OOS Students and the Public State Universities

<p>Bluebayou, Lowell High School doesn't publish information about their students and where they go to college, or am I wrong?</p>

<p>dstark,
what state are you in?</p>

<p>I'm in California.</p>

<p>The most popular schools are UC Berkeley, UCLA and Stanford.</p>

<p>^ Oh, you already said that, dstark. My bad. Not reading well tonight. Interesting that more students from your daughter's California HS apply to Michigan than to the privates you list.</p>

<p>


</p>

<p>Actually, Berkeley's total OOS yield is 37%. They list 3 categories---California resident, "non-resident" (by which they mean non-California U.S.), and "international students." I'm quite certain that at Michigan and in the US News stats generally OOS-US and OOS-International get lumped together in a single OOS category. </p>

<p>UC Berkeley's 2008 data look like this:</p>

<p>yield, admit rate, source (applications, admits, enrolled)</p>

<p>44%, 22% California (36509, 8786, 3835)
23%, 17% OOS-US (5719, 950, 215)
56%, 22% OOS-International (3208, 708, 399)
37%, 19% OOS Total (8927, 1658, 614)</p>

<p><a href="http://students.berkeley.edu/admissions/freshmen.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://students.berkeley.edu/admissions/freshmen.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Note that this is better than a 4-to-1 instate to OOS application ratio, and an OOS yield only slightly below the instate rate. Michigan probably gets fewer internationals (though they get a lot), which might push down their overall OOS yield. On the other hand Michigan is more generous with merit aid for OOS students than Berkeley. According to US News, 22% of OOS freshmen at Berkeley receive non-need based aid, while at Michigan 59% of freshmen receive non-need-based aid. At both schools 40% of OOS freshmen receive need-based aid.</p>

<p>dstark:</p>

<p>dunno much about where Lowell's seniors end up, sry.</p>

<p>
[quote]
According to US News, 22% of OOS freshmen at Berkeley receive non-need based aid...

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That number is highly suspect. According to Cal's cds, 252 total Frosh recieved non-need based aid, out of a matriculating class of 4200+. Regent's scholarships are far and few between. While OOS applicants are eligible, the vast majority go to instate students (bcos they comprise 90% of the student body and they require extremely high test scores).</p>

<p>That's ok..............</p>

<p>^^ I'd guess they probably include athletic scholarships to OOS athletes in the 22% non-need based aid figure. And given the way the UCs divide "non-resident (US)" from "international" they might not be including internationals in the denominator. So if they had only 215 OOS-US students enroll and 43 of them were OOS athletes coming in on full or partial athletic scholarships, that would account for the 22%. Just speculation on my part, but possible. Very misleading, though.</p>

<p>It would be a different story at Michigan where over 1/3 of the student body is OOS. Athletic scholarships would make up a small fraction of the 59% of them getting non-need based aid.</p>

<p>^^Possible, but just speculation, and it would be poor reporting if USNews did include athletic grants in its reports. (I have chosen to save the $15 and not renew my subscription this year.) Cal only gave out 94 athletic scholarships last year, the vast majority of which go to instate kids (Tedford and Monty are trying hard, but Cal doesn't have the sports attractiveness OOS like 'SC or UCLA). And of course, for many sports (water polo, volleyball, swimming, golf and the like), the local athletic talent is pretty good.</p>

<p>22% just doesn't pass the smell test at a public college in a state that does not approve nor encourage of merit. (UC just lowered admission requirements, shuns the NM program, cut Regent's scholarships, eliminated the Golden State Scholars program.....)</p>

<p>Bc,
Unless U Michigan discloses it, we’ll never know what the breakdown is for IS and OOS applications. Thankfully, U Virginia makes this disclosure and we have transparency on their applicant pool. </p>

<p>You make a lot of claims to try to salvage U Michigan’s supposed selectivity and desirability, but IMO they don’t wash. </p>

<ol>
<li><p>There is not a lot of overlap between the applicant pools to U Michigan and U Virginia although each enrolls 1/3 of their students from OOS. Judging just by enrolled students, the populations are much higher in the non-Michigan states from which U Michigan draws its applicants/students (New York-7% of students, Illinois-5% are tops) than at U Virginia (Maryland-3% is top). </p></li>
<li><p>You assume that U Michigan’s OOS applicant pool is almost totally comprised of top tier students that are applying to top OOS publics like U Michigan and U Virginia. I don’t agree. What is more likely is that students in places like Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana, Ohio, etc. apply to U Michigan, get in, and yet decide that their IS flagship is a better deal for them. This would obviously negatively affect U Michigan’s yield. </p></li>
<li><p>Your flipping of the IS/OOS application behaviour patterns of high school students in Michigan and Virginia is not believable. Why should the students in Michigan be any different than those in Virginia? Do you really think that U Michigan is more prominent in Michigan than U Virginia is in Virginia? Furthermore, as further evidence that IS applications aren’t that numerous, Alexandre has argued elsewhere that U Michigan’s admit rate is so high because many Michigan high school students consider it unattainable and don’t even bother to apply. </p></li>
<li><p>According to your assumptions, you project that U Michigan is only able to achieve a INSTATE yield of 48%. If U Michigan is so revered in its own state, then why would its INSTATE yield be nearly 20 % lower than that of U Virginia IS? Is U Michigan’s IS yield of 48% believable when there are no other highly-ranked colleges in the state? I think not. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>Look, U Michigan is a fine school with a huge undergraduate population that includes many fine students. But all you’re doing here is further exposing the fact that, when compared to the colleges ranked in the USNWR Top 30, its overall student body is not particularly elite nor the preferred choice of most top applicants.</p>

<p>^ Well, US News does have separate lines in their "financial aid statistics" data for each school's "average athletic scholarship for first-year students" and "average athletic scholarship awarded to full-time students" without regard to in-state or OOS status. Berkeley reports $16,509 and $15,401 respectively for those two figures. But then down below where the percentages of instate and OOS students receiving FA are reported in detail, the "athletic scholarship" category drops out and your only choices are "need-based aid" and "non-need-based aid." There Berkeley reports that 22% of OOS freshmen receive "non-need-based aid" averaging $16,309---a figure suspiciously similar to the $16,509 average freshman athletic scholarship. Similarly, they report 21% of all OOS students receive an average of $15,964 in non-need-based aid---a figure very similar to the $15,041 they report for all scholarship athletes. Frankly, it's hard to see how the OOS non-need-based aid could be anything other than athletic scholarships. </p>

<p>As indirect confirmation, UCLA reports very similar figures in all of the above categories, except for slightly smaller athletic scholarships and correspondingly smaller average "non-need-based aid" figures. They do report a slightly higher percentage of OOS freshman receiving "non-need-based aid," however, at 27%---which would make sense if it's athletic scholarships because they're more aggressive in OOS athletic recruiting but OOS students overall represent a smaller fraction of the UCLA student body. </p>

<p>As for "poor reporting" by US News: what did you expect?</p>

<p>^^ hawkette,</p>

<p>Your latest rant notwithstanding, Michigan is in an intense in-state competition with Michigan State. Tons of Michiganders apply to both schools and are admitted to both. It is simply not credible, however, to assume (as you do) that Michigan State gets twice as many in-state applicants as Michigan. Nor is it credible to assume (as you do) that Michigan gets 50% to 60% more OOS applications than either UC Berkeley or UVa, both schools more highly ranked than Michigan by US News and both in locations perceived to be more desirable by many of the affluent and mobile who are most likely to consider attending an academically strong OOS public institution. </p>

<p>I acknowledge that Michigan wins more of the cross-admits than Michigan State, but in my own experience this has always been a closer call for many Michigan residents than an outside observer might think. You may choose to believe it or not, but most students are NOT as obsessed with US News rankings as you and many on CC are. Fierce in-state family loyalties and intra-family rivalries come into play. Some families are True Blue Michigan families, others bleed Spartan Green. Some are divided, and it's a battle royale within the family to win junior's loyalties if he's admitted to both schools. Michigan State is also cheaper than Michigan, a big consideration for a lot if Michigan families, and its honors program gives extremely generous merit aid that wins over a lot of top students (I must say I was tempted myself when MSU offered me full tuition and Michigan offered me $800). You find my instate yield estimate of 48% not credible. Yet it's significantly higher than Michigan State's 42%; higher than Berkeley's 44%; higher than UCLA's 38%; higher than Indiana's 38% or Purdue's 33% in the nearest neighboring dual-flagship competition; higher than all but a tiny handful of public institutions; higher than any other Big Ten school's with the possibly exception of Ohio State, and Ohio State doesn't have the kind of instate competition that Michigan State affords Michigan. </p>

<p>Also, I never said the 10,000 or so OOS applicants at UVa are the same 10,000 or so who apply at Berkeley or the same 10,000 or so who (by my estimate) apply at Michigan. That's ridiculous. You're flailing at a straw man here. I do say, however, that until you can point to credible evidence that ANY public institution gets anywhere near the 16000+ OOS applicants you ascribe to Michigan, and/or point to credible reasons why Michigan should draw 50% more OOS applications than any other known public institution, your claim amounts to sheer fantasy. It's risible.</p>

<p>You accuse me of "flipping the behavior patterns" of in-state and OOS applicants in Michigan and Virginia. I'm doing no such thing. I'm holding OOS applications constant across the two states (no reason to think they'd be higher in one than in the other, but if anything possibly higher in Virginia where more people cross state lines to go to school) I'm then conjecturing a larger in-state applicant pool in Michigan for several very straightforward reasons: 1) it's a bigger state, with a population 1/3 larger than Virginia's; 2) it's in a state and a region where historically public universities have been dominant, with a far higher percentage of students choosing to attend (and a fortiori to apply to) their in-state public institutions; 3) Virginia's population is anomalous insofar as its largest population center, the DC suburbs, considers itself more a part of the DC metropolitan area and more broadly the Northeast Corridor than part of the Commonwealth of Virginia, which probably accounts for the University of Virginia's uncommonly low rate of in-state applicants; 4) my estimate is consistent with what we know about instate applications to cross-state rival Michigan State and every other public university in the Big Ten---indeed, even a very conservative estimate by that measure. There's simply no credible reason to think in-state applications to the best public university in the state and in the region would be approximately half those to its chief instate rival and to any other Big Ten public university. It flies in the face of reason. Oh, and 5) your assertion on the one hand that weaker instate candidates are scared away by Michigan's demanding admissions standards despite its comparatively affordable instate tuition, yet on the other hand Michigan attracts a larger and weaker pool of OOS candidates who apparently are undaunted by OOS tuition approximately 4 times the instate rate a Wisconsin or Minnesota resident can get at either of those fine schools is---well, just laughably absurd.</p>

<p>Why the anger, hawkette? Unhappy that someone's breaking up your little Michigan-bashing game? Just chill.</p>

<p>


</p>

<p>Actually, you're just dead wrong about that, hawkette. Far more "top applicants" go to schools like Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, Texas, UIUC, and Wisconsin than anywhere else. In absolute numbers it's not even close. Michigan has more than twice as many students who scored 700+ on SAT math (or the ACT equivalent) as Harvard; more than 3 times as many as Princeton or MIT; four times as many as the University of Chicago; and five times as many as Rice. Oh, and 11 times as many as Caltech. Between them, those six great public institutions have nearly 60,000 undergraduates who scored 700+ in math (or equivalent)---more than all the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, the University of Chicago, and Johns Hopkins COMBINED. </p>

<p>I'm working up some charts on this. It's pretty cool. Remind me to show them to you sometime. No time to do it right now as I'm preparing for a major conference this week.</p>

<p>hawkette you are causing a lot of CC drama</p>

<p>Bc,
My rant? LOL. That’s a good one. This is fun. </p>

<p>Look, IS yields for U Michigan at 48% (your estimate) and U Virginia at 67% (verifiable fact) constitute a huge difference. What does this say about U Michigan’s reputation among applicants who know its value best? If your 48% IS yield number is anywhere close to being correct, that says volumes more than I or anyone ever could. If true, even Michigan residents don’t think it’s the plum that so many here vigorously promote. You purport that this canyon-like difference is explained away by the competition from Michigan State. Uhm, U Virginia gets some tough IS competition from the likes of W&M and Virginia Tech, not to mention fast-improving privates like U Richmond, and still manages a 67% IS yield. </p>

<p>Re the OOS yields, your comparisons to UC Berkeley are not very useful. UCB takes a MUCH smaller number/percentage of OOS students. Applicants know this and act in other directions. U Virginia, on the other hand, takes nearly the exact same percentage of OOS applicants as U Michigan. Clearly, U Virginia is a much better school for statistical comparison with U Michigan. </p>

<p>Re my characterization of your "flipping the behavior patterns" of IS and OOS applicants in Michigan and Virginia, this was taken directly from your post from just yesterday in # 198?</p>

<p>“So let's flip your assumptions and say Michigan gets 16,848 in-state applications and 10,990 OOS”</p>

<p>Finally, let me say again for the millionth time-I think that U Michigan is a fine state university that has many fine students among its 26,000+ undergraduates. It also has many students that are not as fine. When I make comparisons of ABC College to XYZ University, I don’t pick and choose which students I want to compare. This would be like Cornell fans taking just its engineering students and saying that its student body was superior to Harvard. Who’d buy that line of thinking? No one. So, why should we do it any differently with any other college? I compare all of the students. </p>

<p>You U Michigan guys/gals want all the adulation without any of the inspection. My belief is that objective information is the best disinfectant for separating the hype from the reality. And IMO, the reality is that U Michigan’s student body overall is very good, but not elite. </p>

<p>MPM,
I can see you are new to CC so I’ll try to explain the drama. My experience has often been that if one dares challenge posters from U Michigan on their college being anything other than a wondrous colossus, some of their supporters will do their very utmost to tar and feather you (btw, I haven’t commonly considered bc and alex in this context, our differences notwithstanding). Often, it’s personal and textbook from the 60s-pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. I’m the target. </p>

<p>Over the past 3 years, I have posted many threads full of objective data that compares mostly highly ranked colleges. Oftentimes, the objective data shows a result that is out of line with someone’s infatuation with their school. And then the attacks begin. I guess you call it drama. I prefer to think of my data posts, and responses to the attacks, as a reality-check.</p>

<p>"But all you’re doing here is further exposing the fact that, when compared to the colleges ranked in the USNWR Top 30, its overall student body is not particularly elite nor the preferred choice of most top applicants."</p>

<p>Hawkette, as usual you are totally unconvincing. </p>

<p>1) How did BC expose "the fact" that Michigan is not selective or a preferred choice of top applicants? I fail to see any sign of this "fact". Can you please provide us with the "facts" to support your ridiculous claim?</p>

<p>2) There is a slight contradiction in your sentence above. On the one hand, you say that Michigan's overall student body is not particularly elite nor the preferred choice of most top applicants. You have proof of neither. You are merely stating opinion. But (and here's the contradiction) the USNWR, which you use as the basis fordefining your top 30 universities, actually ranks Michigan 18th in the nation in terms of overall selectivity. </p>

<p>As for Michigan not being the "preferred" choice for top students, or that most OOS students who apply to Michigan aren't applying to top private universities, I guess that's your opinion. But you have no proof of that whatsoever.</p>

<p>So please,do yourself a favor and stop claiming that you have "facts". Instead, be honest and say that you are basing your claims on opinion, personal sentiment and SAT scores.</p>

<p>It is my understanding that hawkette is a graduate of The Ohio State University. She is so proud of it that she never posts anything about her alma mater on these boards. Instead she posts thread after thread, post after post, about a school that she never attended but perhaps secretly wished that she had.</p>

<p>


</p>

<p>Oh, so a 48% yield is BAD, indicating lack of respect for a school? Then what does that tell us about the following schools---your own figures, posted yesterday: </p>

<p>yield, school (applicants, admits, enrolled)</p>

<p>47%, Cornell (30383, 6503, 3055)
42%, Duke (17748, 4077, 1700)
39%, Vanderbilt (12911, 4238, 1673)
38%, Caltech (3597, 607, 231)
36%, U Chicago ( 10362, 3597, 1300)
34%, Northwestern (21930, 5872, 1981)
34%, Wash U (22428, 3887, 1338)
33%, Johns Hopkins (14848, 3603, 1206)
33%, Rice ( 8968, 2251 , 742)
30%, Emory (15366, 4175, 1235)</p>

<p>Look, if Michigan's instate yield IS 48%---and that's a bit of educated guesswork on my part, based on a conservative estimate of their number of instate apps---then that's extremely high on a national basis, better than, among the publics, Berkeley, UCLA, Wisconsin, UIUC, Georgia Tech, Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, Purdue, and Michigan State. And any school in the UC system. And any school in the Pac 10. And William & Mary, U Maryland, and Rutgers. And any SUNY. And among privates, in addition to those for which you list yields above, NYU, Boston College, Tufts, Brandeis, Lehigh, Carnegie Mellon, RPI, U Rochester, and Case Western. Higher than any university in the US News top 50 except the Ivies (Cornell excepted), Stanford, MIT, Notre Dame, and exactly 4 publics--Florida, UNC Chapel Hill, Texas, and Virginia, in that order (and no one's suggesting Florida is a better school than Virginia, Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA et al because it has a higher yield). And i'd be willing to bet that Flrodia, Texas and UNC all have far higher numbers of in-state applicants than those you report for UVa. A 48% instate yield is a sign of strength, not of weakness---an indication that state residents DO recognize quality and value. </p>

<p>I applaud UVa for its high instate yield, but that yield is not representative of top schools, public or private. It's an outlier both as to the small number of instate applicants and as to the high yield of admitted instate applicants. Your attempt to construct a hypothetical structure of applications and yield for michigan out of that single data point is pure delusional fantasy---spun, in typical hawkette fashion, to cast aspersions on Michigan. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Re the OOS yields, your comparisons to UC Berkeley are not very useful. UCB takes a MUCH smaller number/percentage of OOS students. Applicants know this and act in other directions.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I don't quite see the relevance of this argument, or how it gets you anywhere. UVa gets a little over 10,000 OOS applications. Berkeley gets about 9,000 OOS applications. UCLA gets about 10,000 OOS applications. I say, let's assume Michigan gets a little over 10,000 OOS applications. Is that so unreasonable? Is that "flipping behavior patterns"? Or is it just being consistent with the data we have---absent any basis in evidence or in reason to imagine that 50% more OOS students would apply to Michigan than to any of those schools, or to any other top public? I also cited Berkeley for its comparatively low instate yield; I don't see how a relatively low rate of OOS applications would affect that in the least. Berkeley's an outstanding school. Its 44% instate yield is also verifiable fact. I'm positing an instate yield at Michigan that's 4 points higher than Berkeley's, and higher than all but a vanishingly small number of public universities, of which UVa is one. Yet you irrationally insist UVa's instate yield is the only plausible benchmark. Hogwash. </p>

<p>Typical hawkette argument: find an outlier someplace (UVa anomalously low number of in-state applications coupled with anomalously high instate yield), hold that up as the yardstick by which to find the University of Michigan wanting, and ignore overwhelming evidence to the contrary.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Re my characterization of your "flipping the behavior patterns" of IS and OOS applicants in Michigan and Virginia, this was taken directly from your post.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I didn't say "flip the behavior patterns." I said flip the numbers you ascribe to Michigan because your numbers just don't make sense in light of all the considerations I advanced in post #211, not a single one of which have you answered with a reasoned argument.</p>

<p>U.S. News top 51 research universities, ranked by estimated number of students with SAT Math scores >700 (or ACT equivalent):</p>

<p>rank, estimate >700 SAT math, undergrad population, reported % SAT math >700</p>

<p>1 .14,212 U Illinois 30,895 46%
2. 11,333 UC Berkeley 24,636 46%
3. 11,216 U Michigan 26,083 43%
4. 11,149 UCLA 25,928 43%
5. 9,798 U Wisconsin 30,618
6. 9,365 U Texas 37,459
7. 7,971 Cornell 13,510
8. 7,537 Southern California 16,384<br>
9. 7,464 NYU 21,327 35%
10. 7,390 U Florida 35,189 21%
11. 6,614 UCSD 22,048 30%
12. 6,490 U Penn 9,687 67%
13. 5,654 Georgia Tech 12,565 45%
14. 5,467 Northwestern 8,284 66%
15. 5,428 U Virginia 15,078 36%
16. 5,367 Wash U 7,253 74%
17. 5,154 Penn State 36,815 14%
18. 4,986 Harvard 6,648 75%*
19. 4,881 Columbia 7,285 67%<br>
20. 4,855 Notre Dame 8,371 58%
21. 4,822 UNC Chapel Hill 16,628 29%
22. 4,571 U Washington 28,570 16%
23. 4,411 Stanford 6,584 67%
24. 4,348 Duke 6,394 68%
25. 4,089 Yale 5,311 77%
26. 3,965 Brown 6,008 66%
27. 3,919 Carnegie Mellon 5,849 67%
28. 3,763 Emory 6,719 56%
29. 3,723 Boston College 9,081 41%
30. 3,688 Princeton 4,918 75%
31. 3,688 UC Irvine 21,696 17%
32. 3,630 MIT 4,172 87%
33. 3,527 Vanderbilt 6,532 54%
34. 3,519 Georgetown 7,038 50%
35. 3,366 Johns Hopkins 5,705 59%
36. 3,055 UC Davis 23,499 13%
37. 2,906 U Chicago 4,926 59%
38. 2,870 Tufts 5,035 57%
39. 2,706 Dartmouth 4,164 65%
40. 2,394 UCSB 18,415 13%
41. 2,222 RPI 5,167 43%
42. 1,953 Rice 3,051 64%
43. 1,853 William & Mary 5,792 32%
44. 1,745 U Rochester 5,131 34%
45. 1,617 Lehigh 4,756 34%
46. 1,599 Case Western 4,207 38%
47. 1,487 Brandeis 3,233 46%
48. 1,412 Wake Forest 4,412 32%
49. 1,032 Tulane 6,449 16%
50. 913 Caltech 913 100%
51. 483 Yeshiva 3,017 16%</p>

<p>"You U Michigan guys/gals want all the adulation without any of the inspection. My belief is that objective information is the best disinfectant for separating the hype from the reality. And IMO, the reality is that U Michigan’s student body overall is very good, but not elite."</p>

<p>"rank, estimate >700 SAT math, undergrad population, reported % SAT math >700</p>

<p>1 .14,212 U Illinois 30,895 46%
2. 11,333 UC Berkeley 24,636 46%
3. 11,216 U Michigan 26,083 43%
4. 11,149 UCLA 25,928 43%
5. 9,798 U Wisconsin 30,618
6. 9,365 U Texas 37,459 "</p>

<ol>
<li>4,855 Notre Dame 8,371 58%</li>
<li>4,348 Duke 6,394 68% </li>
<li>3,763 Emory 6,719 56%</li>
<li>2,706 Dartmouth 4,164 65%</li>
<li>1,953 Rice 3,051 64%</li>
</ol>

<p>All I can do is LLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL...</p>

<p>i dont find the numbers baffling. a large number of college students who didn't get into the super elite schools, like harvard, end up going to their state's flagship school for a subsidized education. im sure most prefer to go to their home state school than shelling out tens of thousands of dollars per year to go to the lesser elite schools like those in the 20s-40s range.</p>