<p>Do anyone think the university could use a different webiste layout/ format, or possibly know if it is already under the works? Since my first time going to The University of Iowa website I always thought it could used a little more effort, as the image I got was more of a newspaper. I think the website overall is very informative but question on the effort put towards its online image. What could possibly get done?</p>
<p>Current freshmen</p>
<p>If you’re referring to the aesthetics of the University website, it is pretty bland. Although it may not necessarily be attractive, it is easy to navigate for current students and not bogged down by pictures and fancy layouts. I know the website is updated and renovated daily, but a drastic change in layout is not likely to happen. Its structured for ease of navigation, and a big part of that means not disrupting the “known” layout. However, individual departments change their pages somewhat frequently.</p>
<p>As college studnents and potential college students we are all very educated and wouldn’t be challenge by a different format/ layout. I also think that university websites do play a part in a schools public marketing and that’s why I think a revision is important.</p>
<p>You would be surprised how many people cant navigate simple websites. Saying that everyone with a college education has the ability or the time to learn a new layout is a huge assumption. I dont know what youre comparing the UIowa website to, but I actually think theirs is pretty decent compared to many others (ie: ia state).</p>
<p>I first compare the schoool to every single university within the Big Ten, and ask what could possibly be done. Unfortunately I do not have a student position with the school online marketing.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/999427-class-2015-list-acceptances-h-s-2011-a-28.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/999427-class-2015-list-acceptances-h-s-2011-a-28.html</a></p>
<p>Reviewing the above link I was surprised when I notice every big ten school on the list besides The University of Iowa. Since this is CC I question on whether the RAI placed by Iowa board of regents could have made students less attracted to the school and possibly effect its score with USNEWS yearly ranking.</p>
<p>Coolbreeze- Unfortunately, it seems that UI is underrated on CC and in my suburban Chicago community as well.</p>
<p>According to Naviance over 80 students from my kid’s high school applied to UI and only 5 are attending. But, I don’t think the RAI has anything to do with that. People in my community covet UW-Madison and Michigan. U of I-Champagne/Urbana is second to those two. </p>
<p>I’d like to know why you think that the RAI might be a factor. Do you think that it attracts students with lower stats or that it makes it more difficult to gain admission? </p>
<p>My son will be applying this fall and as I watch those nasty red x’s on Naviance close in on his stats I’m worried that the RAI is less of a factor than UI says it is. He is above 245 when I calculate it but many students with his stats are being rejected from UI. </p>
<p>It will be a difficult decision for him if he’s accepted because he likes two other universities as much as UI. </p>
<p>I’d like to know what your thoughts are on the RAI.</p>
<p>[College</a> of Liberal Arts and Sciences Admission Requirements for First-Year Students - Requirements and Deadlines - Undergraduate Admissions - The University of Iowa](<a href=“http://www.uiowa.edu/admissions/undergrad/requirements/fy-clas.html]College”>http://www.uiowa.edu/admissions/undergrad/requirements/fy-clas.html)</p>
<p>Many students, especially the student body you would find on college confidential may be turned off from a school that give automatic admission if you meet a certain score, that is exactly what RAI is. Instate 245, out of state 255.</p>
<p>CB, a couple questions for you. First is a comment really. Drawing a link between Iowa’s admissions requirements and some arbitrary list of college acceptances is a pretty dubious affair. Now, IF you’re suggesting that this list represents the acceptance of high-caliber candidates and IF the lack of Iowa mention shows their lack of interest in Iowa and IF this in turn means that Iowa is a low-end school which is SOMEHOW because of the RAI system, well, by golly your logic holds water. But that logic is obscure and twisted.</p>
<p>I’d ask you CB, why it is your posts concerning Iowa have changed from positive and optimistic to generally negative. This shift occured shortly after your arrival on campus last fall. I am guessing you are not enjoying your time there? Are you finding the academics lacking? Most of your posts seem to deal with the school’s shortcomings.</p>
<p>Lovemykids2, the RAI is a recent tool used by the University and by Michael Barron’s admission it is an experiment. Whether it “works” or not is, like most aspects of college admissions, a subjective and complicated question. Personally I would not be surprised if the weights applied to different factors get changed. The current RAI formula heavily weights the number of college prep courses and underweights ACT score and GPA, in my opinion. So what does this mean about the caliber of accepted candidates? I have no idea.</p>
<p>While it’s clear that Iowa’s requirements are not as high as Illinois’ or Wisconsin’s or certainly Michigan’s, any suggestion that it’s a cakewalk school are foolish. My son is a freshman in biomedical engineering and he is getting his a__ kicked. The recommended courseload for this semester is 18 credits: two math courses, chem, physics and computer science. No elective, no humanities. You tell me if that’s tough.</p>
<p>Yikes, beastman your post comes across scarey and have lost me within all of it.</p>
<p>First, I am happy to be at Iowa and excited to return to the school next year. My comments of the school have never turned from postive to negative it has always been positive and “progressive” comments. Have you not seen my recent post under college search or my recent post under this forum in general on how great it is that the school has seen a increase in endowment, comparable to other schools that have nearly twice the size student body? As a student at Iowa who have absolutely enjoyed my time here I can not help but figure out why the school is underrepresented on cc etc… Do you not find it interesting as myself that looking at the above link the University of Iowa was not listed among the schools once? If you are a alumni from the University of Iowa I think it would sprawl interest and not a view of negativity. Do I think the RAI attract away many high profile students, ofcourse I do but I do not think it attract away all because as a student at Iowa I think the student body is very competitive.
Eventhough I think Iowa is the best school in the Big Ten comparing it to the other schools it is the only one with a RAI system.</p>
<p>
I now feel even worst today as I was recently stressed out about my current course load ( 18 credits) but have decided to withdraw from one and take one or several math classes over the summer at a local community college or MSU. I also think one of my classes may be considered a elective.</p>
<p>cb, I am sorry if my challenge to your logic was “scarey.” This is a public forum and if you are inclined to speculate or draw inferences you should be prepared to back them up. Posts here influence readers and they need to be more than just speculation.</p>
<p>Am I intrigued that Iowa is not listed in the link you post? Not in the least. I have never taken CC or any of its participants to be either authoritative or representative on the matters under discussion. Many objective, published measures of a school’s competitiveness are available. I generally refer to these statistics rather than posts here on CC.</p>
<p>That said, I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying your time at the University.</p>
<p>
Assuming you are out of state, to be admitted a student must have a admission score of at least 255. This could be why many were rejected eventhough they had good stats.</p>
<p>Coolbreeze- Thank you, I did know that the RAI for OOS was 255, and my son is just above that. </p>
<p>I think that Beastman’s comment regarding CP classes was interesting. Perhaps that is the reason for the rejections seen on Naviance. If those kids took intro classes or took fluff classes instead of science, math, and history classes, it could make a difference. </p>
<p>My son will have taken 4 years of all core classes as well as a few technology classes, business, and law classes. All were CP with a few honors mixed in.</p>
<p>Hopefully UI will consider that when they look at his transcript. His GPA isn’t as high as his sister’s, nor is his ACT so I know that he won’t get the nice merit scholarship that she did, we’re only hoping for admission.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it seems that UI is underrated on CC and in my suburban Chicago community as well.</p>
<p>According to Naviance over 80 students from my kid’s high school applied to UI and only 5 are attending. But, I don’t think the RAI has anything to do with that. People in my community covet UW-Madison and Michigan. U of I-Champagne/Urbana is second to those two. </p>
<p>lovemykids2, I live in the suburbs of Chicago, people in my community think very highly of UI, but the cost turns people down. My daughter is going this fall and her award summary was just posted on ISIS, COA for fall 2011 is $38,454.00. Ouch!
Also just an FYI, I have twins, funny thing happened at Iowa. Twin 1 has an RAI of 243, so when she applied she sent in a personal statement and 2 letters of recommendation. On a Tuesday her application said “not admitted” then that same week on Thursday, Twin 2 who has an RAI of 270 application status went to “Admitted”. On that Saturday we received 2 letters of acceptance in the mail. I rechecked the application status of Twin 1 and it said “admitted” It was strange to say the least.
I am sure your son will have no problem with admission. BTW Twin 1 is going to another school here in Illinois. But she was still thrilled they admitted her.</p>
<p>Excellent thread. I’m clearly in the camp that the U of IA is vastly underrated on CC. One only has to look at the number of threads/posts for the U of IA as compared to the other B10 schools.</p>
<p>As most know, the RAI is used by all three Iowa Regents universities - U of IA, ISU and UNI. I speculate that the RAI admissions component may actually make the U of IA more attractive - particularly for IL students - as compared to the B10 schools of U of MN, U of IN, Purdue, MSU etc. The student can get on the IA Regents website and, in a matter of minutes, have a very good idea as to the likelihood of their admission here. Very little fretting or worrying involved.</p>
<p>Further, while ISU and UNI have to work pretty hard to keep their enrollment numbers up (I’m an ISU alum), the U of IA seems to have the opposite problem, namely because of the large application/admissions pipeline of good students from IL. Based upon recent application and admissions growth trends (and state budget issues), I suspect that, at some point in the future, the U of IA will look to manage/limit its enrollment throught either: 1) increasing the minimum RAI score, or 2) will discard the RAI all together and move to a “holistic” application process.</p>
<p>Beast, LMK2 and Chicago - I agree very much with your RAI comments. Personally, I kind of like the RAI. It limits some of the “arbitrariness” that seems to be occuring in the admissions process at B10 schools like UMich, UW Madison and the U of IL. Our D had an RAI of 280 -she took a full college prep H.S. class load (w/ 4 AP’s), had a solid grade point average and class rank but only an average ACT score. That is what’s nice about the RAI. If a student has a weakness in one area, it can be offset by strengths in another. If the student is strong across the board - no problemo!</p>
<p>Anyway, what’s the opinion of the rest of you posters/readers/lurkers here? I’d welcome your thoughts.</p>
<p>Thanks and HAPPY ST. PADDY’S DAY :)</p>
<p>B10P</p>
<p>B10P, not to derail your worthy attempts to solicit more input from others but I want to address Chicago1992’s comments.</p>
<p>Specific to your situation, 1992, have you been awarded any merit aid, esp. the $4260/year available to many OOS students? I ask because it seems like during my visits to Iowa you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a dozen suburban Chicago prospects and/or parents. Their common story is that Iowa is generally the same or cheaper than Urbana-Champaign for them. As Illinois residents. Huh? How this can be I have no idea but that’s what I’m hearing. Of course, it all comes down to individual circumstances, and maybe those families garnered more merit aid at Iowa than they did at home.</p>
<p>B10P, I agree with you and love the RAI for its straightforwardness. Wisconsin makes me both gag and chuckle with their “holistic” approach, telling prospects they want a “community” of “engaged learners” who “bring something to the table.” Now this makes perfect sense to me if we’re talking about a LAC of 1500 students, but a sprawling public university of 30,000? Puh-leaze!!</p>
<p>I think I just gagged on a dead cat :)</p>
<p>“Specific to your situation, 1992, have you been awarded any merit aid, esp. the $4260/year available to many OOS students? I ask because it seems like during my visits to Iowa you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a dozen suburban Chicago prospects and/or parents. Their common story is that Iowa is generally the same or cheaper than Urbana-Champaign for them. As Illinois residents. Huh? How this can be I have no idea but that’s what I’m hearing. Of course, it all comes down to individual circumstances, and maybe those families garnered more merit aid at Iowa than they did at home.”</p>
<p>Beastman, UIUC is currently about $31,000. I haven’t received any letter of merit aid, or award summary at this time. I am of course hoping to. I was just saying that people where I live do look at Iowa as a great school. But if you compare the cost of Iowa vs, let’s say Illinois State University, it’s about a $12,000 a year difference. So when parents look at that difference, it turns them away from Iowa. With that said, the cost of UIUC turns off a lot of parents where I live also. I personally think the OOS cost at Iowa is not bad compared to OSU, when I received their cost of attendance it was about $43,000. And I guess it makes a difference what your major is too. I know a few girls by me who wanted to go to Iowa for Nursing, but their parents are sending them to ISU(Illinois), at the end of the day a BSN degree is still the same from either school.
But yes, Iowa’s cost compared to UIUC is not too bad. Hopefully I get the $4260 your talking about!</p>
<p>I applied to Iowa State, and I would argue that the RAI is an asset, not a liability. The RAI:
a) allows for very quick turnaround on admission decisions,
b) reduces the mystique/confusion associated with holistic review,
c) allows officials at small schools with limited admissions experience a simple way to counsel students on college admissions, and
d) permits quantitative evaluation of future schedules for use in high school planning</p>
<p>I would argue that the type of student who might be turned off by the RAI is unlikely to end up at any of the three regent universities anyway. Let’s face it: U Iowa is not U Michigan. That’s not to say that a student cannot receive a truly top-caliber education at any of these schools. In fact, I think the regent universities are a major asset for the state of Iowa. But none of them carry the same elite cachet as some other schools, and I don’t see a prestige-obsessed student or parent targeting Iowa regardless of the exact admission procedure.</p>
<p>Regarding the website, I actually think the U Iowa website is quite aesthetically pleasing. In terms of ease of use, I would give an edge to ISU, but both are above average in my opinion.</p>
<p>Why are students not choosing to attend U Iowa? First, I don’t think we really have sufficient evidence to warrant this conclusion. But even if true, I think cost is a much more likely culprit. At the end of the day, the out-of-state costs at U Iowa are higher than at many peer institutions.</p>
<p>Just my 2 cents.</p>