NU overall acceptance rate at 18% -- down from 27% just 2 years ago

Colleges and Universities A-Z Northwestern University
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<p>I was involved in an interesting discussion relating to this last night at a scholarship dinner. For the first year ever in our state, none of the 7 top students from our region who were getting this particular scholarship will be attending our local (very well respected) universities… all had opted for out-of-state schools. </p>

<p>An interesting thing about that, though, is that at the same time our local university has never been more selective wrt local students – in fact at least two local Valedictorians with 4.0 GPAs and nearly perfect test scores were not admitted. </p>

<p>Part of this is that in reaction to limited State funding, many state schools are now admitting FAR fewer in-state students. In addition, students (including our D) who received our state’s prestigious State Scholar Award, which in the past gave a full-ride for 4 years to any in-state school, were told this year that there is NO funding for the program. </p>

<p>So limited funding for many state schools and state scholarships might also be playing a role in a higher number of applications to the well-endowed elite private schools.</p>

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<p>CA is an outlier here. With the budget so bad, they have admitted more OOS to the UC system, to get those higher OOS tutition $$. I haven’t read anything yet as to how this has turned out (then again, it’s still April.) I would think an OOS student might be more risk adverse to headlines about UC raising tution (even more) and at the same time cutting programs. </p>

<p>At least if you’re in CA, you have a better change of “going to ground” and talking to someone in the know. Yet still, for us, that’s not enough because who has that crystal ball to know what it will be like four years hence, which is crucial to the decision making. More uncertainty doesn’t lead to easier decision making.</p>

<p>Of the top ten in my S’s class of 2010, 5 went OOS (Brown, Columbia, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins and DUke) and five went to either US Berkeley, UCLA or USC.</p>

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<p>You bring up another important aspect of this state funding issue. I heard yesterday (2nd hand) that our state schools have announced their intention to raise tuition at least 10% per year for at least the coming 3 years. Ouch.</p>