In our area, U Richmond, Tulane, Elon, and Bentley (MA), and Butler have seen a surge in applications in last two years. Richmond for their outcomes in placement on Wall Street and healthcare sectors, Tulane and Elon for their ample Merit scholarships for strong Northeast students, and Elon’s Honor College outcomes, and Bentley for their proximity to Boston, merit aid, and more accessible acceptances for business school hopefuls.
I’m an international student (europe), and people are suppper competitive. Everyone wants to go to a name brand school and LACs are not super popular, but that being said, there are still some who prefer that. Usually people prefer going to urban areas and cities (the coasts are more popular), but as I said before, there are exceptions.
I’m gonna do it by regions: (n/a means that not alot of people choose these regions and they arent super popular)
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New England:
Tier 1: Yale, Harvard, MIT, Brown
Tier 2: Tufts, Northeastern, Boston College, Babson, Boston University, WPI, Emerson -
Mid East:
Tier 1: UPenn, Georgetown, Columbia, Barnard
Tier 2: NYU, Rutgers, Parsons, Pratt, George Washington, American Uni, Fordham -
South East:
Tier 1: Duke, UVA
Tier 2: UNC, Tulane -
Great Lakes:
Tier 1: UMichigan, Northwestern
Tier 2: Purdue, Michigan State, UWisconsin-Madison -
Plains: N/A
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Southwest: N/A
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Rocky Mountain: N/A
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Far West:
Tier 1: Stanford, USC, UCLA, Berkeley, Caltech
Tier 2: Loyola Marymount, UCSD, Pepperdine, Chapman
Interesting that, from your European viewpoint, three small religious colleges (of different Christian denominations) are among the highest profile ones in the region, even though they are much lower profile locally.
@ucbalumnus yeah, thats interesting! What would you say are more high-profile schools in that region? I’m sure there are popular state schools, but people around me usually prefer private schools since its usually the same cost as public schools (cause its basically impossible for us to get financial aid)
@akcollege123 In the far West, Tier 2 might look like this:
Pomona, Harvey Mudd, UCSD, UCSB
Some people would move USC to Tier 2. Reed College is a non-California candidate for Tier 2.
For engineering majors, Calpoly SLO is also potential Tier 2.
If you are partial to religious colleges, Santa Clara University might be higher profile than the ones you listed.
The high profile private schools in the region are Stanford, USC, Caltech, the Claremont colleges, and Reed. Those interested in Catholic schools will find a number of them in the region (LMU is one, but there are also San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Portland, Seattle). Religiosity various among religious schools; Pepperdine (Churches of Christ) is heavily religious, while the Jesuit Catholic schools have a much lighter touch.
For California residents, more of the UCs (except perhaps UCR and UCM) and CPSLO tend to be seen as generally desirable. Cal Poly SLO may also be attractive to some out-of-state students, due to its lower CSU cost. Washington seems to have a high mind share, despite the competitiveness around the popular CS and engineering majors there (though engineering is switching to a new system that is probably much less competitive after enrolling as a designated pre-engineering student). Some students also look to the Arizona, Arizona State, and Oregon, either with parental money or scholarship money to pay for the out-of-state costs. San Jose State and Santa Clara have some visibility based on their Silicon Valley location.
Around here, the reach school that people apply to and get rejected from is currently Stanford, Vanderbilt and Yale also in running.
Where people actually go? Wisconsin, Minnesota, UW Eau Claire, UW La Crosse.
Most popular LACs Macalester, St Olaf, Grinnell
Why is Elon a “Hot” school?
The tuition at Elon is 35K , which is not cheap, but for a private is much less expensive than the schools that are all hovering around 50K these days. Another popular thing about Elon is that in they do a month abroad, instead of full semester (or you can stay and take a concentrated class). Their communications program is top notch. They dont require a 4.0 GPA and ACT/SAT scores that are superhuman (average ACT is around 27 and having a few B’s still gets you accepted). The campus is beautiful. It definitely attracts more females than males though,. It was my D17’s 2nd choice school. (she got into her first choice).
New England public school perspective:
Wildly Hot - Northeastern, no one can believe how far, how fast that campus has come.
Always Hot - Boston College, Fordham with the later gaining on BC with nice merit packages.
Cooling off - Boston University. Needs some campus renovation.
Best Places to Escape Northeast - Duke, Clemson, Miami
Elon also offers a fair amount of merit (coupled with far more reasonable tuition)
Any school located somewhere in Ecuador is hot.
Has Wash U cooled down a bit? It was really hot the last few years.
akcollege123, you forgot to mention the University of Chicago in the Great Lakes region. It is quite possibly the hottest college in the nation.
Pomona College is pretty hot temperature wise and in popularity and prestige. And all the UC colleges are usu red hot as California in general is a popular destination for most college bound students. But esp UCLA which seems to be a dream school for a lot of people. go Bruins!
When I was in high school in Virginia in 1980ish, Elon was the super safety school. It was the place you applied when you could maybe only get into community college but wanted to go away. JMU was the school the middle of the pack kids went to. Rankings change a lot over time. Good for these schools for working to improve the offerings. A friend’s son graduated from Elon in film studies and is having an amazing career.
Rankings do change a lot. 40 years ago, Amherst was my safety. Times change. Schools that are hot right now seem to be more geared to what potential students see as valuable-co-ops at Northeastern, internships at Elon, career placement at other schools. And value. Students are much more value oriented than they used to be.
UChicago and Northeastern may be hot because of their relentless marketing strategies over the past decade-plus. There are articles about how they pumped up their hotness over the years.
UChicago (and there are several newspaper articles about this too. This article sums up the history, though)
http://www.personalcollegeadmissions.com/getting-in/the-great-success-of-the-university-of-chicago
Northeastern -
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/
@Dustyfeathers, while Northeastern may have gamed the rankings at one time, the current admitted student profile is very impressive - one can’t game the students, or their parents, once they are there, so the value proposition must be evident.
Hot schools in our area seems to remain quite stagnant. Iowa and Indiana for the B+ kids. Wisconsin and Michigan for the A students who want Big Ten. And the usual suspects for the high achieving students - Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Duke, Rice, Wash U. They all want the 5000-6000 undergrad, suburban school. Out of 750 grads each year, we still only have maybe 20 kids apply to elite LACs.