Rose Hulman lack of recognition?

I recently toured this school, and I was impressed by the campus and academics. Additionally, after looking at the salary of some of the graduates and where the graduates matriculate for grad school, I am asking, why is this school’s acceptance rate so high?

This school is also ranked #1 for schools without a grad school program, ahead of HMC and Olin.

My only conclusion is that since this school is not part of Common App, not as many people apply.

This schools acceptance rate is around 55% versus a 8 and 10% for the other two engineering schools ranked lower than Rose Hulman.

  1. It's not on the east or west coast.
  2. It's not near a major city.
  3. The male:female ratio is 76:24
  4. Only about 2000 students
  5. Very few arts classes.

It is part of the Common App.

I heavily recommended it to D16. She wouldn’t touch it.

I asked this to the admissions office when I visited last year and they said that they accept anybody who they think will be able to make it through Rose-Hulman.

If you can SURVIVE Rose Hulman…then you would be admitted. This isn’t your state school where you go have fun with friends and party hard. This is a school where you spend your Saturday studying…oh and I should mention you pull an all-nighter on Saturday studying, because on Sunday…you need to study just as hard for something else…

The people who generally apply to Rose already know what the school is about, and if they have the scores to even get past the first year.

Think of a school with 3000 students, and every year, only 1400 or so apply. Compare that with Harvard…hell when I was looking at schools 15 years back, I applied to Harvard even though I knew I couldn’t get in. Many schools that people know (outside of the focus of the school) are going to get lots of just …stupid applications. You don’t apply to rose on a whim…you apply because you want it.

I think location hurts RH in terms of getting applicants. One of my kids attended Operation Catapult. She just couldn’t see herself there for 4 years given the other options she was likely to have, and didn’t apply. They are also not a school that “meets need” financially, which is a problem for some students and likely hurts their yield (so they accept more students to get a full class, since some turn them down due to cost).

I feel like a lot of this comes from the above mentioned reasons (location, size), but a big factor I see (current student) is that if you go tell someone from your high school or a family friend that you’re attending Rose-Hulman, they’ll give you a puzzled look and ask what the heck it is. However, almost anyone I’ve asked in a computer science or related engineering industry has congratulated me for getting in and treated it as a well-reputed school. Anyone from the East and West coasts isn’t going to have much interaction with the school unless they are in the professional world- which doesn’t get the word out that well. That also means they don’t get as many throw-away applications like MIT or Harvard, which pride themselves on their low acceptance rates.

Rose is not part of the common app.

My daughter applied and was accepted for fall 2017. She will not attend, aid offered was not enough for us.

they are moving to common app this year, do you think applications will spike?

Also, I am really hoping to get nice aid there, it will likely be the tipping point in my decision. Do you mind sharing stats and how much aid was offered? I believe aid is mostly merit based along with a bit of need based so I would like to gauge how much I can expect if i get in. You can PM me; if you do not feel comfortable though its completely fine.

@mommabear67

From what I’ve seen at least in Indiana, a Rose degree will for sure get your foot in the door around here. I’ve seen multiple Rose grads driving around in Ferraris and Teslas touting their school license plate and stickers on their cars. Recognition and value shouldn’t be a problem.

Our son applied and was accepted to Rose Hulman in 2013. We were very impressed with the school and it was a close second choice, but merit money was less than where he eventually enrolled. What was MOST impressive about RH was their career service center. RH is well connected not only in Indiana, but in many large companies around the country. If you do well at RH, you should land a very good job.