Outside of the consistently top schools. What traditionally strong institutions outside of this top group that you feel both here on CC and in your worldview seem to be more competitive and attractive than ever. And why?
A few that seem to meet this threshold for me.
University of Pittsburgh
Fordham
Tulane
University of South Carolina
U of Massachusetts/Amherst
Northeastern seems to get more popular every year.
I bet rising popularity is different depending where you live. Here at our school in suburban Chicago, the southern schools have been getting more attention - U South Carolina, Clemson, Alabama. Also kids have been looking for alternatives to Big Ten schools - U Oklahoma , U Arizona, UCSD have become more popular. Kids here just love the big schools. No one really looks at east coast public universities. I think they see them as the same as Big Ten schools with the same bad weather. Ha.
I’m waiting for the tide to turn and for kids to discover LACs but, for the most part, only athletes go to LACs when they are recruited. Our guidance counselors try every year to get more kids interested in them but kids from our 3000-student school just can’t get past how small they are. Their loss if you ask me!
Maybe it’s just personal/recency effect, but I see Purdue a lot more than I used to. I don’t think our HS had sent more than a handful total in the past, but my D and three classmates enrolled two years ago, and several have followed each of the last 2 years.
They’ve held tuition steady for eight years now and with applications up from 31k to 55k in 6 years, admit rates down 14 points, and Freshman ACT up over 2 points, it appears to be getting attention more broadly.
@RichInPitt I don’t know anyone at Purdue who isn’t happy…and they all seem to get amazing internships and jobs.
And that’s how reputations go up. Kids from a high school test the waters with a school, have a good experience, and tell their friends back home!
Good post. Here in the northeast, seems there is much more recent interest in SEC and southern schools such as Clemson, Elon, Wake and the like. Have no idea why. Number of Alabama applicants, which was never seen years ago. And “cool” schools with manageable acceptance rates like NYU and Wesleyan remain in the mix for an inordinate amt of kids…
Schools with technical degrees & CS majors are sought after now.
@Publisher that’s a good point.
Tech schools. I do hear a lot more about Perdue than ever. UMaryland for CS and Georgia Tech. Really hot schools.
Southern schools too.
University of Rochester comes up a lot too and years ago it was always a good school but not super common.
Grinell is a top school but I’ve heard it mentioned a lot more on the east coast where I live lately than the past.
Maybe students and parents are looking for peaceful and safe environments too.
I think @homerdog is right about much of the rising/falling popularity depending on where you live. And then there are cascading effects: @TheBigChef is right about Northeastern, and cascading from that is a big rise in Drexel’s popularity. (Not just anecdote + anecdote = data, but something the head of college counseling at S’s school has been bringing home as a truth from his travels to various conferences for the last couple of years.)
Michigan (which I think probably was always popular), Purdue, and TAMU were super popular two cycles ago with my D and her engineering crowd.
Based on CC chatter, UCF and USF.
UCF, in particular, enrollment is 2.3x of the enrollment 20 years ago.
Yes. UCF. That’s a good one. I would also say many of the UCs outside of the two biggies are off the charts hot too.
Interesting, haven’t had Purdue mentioned thru last 2 cycles -increased interest can certainly be dictated and driven by athletic success. Villanova perfect example - great school, but applications skyrocketed after b-ball success…
One thing that seems “hot” among the children of my colleagues is affordability. In-state public schools seem to be getting increasingly large numbers of increasingly strong students. The quality of the strongest graduates that I am seeing from these schools is very high right now.
“technical degrees & CS majors are sought after now”
I agree with this also.
Colleges & universities which offer a substantial number of merit scholarships are also increasingly popular now.
U Richmond is hot in my area (suburban Chicagoland)
Looking at the stats of where grads go for our local public here in NorCal, the only school that appears to have really hit the radar locally is…Tulane. The Class of 2022, my kid’s class, had 5 attend Tulane. In the prior 3 years, a total of 1. Class of 2023 stats have not been posted.
There have been smaller upticks to MIT, Duke and WashU too though they’ve always been “on the map.”
@sushiritto I do wonder about Tulane. Any idea why Tulane now popular? I don’t think there’s any merit. I don’t think their rankings have gone up. Maybe it’s similar to other schools that have had their acceptance rates plunge and Tulane is a little easier to get in?
We’re in a NJ, and outside of Rutgers and TCNJ, the most popular schools attending from last year’s graduates are (in alph order):
Boston College
Bucknell
Clemson
Delaware
Fordham
Lehigh
Maryland
Michigan
NYU
Syracuse
Vermont
Predominantly, most local grads are attending UC’s, CSU’s and CCC’s as one would expect. But once this thread popped up, I looked up the stats for the Years 2015-2018 and Tulane jumped out at me. No idea why, but one thing is clear from the stats, southern schools in general aren’t popular here, at least yet.