I don't understand why Indiana University isn't "that good" stat wise?

Mirc · 08-21-2006, 03:55 PM

I don't really understand this. IU is, from what I understand, Indiana's overall flagship state school. But when you compare its students to the students of other flagship state schools, they are far below. For example IU only has about 25% of their 1st year students who graduated in the top 10 of their highschool class, while schools like UT-Austin(68%),UVA(83%),University of Washington(51%),University of Maryland-cp(64%),UI-UC(48%),Ohio State(39%), UF(81%),UGA(52%), Penn State(40%), Rutgers(36%), UConn(37%), UW-Madison(51%), and so on. Also their avg gpa is much lower.

So why is this?, the only reason I can think of is that Purdue is such a simmilar school and combined they have about 60k undergrads, so maybe they split the top students?

Drew00 · 08-21-2006, 04:21 PM

A lot of top students go into engineering. No engineering major in their right mind would go to IU over Purdue (seeing as IU doesn't even offer engineering).

namtrag · 08-21-2006, 04:30 PM

UVA and VT are similar to IU and Purdue, but uVA still gets 83%. So I don't necessarily think Drew is correct.

Mirc · 08-21-2006, 04:38 PM

Quote:

UVA and VT are similar to IU and Purdue, but uVA still gets 83%. So I don't necessarily think Drew is correct.

I was going to mention that too and the UT-Austin and Texas A&M stats. It just would've been worded to weirdly. I wanted to also use the non flagship schools as examples too, like the UC ones other than Berkeley.

namtrag · 08-21-2006, 04:39 PM

I don't really know, but some states require their flagship schools to admit a certain percentage in-state, so if Indiana has laws like that, the universities are not allowed to be but so selective.

In Virginia, UVA and W&M are limited to about 35-40% out of state, which is quite a high percentage, so they can afford to be very selective.

Mirc · 08-21-2006, 05:56 PM

^
yeah that could be it

Mirc · 08-21-2006, 07:02 PM

nevermind, that couldn't be it because nearly 1/3 of their freshmen were OS

Quote:

Originally Posted by usnews

Out-of-state freshmen:
32%

Drew00 · 08-21-2006, 07:40 PM

Texas, California, and Virginia are much larger (population wise) than Indiana

Mirc · 08-21-2006, 08:17 PM

but what does that have to do with the percentages of students who finished in the top 10 of their class?

Fsu-uf · 08-21-2006, 09:39 PM

it might just be state school syndrome?

Drew00 · 08-21-2006, 09:42 PM

more people -> more public/private schools -> more kids in the top 10%

A2Wolves6 · 08-21-2006, 09:43 PM

IU and Purdue both share the title of "flagship state school". State schools have the majority of their students coming there from in-state. Since Indiana's population doesn't compare with the likes of Texas, California, (okay, better comparison would be IL and MI), they don't have a ton of applicants for a bunch of spots, and accept most of their applications, and only about 1/2 those accepted students will enroll because either A) They like Purdue better or B) They don't want to pay OOS tuition. This is speaking generally though. It's just basic supply and demand. Doesn't mean it's a bad school though.

Mirc · 08-21-2006, 10:32 PM

Quote:

Since Indiana's population doesn't compare with the likes of Texas, California, (okay, better comparison would be IL and MI), they don't have a ton of applicants for a bunch of spots, and accept most of their applications, and only about 1/2 those accepted students will enroll because either A) They like Purdue better or B) They don't want to pay OOS tuition. This is speaking generally though. It's just basic supply and demand. Doesn't mean it's a bad school though.

that makes very good sense, thanks

MomofWildChild · 08-21-2006, 10:58 PM

Indiana is an excellent school, but there are some pretty poor high schools in the state which feed into it. The bottom of the freshman class is pretty sketchy academics wise. (I am an alum, by the way, and love the school). A lot of the bottom kids don't make it past first semester or first year.