<p>The typical choice for an upper income out of state student is not Harvard or UVa. It is a full scholarship or half merit scholarship from another university (that is not considered as prestigious) and that may be offering small first year honors classes vs. $38K a year for tuition and fees from UVa.</p>
<p>collegekid – I think you got as much of an answer as you are likely to get from posters to the UVa thread, in the first page or so. Those who post this time of year (after admissions season) tend to have some affiliation with UVa and the biases which come with that.</p>
<p>The new US News rankings should be out soon. You can see what they have to say. Over your 4 years at UVa, the school’s ranking is not likely to change much, though it could fall out of the top 25 for the reasons some have given here – anti-public school bias in the rankings; reductions in state funding for UVa; etc. Make the most out of your four years, and the ranking will not be that important to you. Some of UVa’s most loyal supporters (alums from 45+ years ago – pre-women) attended the school when it was known as a party school for guys seeking “gentlemen C’s.” College will be what you make of it. Not what USNWR says it is.</p>
<p>Sevmom~ I certainly don t care about your “nitty gritty”. I just wanted you to support your argument but clearly you can not so your input is now irrelevant to me.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m not really quite sure I would agree with this. When our D entered UVA in 2010, we received a spreadsheet with the names of the students from our home state as well as the high schools they attended. Our state is fairly well-represented at UVA, and I noticed most every kid came from either a pricier private prep or a very affluent public. I would speculate that the overwhelming majority are full pay. Many of these kids I know personally, and they had acceptances from Duke, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, BC, Cornell, UNC, NYU, Wake, and even Dartmouth; they all chose UVA. Our D had a very large merit scholarship from Pepperdine but chose UVA (full pay). Another turned down the CV scholarship at Vanderbilt for UVA (full pay). Both are “upper-income”, and I don’t think they’re atypical.</p>
<p>JC – hard to say what is “typical” for a certain demographic based on anecdotal evidence. The data, though, does say that UVA’s OOS yield (28-ish percent I think) is lower than the yield of Cornell (53%), Duke (42%), Northwestern (43%), Vandy (37%), NYU (37%), Wake (32%), UNC (31% oos). About even with BC. Yield, as Dean Roberts recently noted, is primarily a function of reputation and price. So I think the oos yield gives a fair representation of how UVA competes in the oos segment. IS yield is way higher, not surprisingly, since the price is lower. </p>
<p>Don’t know what the oos yields are for UM, Cal, UCLA. UNC’s is a bit higher than UVA’s presumably because the UNC price is lower.</p>
<p>JC: It is nice to know that there are some families out there that don’t have to be concerned at all about costs. What I am hearing is that there are families with relatively high incomes who are trying to put their kids in a position to go through med school, law school or other grad school without tremendous debt, and who are paying very high costs because they live in NY, NJ, Chicago, DC or other geographic areas with high housing costs and high state and local taxes. Many of those families in big cities already blew a hundred grand on private secondary school tuition. For these families, they may be barely able to afford $48K a year for each of their kids for tuition, room and board, but they are encouraging them to look at other options where they can get some merit aid that may bring the cost down to $30K a year.</p>
<p>Never mind. Talking about two different things.</p>
<p>Dean Roberts had an interesting piece about yield in response to an op-ed piece earlier this year. </p>
<p><a href=“http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/uvas-admission-dean-responds-to-donors-gripe-about-yield/30385[/url]”>http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/uvas-admission-dean-responds-to-donors-gripe-about-yield/30385</a></p>
<p>I think lots of people are looking more closely at cost recently,charlieschm,that’s for sure. Truly affluent families will always have more options.</p>
<p>There is no Ivy league merit aid. So the only factors in Ivy yield with respect to UVA are reputation and need-based aid. OOS, UVA is about $10K/yr less than any Ivy. That’s not insignificant, but it’s not a huge either.</p>
<p>UVADad, that’s not quite true. “Need-based aid” can be more or less generous depending on the institution: Harvard and Princeton consider a lot of families “needy” that are comparatively comfortably off, and both schools offer more in grants, less in loans. Also a school that has binding early decision, like Cornell, is going to have a higher total enrollment of accepted students than a school that doesn’t. So you can’t really draw many conclusions about yield and desirability from the raw numbers.</p>
<p>Addressing the original question: I’ve been teaching at UVA since 1988. It’s always been a fine school, but it’s my strong impression that incoming students are somewhat better on average than they were: better prepared, stronger writers, more intellectually ambitious, more really, really bright kids in every class. This change doesn’t necessarily reflect anything UVA is doing and might not produce any change in UVA’s ranking relative to other schools. For instance, it might be because high school curricula for elite students have gotten more rigorous. Or it might be because the schools above UVA in the rankings have gotten even more selective, meaning that a lot of kids who might have gotten in to Harvard or Yale in “the old days” end up here. One thing that’s been very clear to me in the past several years, though, since the recession hit, is that a huge proportion of the best in-state students are aiming, or at least settling, for UVA or William and Mary now rather than looking out of state. At our local public hs graduation, the school announces where the top 10% of kids (40-50 kids) are attending. It used to be that a fair number of them were going to Duke, Cornell, Yale, Northwestern, Williams, etc. But when my son graduated 2 years ago, almost every single kid in this category was planning to attend UVA, William and Mary, Virginia Tech, or JMU. The exceptions were the valedictorian, who got a full ride at USC, and a few kids whose parents couldn’t or wouldn’t pay their share of instate university tuition, so were starting at the local community college and planning to transfer.</p>
<p>jingle, It seems to be similar here in my part of Virginia. Top kids around here have always been attracted to UVa, William and Mary, and Virginia Tech but even more so in the last few years. Our local paper does an insert every year of where the top students in each high school are going in each of the 5 cities of southeastern Virginia. Highest numbers were to UVa, Virginia Tech, and William and Mary. Most staying instate with an occasional Ivy thrown in or a school where a kid is probably getting very good merit aid. But the majority this year were going to UVa, VT, or W & M. This area is not as affluent in general as northern Virginia but I would imagine even there , more kids may be staying instate or looking for merit?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, absolutely our observation here. Since the economic downturn more and more families that would have considered private or OOS schools where they would have been full-pay are rethinking and staying in state at our top universities.</p>
<p>The yield numbers prove what you all are seeing in-state. UVA’s yield on in-state students is up around 66% – equal to the yield that Yale gets!! UVA in-state is a compelling and outstanding reputation/price ratio.</p>
<p>The yield for UVA OOS is about 25%. That’s pretty good, but obviously a completely different reputation/price equation.</p>
<p>UVA needs to get more money (and/or reduce its costs) in order for it to maintain its rankings and reputation. Sullivan, Dragas, Paul Tudor Jones and US News all agree on that. Since I’m not seeing how UVA is going to get that extra money, I’d expect UVA’s rankings and reputation (while still good) to be flat or somewhat down in the coming years.</p>
<p>I’ll withhold judgement until I see what the BOV and Sullivan come up with and eventually present to the university community as a plan to move forward. Even then, things I may find unfavorable at first may actually work out exceptionally well once executed. We have to be open to change. It may raise the university to a higher level. Certainly there must have been people who were very opposed to allowing women to attend, thinking the tradition at UVa would be compromised. Yes, the university changed, but what resulted IMO was a better version. So yes, perhaps what we know and love is going to change, but what is to come may be necessary and amazing in it’s own right. I remain optimistic.</p>
<p>What I do know, and perhaps we will respectfully disagree on, is I don’t give two hoots what Paul Tudor Jones thinks in the matter of UVa moving forward. He is not on the BOV, nor is he part of the UVa administration. As a major donor his opinion is limited to how his donation is spent, just as my opinion is as a minor donor. It gives him no other authority or voice at the university. Personally, I find it odd that you include him with the two major entities in the equation that will be responsible for really trying to come to a mutual agreement that is most beneficial for the university. Again, we may agree just to disagree here, which is perfectly fine.</p>
<p>Well, Blue, I think you said that beautifully, and I agree. FWIW, as a minor donor, you know. :D</p>
<p>I too agree with Blue, well stated.</p>
<p>Blue – I mention Jones only because it is pretty obvious that he had a significant role in the attempt to oust Sullivan. And that he and Sullivan (as well as others including me) are in agreement that the underlying issue is UVA’s financial situation. </p>
<p>I hope the BOV and Sullivan come up with a great fix for that issue. I’m not as optimistic on that as you, but only time will tell.</p>
<p>NW - Yes, Dragas included Jones in the discussions to oust Sullivan. In my opinion as he is not a member of the BOV that constitutes a major ethical breech, to discuss the presidents employment with someone outside the BOV, and is one reason I feel she should not have been reappointed. Dragas was reappointed however, so my wish is that the BOV and Sullivan can work together for the betterment of the university. Jones is of no consequence to me.</p>
<p>I respect your opinion not to be as optimistic. We all come at this from different places. I agree, only time will tell, and we all hope for the best.</p>
<p>I see the same thing down south with top students from local high schools giving up elite schools to attend state honors programs with merit money and private universities with merit scholarships. Even kids from upper middle class families are following the merit scholarships. The money is great and the kids feel wanted by schools that offer merit aid.</p>
<p>So what do those trends mean for UVA?</p>
<p>Perhaps increasing admissions selectivity and yield for IS. That would be good for reputation/rankings since IS students are 70% of enrollment.</p>
<p>Probably decreasing selectivity and yield for OOS students. Not good for rankings but perhaps outweighed by the positive IS trends.</p>
<p>Status quo for finances. UVA may not be able to snag as many high end OOS kids as in the past. But it should still be able to sell out its OOS seats to a slightly less selective group of students. But since status quo finances are the root problem, that’s a negative imo.</p>