<p>I never said it would result in a weaker entering class for next year. For one, Minnesota is intent on playing the US News Rankings game, and if any University truly and obsessively is (like Minnesota), its not that hard to ensure that you will have more selective entering classes coming in.</p>
<p>Furthermore, what I actually said was if they admitted 30% of the student body from out of state right off the bat in next years group of freshman, then the attending class would be quite a bit weaker. If a University that isn’t already A-level selective and doesn’t have a whole lot of rep decides it wants to attract three times as many out of state students, it just isn’t going to suddenly attract the cream of the crop, even if it lowers tuition to a level of explicit beggary. </p>
<p>And I don’t see Minnesota “passing Wisconsin” unless it plays some quirks in the US News Rankings. Getting near Wisconsin in rankings and “quality,” has probably been inevitable for some time, but passing is unlikely. Wisconsin is still becoming more selective, especially in its pool of out of state residents. If Minnesota does get up to Wisconsin’s level soon, it will find that its selectivity will probably top out around there. That is, it will have a very difficult time breaking into the next level for a number of reasons. And if Wisconsin does ever start to slip, all they need to do is drop out of state tuition and recruit more international students (which I imagine the admissions depart is considering due to the drop in HS grads). It would be so easy… I mean, tons of kids from all over the nation already know that Madison is a great place to combine a high-quality education with a great college experience.</p>