<p>Well, in both the short and long term, I don’t think it is terribly realistic that this idea is going to completely boost Minnesota’s selectivity (or at least actual attending student body). I’m not trying to be defensive here, either. </p>
<p>Usually schools who take the “lets admit out of state students!” route end up admitting out of state students with credentials lower than their instate counterparts. This isn’t always true, but it often is, especially if a school is just starting to do it in an attempt to attract more out of state students and rise up the rankings. UW-Madison is like this, in fact; out-of-state residents have about an average 3.58 GPA to an instate 3.82, I believe (although east coast grading is different in many respects and many of these people come from challenging private schools). This is partly because for many of these very qualified students looking out of state, cost is not a huge concern, and Wisconsin was just their “safety school” (usually after Michigan, Florida, etc). Thus, Wisconsin has a problem getting that “top level” out of state talent in large numbers because they are getting accepted by the “better” schools at the tops their list (often privates willing to give large financial incentives). Even though UW often offers a comparatively lower tuition, many of them will gladly take on the debt to pay the extra 10k to go to Michigan. With that said, it would be interesting to see how the out of state students already attending Minnesota stack up against the instaters, but I am too lazy to find this info, and I suck at finding these things.</p>
<p>Anyway, if UMN tripled its out of state student body in a small number of years like you said, unless they suddenly obtained the decades-long-earned rep of Michigan, they would probably need to be admitting out of state students with some comparatively pretty low scores, especially when it comes to the kids who are actually choosing to attend the following fall. Furthermore, as amazing as The Cities may be as a magnet to sell the university to out of state kids, I don’t think it would be a huge part of the equation or consideration considering that a very large number of these students are coming from cities like Boston, New York, LA, Seattle, or the Bay Area. Most of the top privates (and publics) offer very very little in this department in comparison to Minnesota.</p>
<p>I imagine that if next year’s incoming freshman class had tripled its out of state population (unreasonable, obviously), many of these students would be getting in with GPA’s in the low 3’s and pushing high 2’s; a lowering in tuition will just not result in an increase in highly-qualified out of state attending students that can account for a full 200% increase in out of state population (as well as a boost in the credentials of the 10% already there). Perhaps after a decade or so this would change, though. I don’t really know.</p>
<p>With that said, I believe the HS-grads decline is even worse here in Wisconsin than it is in Minnesota, and I would like to see us more aggressively recruit out of state and international students. Especially the latter, as it would build up international networking (very important) as well as many other things that are becoming increasingly more important every year in this global world. Otherwise, what this topic was actually about before it got hijacked into another Minnesota/Wisconsin debate (how did that happen again?) will most certainly hold true for UW.</p>