.
Well at 3/4 ride then. Still a huge win for many families. I just hear families telling me they got a full ride and I don’t force the issue. Still a hugely great value. If this lessons it will be interesting to see if they get the same types of students.
I know more than a handful of kids who went to h.s. with my kids, who going to schools like Ole Miss, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina and getting very little merit money, if any, as they don’t have the stats. Why are they choosing to pay OOS rates for these schools? Because their stats are too low to get into UMD, our in-state university, and they want that “big school, good football/school spirit” experience and their parents are willing to indulge them. Even with good stats, it is difficult to get into UMD.
“Because their stats are too low to get into UMD, our in-state university, and they want that “big school, good football/school spirit” experience and their parents are willing to indulge them”
Same reason many rich kids from CA end up at Oregon, Arizona and CU Boulder: PAC-12 football.
Another PA resident weighing in whose perception of “value” is colored by the high cost of our in-state schools. My personal experience is with U of SC. My D headed there four years ago with merit that meant a cost of about $10,000 less per year than the in-state cost for Pitt, Penn State, or Temple (now in mid-30’s) – plus she preferred South Carolina. I should note that there are some good PASSHE schools that would have cost slightly less than U of SC, but with a very different environment.
At $45,000 OOS with zero merit, U of SC (and U Alabama) are not considered that pricey for a number of kids from my area (suburban Philadelphia). And for those kids who do get merit, even the smallest merit award at U of SC makes the cost comparable to the three schools noted above.
Other popular publics around here are U Delaware ($51,000 OOS), U Maryland ($53,000 OOS) and U Vermont ($60,000 OOS). Some students are getting merit, but I’ve got to think many are full (or close to full) pay. Agree with @4kids4us that some kids
Some are kids who didn’t get into Penn State main campus or who would have been required to do (and pay extra for) Summer Session; others just want something “different.” If finances permit, then why not?
Penn provides little support to PSU so the auditors are just chimps doing a political hit job. How much is PA contributing per student?? I know the instate tuition is very high due to poor funding from PA.