I love this thread. I think its exciting how many schools are gaining popularity and credibility. This is good news for students and families once they start to realize the world of opportunity out there.
I think women’s colleges are on the rise as well. Scripps, Smith, Wellesley and Mt Holyoke. All have seen increases in applications and enrollment.
Have seen this too. And there is a surprisingly similar option for SoCal kids: Northern Arizona University. Comparable admissions standards, discounted out-of-state WUE tuition, and access to skiing.
Not everyone associates the words “Arizona” and “skiing”, but NAU is in Flagstaff, at an elevation of 7000 ft, just 15 miles from Arizona Snowbowl.
We looked at Rowan for my youngest…but went with TCNJ as it was “already there” and had gone through the “up and coming” thing.
There’s been a handful of kids each year from my Bay Area town going to NAU and are choosing it over Chico and some of the other CSUs that they traditionally would have looked at. 20 years ago I’d never heard of anyone from my area going there. (I love Flagstaff and went many times as a kid, so I can see the appeal).
Backwards-looking, because of reporting lag, but these are the schools which, between the 2013 application year (for students applying to start Fall 2014) and the 2016 application year, saw all of: applications increased, admission rate decreased, yield increased, 75th percentile for SAT Reading and SAT Math and ACT Composite all increased. Sorted by % change in applications, high to low.
Paul Quinn College
Post University
Ave Maria University
University of California-Berkeley
Boston University
Barnard College
Babson College
University of Pennsylvania
Charleston Southern University
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Haverford College
Mississippi College
University of Notre Dame
Vanderbilt University
Otterbein University
Near-misses: At least one 75th percentile test score increased, and none decreased:
Louisiana State University-Alexandria
Alice Lloyd College
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Jacksonville State University
Emmanuel College
Southern Virginia University
Cabrini University
University of California-Los Angeles
Johns Hopkins University
University of Wisconsin-River Falls
Northwestern Oklahoma State University
Lafayette College
Harvey Mudd College
School of Visual Arts
Alabama A & M University
University of Southern California
Methodist University
Stanford University
Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College
Carnegie Mellon University
Tufts University
Northwestern University
Yale University
Texas Christian University
Pacific University
Lehigh University
University of Rhode Island
Duke University
University of Chicago
Midland University
Dallas Christian College
The other end of the spectrum (apps down, acceptances up, yield down, all 3 75th percentile test scores down):
United States Coast Guard Academy
St Louis College of Pharmacy
Wilmington College
San Diego Christian College
Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
Life Pacific College
Wheeling Jesuit University
The Baptist College of Florida
Wheelock College
University of the Ozarks
SUNY College of Technology at Alfred
La Roche College
St Mary’s College of Maryland
Valdosta State University
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
College of Charleston
University of Illinois at Springfield
Many universities of that level of selectivity have some or many majors which are more popular than department capacity, so they are hard to change into later. It is hardly a problem unique to CPSLO.
The big winner for my strongest students this year was Georgia Tech. California students are choosing it over UCB and UCLA.
I don’t know if UAH is rising in the rankings, but it’s a great option for engineering.
Agree with UT Dallas.
Agree with U Richmond (regular decision rate was 11%).
Agree with UCF.
UMD and UMBC are both getting more selective, for sure.
UCI is no one’s safety school anymore. Great school for CS.
Trinity in Texas, U Delaware, U Rochester, Northeastern seem to be more popular.
I was completely unfamiliar with UMBC until they broke my bracket by pulling the first ever 16-1 upset over UVA.
Very impressive story and focus – the leading school for STEM/URMs. Their president Freeman Hrabowski is worth checking out.
Seems that no one notices the other STEM-oriented public university in the Huntsville metro area, Alabama A&M University (AAMU).
@washugrad My DS is a Nevada grad (2013) he went on elsewhere to earn a Doctorate in Physical Therapy - I’d say he did just fine at Nevada - Go Wolfpack!
Great school, beautiful campus and since he was in-state with the state scholarship, a darn good value.
Nevada has some distinguished programs, Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Douglas Reynolds School of Journalism
It is interesting when you see a college come up on the high school senior lists for a few years in a row and then a different one for awhile. I am not sure if “up” means popularity or ranking. Agree on Dennison…it is popular right now. Before Dennison it was Butler in my district. Michigan Tech has been coming up in quantity of kids attending from our district lately and moving up in various rankings that I have seen.
The California school that dominates the wealth-related metrics is, of course, Soka U of America. In the 2017 USN&WR rankings (don’t have the 2018), SUA was ranked #1 for “Financial Resources” and #1 for “Faculty Resources” in the National Liberal Arts Colleges category – ahead of traditional top-ranked LACs like Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, or Pomona.
SUA is not for everyone, but it doesn’t have to be, given its small size. Their current USN&WR ranking (#39 in the National LAC category) is actually pretty impressive for a school that is less than 20 years old, and which has limited national name recognition. If they keep leveraging their amazing endowment per student ratio (maybe the only one in the country that can challenge Princeton’s) and become better known outside of California and Japan, they could potentially make big gains in the national LAC rankings over the next 10-20 years.
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I think that’s a non-sequitur. First, very few states are actually losing population. I believe West Virginia is the only state that has had an actual population decline in the most recent 10-year period. Some other states have had shorter-term (e.g., 1 year) net population losses but it’s too early to tell whether those trends will continue. And few, if any, states are seeing actual declines in their tax base.
Some states are growing faster than others, to be sure. But faster growth in population doesn’t necessarily equate to a stronger tax base. It depends who’s coming. If a state is growing due to an influx of minimum wage workers and low- to moderate-income retirees, for example, the increased demand for public services (e.g., Medicaid and nursing home care) might outstrip any growth in tax revenue. Also politics may limit how much of any increase in tax revenue is made available for public higher education. To varying degrees this is true everywhere, but some of the fast-growing states are determinedly anti-tax, anti-government spending in their political inclinations, which is likely not to allow their public universities to be as well funded as some others, at least in the foreseeable future.
Also, many public flagships are no longer only, or even primarily for in-state residents. A recent survey showed 11 state flagships are more than 50% OOS, and another 11 are 40 to 50% OOS If demand for seats declines due to a shrinking pool of in-state HS grads, many flagships have found they can easily fill those seats with highly qualified OOS students.who are often willing to pay an OOS tuition premium—so the school’s financial base actually improves, along with entering class stats. In fact, some of the strongest state flagships, like Michigan and UVA, now get very little in the way of subsidies from their state legislatures—to the tune of about 5% of total revenues—but are financially stronger than they’re ever been due to a combination of OOS tuition, aggressively going after outside research grants, securing and successfully commercializing intellectual property rights generated through their research, and growing their own multibillion dollar endowments by carefully cultivating their enormous, affluent (or sometimes downright stinkin’ rich) alumni base, just as the wealthiest private universities have done. In short, decoupling from dependence on legislative appropriations, and thus pioneering a new quasi-private model that others are now trying to emulate. Concededly, Michigan and UVA are outliers at this point, but their success demonstrates that public universities are not inexorably tied to the vicissitudes of legislative funding.
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I think the general trend is most colleges are becoming more selective, just due to the greater number of applications submitted. What I’m curious to know is which ones are outpacing the general trend. (And, conversely, which ones are falling behind the general trend).
@ucbalumnus Alabama A&M is a Historically Black College, I think that is why it flies under the radar for some.
As a group, I think liberal arts colleges are in trouble. The elite will always be fine, but just below that level, particularly among male applicants, there seems to be less interest as students focus more on engineering or business.
I think it is the non-flagships that are growing the fastest and the strongest. As others have mentioned, UMBC and UCF are two that have established their own top programs and aren’t just a step-child to the flagships. They want to compete with the big boys so have D1 athletics and put money into athletics. Also happening at James Madison, Florida Atlantic, South Florida, all the NJ schools already named.
There was a 60 Minutes story about UMBC several years ago about the president and his program to increase the size of the school and have programs that would attract minority students from Baltimore - and keep them. He’s very good.
CMU - Excellent partnerships with industry leaders
Northeastern - Awesome internships
Iowa State - Plenty of midwest students select Iowa Stare over their state flagship for cost of attendance
or academics.
University of Southern California: Snatching entire research departments from top schools. One of top financial aid funds in the country. Great merit money.
Harvard: Over the past decade Harvard has loved the best math students. Check out the Putnam results…
Tulane? A few years ago noone from my area went to Tulane. Now it is hot, hot ,hot.