<p>Saw this article in today's paper and thought some of you would be interested in reading it:</p>
<p>W&M</a> weighs admitting more to freshman class | Richmond Times-Dispatch</p>
<p>Looks like several Virginia schools are proposing admitting more students to help with their finances. Christopher Newport and UVA are also mentioned in the article.</p>
<p>Thanks for the post! I like this idea!!</p>
<p>As do I! But if their board of visitors has to approve any increase, I guess the question becomes, when/how often do they meet?</p>
<p>Since increasing revenue is the goal, I could see W&M using the waitlist to fill the 50 spots in a need-aware fashion.</p>
<p>Yes, and OOS may benefit.</p>
<p>I think an emergency meeting should be held immediately. </p>
<p>I wonder how 50 more freshmen will affect housing…never mind, I think an increase of 50 is quite doable! :)</p>
<p>IMO W&M should go to a 60/40 split instead of what it is currently at, which I believe is closer to 66/34</p>
<p>IMO W&M should go to a 60/40 split instead of what it is currently at, which I believe is closer to 66/34 >>></p>
<p>Virginia residents would disagree. There are a lot of kids with 4.0s who can’t get into WM and UVA and it is a great source of frustration here in NoVA.</p>
<p>The state legislature sets the percentages for the allowable IS/OOS mix. A year ago a proposal to increase IS enrollment to 80% did not pass. I don’t think the legislature wants to change the mix for the reason cap cited. Even if they did, the additional dollars from OOS tuition would be absorbed into the state budget and would not directly benefit W&M.</p>
<p>An article in the Post today mentioned that the new gov committed to increasing the numbers at state colleges. This might be another reason (besides $) for this strategy.</p>
<p>if it is truely a revenue issue, the delta between IS and OSS tuition will have to shrink quite a bit. A quality education isn’t cheap. Would VA residents agree to pay more if they went 80/20?</p>
<p>In-state COA is 22K next year. Tuition & fees are more than 11K. I’m not sure how that stacks up against other states, other than it is way more than DD1’s school was on the west coast.</p>
<p>I really hope this takes effect next year and they use it for OOS.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t the 50 additional freshmen have to have the same ratio of OOS to IS as the overall enrollment overall must have? I would think they would admit the number of OOS applicants that they believe they need to admit in order to achieve the state-mandated ratio of all students who accept the offers of admission. So the additional 50 couldn’t be allocated to either IS or OOS (or to any proportion of IS to OOS other than the same proportion that is already required).</p>
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<p>Students with 4.0s and took the most challenging course load will get into UVA and W&M. If you don’t take the most challenging course load, then that is your own fault.</p>
<p>If taxpayers want more instate students, then they should demand the state government pay more than 15% of W&M’s expenses. It is unacceptable to demand more access while refusing to provide the support that is required for the state of Virginia to maintain its world class universities.</p>
<p>This is from 2004:
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<p>That 18.7% is lower now.</p>
<p>This is from 2009:
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<p>Guess what? UVA and W&M will happily trade their 7% and 14% state funding and go private. Then the politicians AND state residents will be SOL. UVA and W&M will probably take Virginia Tech with them too. Virginia schools will not be nearly as nice when James Madison is the best it has to offer (not that JMU is a bad school).</p>
<p>My understanding is that, since OOS acceptance rates are so much lower, there are a lot of OOS kids with 4.0s who can’t get into UVA and W&M either. I haven’t been able to find recent data on the differing stats between instate and OOS students, but when my oldest d entered W & M in 2001, there was a nearly 100-point differential in SAT scores between instate and OOS students (according to a class profile I still have around here somewhere …). My point being that OOS students aren’t keeping qualified instate students out of W & M. The OOS students are in a somewhat more competitive applicant pool, and therefore help elevate the stats for incoming freshmen.</p>
<p>We were staggered when we first heard how little of W & M’s annual budget comes from VA taxpayers. I’d say they have a pretty good bargain - funding 14 percent of the annual budget in exchange for the school’s obligation to admit two-thirds of its incoming class as instaters. In fairness, I’d think the potential increase of 50 students should reflect that same ratio.</p>
<p>Students with 4.0s and took the most challenging course load will get into UVA and W&M. If you don’t take the most challenging course load, then that is your own fault.>>></p>
<p>Both of my kids could name friends who did not get into either of those schools - with 4.0+'s, high SATs and 6 or so AP courses. We are in Nova.</p>
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Whereupon the state will present the newly-freed colleges for a multi-billion dollar bill for their physical plant. The state will surely not make it easy for these schools to go private; while the politicians may be willing to strangle the Golden Geese, they’re not willing to simply set them free. </p>
<p>Every year, there are multiple attempts by Delegates to tinker with admissions policies, (like in-state vs. OOS ratios, or a bill that anyone in-state with a 4.0 GPA is guaranteed admission, etc) or with the tuition charged (remember the delegate who was outraged that W&M was named a “Best Buy”? He thought that made it clear that W&M was under-charging OOS students, and so introduced a bill to put a surcharge on OOS tuition.) </p>
<p>Part of the problem is that every year, there are all these sob stories about these poor in-state kids who didn’t get into their “dream school”, (W&M, say), even though they had “stellar” stats (often, not so much, but others, legitimately so.) First time I heard the complaint, it was from a father, who’d “paid taxes for years”, only to see UVA reject his kid, with his B+ average. </p>
<p>They complain to their state reps, who sense an opportunity to get their names in the paper, and who come up with yet another populist way to meddle with the schools, which thankfully, fails. </p>
<p>The problem is, there are those that think because it’s a state school, that admission should be guaranteed for <em>their</em> kids (never mind that their contribution to W&M via the taxes that they scream so loudly about probably amounts to $6.17.) This is the road to “Community College.”</p>
<p>I get the frustration - but ultimately, every attempt to open these schools up in this way would have immediate consequences - invariably damaging the very things that make the school attractive in the first place. </p>
<p>People who “get” this need to contact their representatives, every year, and tell them not to support these types of bills, and instead support excellence in our state schools - W&M, UVA, VT are state treasures - and ill-thought-out, populist garbage like forcibly raising in-state admit rates will only damage the quality and reputation of these schools (and these two things can be shown to be inextricably linked.)</p>
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<p>6 AP courses? That doesn’t sound like a lot… Can’t you take AP courses sophomore year? So they took 2 per year? or 1/2/3? I bet 6 is a good bit under the average number of AP courses taken by NOVA students that are admitted to UVA/W&M. Weighted 4.0s in NOVA (at least fairfax) have become even more devalued since they went to the +1.0 for weighted classes.</p>
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<p>That isn’t true. I know many kids who had a 4.0+, high SAT scores, took 6+ AP classes, (in Va Beach 10th grade was the first year they could take an AP class, and then only one was offered), they also took magnet math and science classes that are taught on the college level but don’t qualify as AP, have leadership experience, extra curricular activities, sports, hundreds of volunteer hours, etc., who either got wait listed, or didn’t get in at all.</p>