Acceptance rate is only loosely correlated with selectivity or academic strength of the average student because you are not considering differences in applicant pool. For example, freshman SMU and Tulane have similar GPA/score stats, even though SMU has a >50% acceptance rate and Tulane had a 13% acceptance rate this year. At both schools, the median scores were in the test scores means are in the low 90s percentile, and mean GPA is in the A- range, yet the acceptance rates are completely different. Clearly neither school is as selective HYPSM…, but that was not the claim. The comment that triggered this tangent was, “SMU isn’t really an attractive school for high achievers, neither rank nor rigor of the school is at their desired level and no free full rides either. It’s more for rich or poor average students.” The SMU students as a whole are not “average,” and SMU does offer merit scholarships for high achievers. The best SMU merit scholarships include full ride + money to study abroad + honors classes.
Most people will find that OOS publics are too expensive with no or not enough financial aid. Forum posters are not representative of most high school and college students or parents, since forum poster parents tend to be high income and forum poster students tend to be high achieving (i.e. have more possibilities for merit scholarships or admission to good financial aid private colleges than most students).
sry, not seeing Utah gaining much anytime soon. It just seems too far away. Many who go to 'Zona/ASU are from SoCal, which is a 5-6 hour drive. (I know some who do it much faster – yikes!). UOregon offers a big green ethos, particularly for students interested in that area.
Yes, the Arizona schools appear expensive at sticker, but they are generous with OOS tuition waiver/scholarships, so the cost is much less than a private and can be on a par with a UC instate. Perhaps Utah is too, but just doesn’t have the connections on the Left Coast. Utah offers great skiing, but then so does Colorado, which also offers weed and a great college/party town. Way before CO joined the Pac, it was extremely popular with NorCal skiers.
Colorado, Oregon, and the Arizona schools just have a long pipeline to California high schools. Only CO requires an air flight.
@ucbalumnus Very true…
@bluebayou In Nevada where my D lives, she has met more people who’ve attended college in Utah, but even there more kids go to Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, and other Western States. And it still tends to be LDS kids who head to Utah. It’s interesting because our area of SOCAL is affluent and conservative, but even here no one wants to go to Utah for some reason…
^^well, sure, NV has the 4th highest (per capita) LDS population.
Not too sure why folks are hung on politics. The U is just too far to drive. Simple as that. Add in an officially dry campus, a third-to-half LDS students, and there are plenty of other attractive western publics.
With all the chat about student’s going out of state, I think some numbers may help put it into context.
Residence and migration of all first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduates in 4-year degree-granting postsecondary institutions who graduated from high school in the previous 12 months, by state or jurisdiction:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_309.30.asp
For example, a large % of students in the state of Utah are from out of state. Of the 19,318 undergrad students, enrolled in the state (at 4 year colleges), 12,658 are in-state, and 6,660 are OOS. Utah also only exported out 1,406 students, so the net migration was +5,254.
Utah does appeal to OOS students, but it’s not a large/populous state.You may not know of any students going to Utah, but, based on it’s size, it’s getting more than it’s share of OOS students.
Compare it to California. CA has a net minus migration with 36,528 students leaving the state, and 22,632 students going into the state (net of -13,896). The total enrollment in CA (undergraduates attending 4 year institutions) is 152,534 (as compared to Utah’s 19,318).
^^^ New Jersey really IS losing all its students!
31,686 (students starting college)
4,299 (stay instate)
27,387 (LEAVE)
Note: the above numbers are for “first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduates in 4-year degree-granting postsecondary institutions who graduated from high school in the previous 12 months”, according to the linked page.
https://www.byu.edu/numbers says that 35% of BYU students are from Utah. BYU had 5,440 new frosh, so that means that about 3,500 of new BYU frosh who came from places other than Utah make up more than half of the 6,660 new frosh in Utah colleges from places other than Utah. (Probably about 600 of those new BYU frosh came from California.)
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=utah&s=all&id=230764 indicates that 26% of University of Utah students are from places other than Utah. Since there were about 4,100 new frosh, that about 1,100 of them came from places other than Utah. I.e. less than a third of the number of non-Utah students compared to BYU.
So whether you know any students going to college in Utah may be dependent on how many CJCLDS members you know, since CJCLDS students going to BYU appear to make up most of the college student migration to the state of Utah.
^^Church members can also earn a full ride to BYU. (dunno about Utah.)
One of the top kids in our SoCal HS cleaned up with several local cash scholarships and made a downpayment on a 'Vette since he took the full ride to BYU (Accounting major).
Free becomes very attractive for OOS! But that is a special kinda free. 
BYU is not all that expensive among US colleges at list price to begin with: https://enrollment.byu.edu/financialaid/cost-of-attendance
I.e. an observant CJCLDS member is likely to find his/her “church flagship” to be price-competitive with or less expensive than his/her state flagship.
^^and per the CDS, slightly less than half of the Frosh receive merit aid.
One of my colleagues is a LDS and it was expected that he give at least 10% pretax gross income “tithe” to the church every year. He was making more than 200K a year so that’s at least 20K every year. All 4 of his kids went to BYU undergrad as LDS only pay 50% of the tuition of non-LDS students. His per child tuition cost was around 5K a year. Cheap for a college the caliber of BYU and I could see the attraction to have his family attend as our CA state colleges (CSU/UC) tuition range from 7K-13K per year.
CJCLDS CDS is a mouthful.
Post #162 is not surprising at all. The 8 Ivy’s are not the “Top 8” schools anymore. The world has changed. Duke, Northwestern, Chicago, Stanford and Vandy have all taken share against the Ivies and are now either Ivy League equivalents, or equivalent to HYP.
“SMU’s acceptance rate is 50%. In a country where top schools accept less than 10%, SMU is not nearly as selective and academic strength of average student is significantly lower than top schools.”
@Data10 posted good information.
It is something I personally try to pass on in different threads regarding using acceptance rates without regard to the quality of the pools and the ultimate admits. Some schools get a lot more candidates outside of the realistically considered set.
Here’s his/her post.
“Acceptance rate is only loosely correlated with selectivity or academic strength of the average student because you are not considering differences in applicant pool. For example, freshman SMU and Tulane have similar GPA/score stats, even though SMU has a >50% acceptance rate and Tulane had a 13% acceptance rate this year. At both schools, the median scores were in the test scores means are in the low 90s percentile, and mean GPA is in the A- range, yet the acceptance rates are completely different. Clearly neither school is as selective HYPSM…, but that was not the claim. The comment that triggered this tangent was, “SMU isn’t really an attractive school for high achievers, neither rank nor rigor of the school is at their desired level and no free full rides either. It’s more for rich or poor average students.” The SMU students as a whole are not “average,” and SMU does offer merit scholarships for high achievers. The best SMU merit scholarships include full ride + money to study abroad + honors classes.”
Utah gives a nice WUE discount, and makes it pretty easy for students from non-WUE states to establish residency. I think the main thing that has kept it from becoming more popular is the LDS “stigma”, for lack of a better word.
I graduated HS in NJ 30 years ago and it was the same then, speaking from my anecdotal experience. Almost everyone I knew went out of state.
I graduated form NJ HS in 1967–same then. We all wanted to get away. Many do return to work afterward.
NJ is losing students, but the stats in #306 are not correct. The 4,299 quoted are the number of students from other states that come to college in NJ. Overall, there are 29,875 first year students in NJ institutions (column 2). There were 57,262 first time students (column 3) graduating HS in NJ and of these, 25,576 went in-state (column 4). Thus, of the available seats in NJ, 86% were from NJ and 4,299 were from OOS. However, 45% of NJ grads went out of state. Some of that is kids wanting to leave, but some is due to somewhat limited choices. There just aren’t enough seats in NJ for graduates. Many kids in NJ would be thrilled to get into Rutgers New Brunswick.
I’m certainly not prioritizing a party scene for our kids but I know two kids who went to U of Utah recently and left after freshman year. The dry scene was just too much for them and neither of these kids were big partiers in high school. They admit that the school itself was terrific and the campus beautiful but they didn’t feel like they fit socially.
@homerdog Interesting to hear that. I think a higher proportion of OOS kids at Utah are in Greek life, because there’s no shortage of parties there.
I don’t see the nominally dry campus making a difference to what kids do in practice, but the OOS kids generally go for either the specialist programs (dance, theater, music, etc.) or because they are really outdoorsy (my D and her friends go camping or backpacking at the drop of a hat, drive 4 hours to a national park to see sunrise, go for a Sunday hike to the hot springs, go skiing, etc. and that’s just the last 2 months), not because they are looking for a party.
Spring break at a national park is more of a thing than spring break at the beach (apparently you can’t go to college in Utah without hiking to Delicate Arch and getting your photo taken there) - they are already planning which ski resort to drive 12 hours to next spring break to use their Ikon passes. If you don’t like the outdoors lifestyle I can imagine it being hard to fit in, whether you moved to Utah for college or for a job.