New Billboard "$2500 Incentive to Transfer to Our School"

toledo · 05-26-2008, 02:03 PM

I noticed a new billboard today near our local university. It's for another university located about 45 minutes away. Doesn't this seem tacky or desperate? I guess their admissions aren't way up this year!

northeastmom · 05-26-2008, 02:06 PM

Does the school's students have fairly okay stats? Is it in a high crime area? I wonder why.

bsb2007 · 05-26-2008, 05:01 PM

I'm always skeptical when it comes to advertisements like this. there's this college in my city that has been struggling for quite sometime (about 3yrs). In order to build their enrollment, they are advertising that they are offering every graduate in certain schools a free ride for four years. The graduates don't need to apply they just need to sign a form. Stuff like this is tacky and my question is, why do they need to do this? if they truly are an accredited university with high ratings, they should need to advertise a $2,500 incentive.

northeastmom · 05-26-2008, 06:12 PM

bsb, there are colleges that accept students without completing apps, but they do not advertise it. I know a student who transferred into a good private university in my area. He showed up in the admission's office without an appointment. He had his unofficial transcript with him. He was accepted on the spot (not a straight A student, in fact far from it). He even got a single by visiting housing in person the same day.

interesteddad · 05-26-2008, 06:35 PM

Colleges are just like car dealerships. At the end of the day, they need to sell product. Every single one of them has their own version of a Red Tag Special. What do you think Harvard going loan free is?

thumper1 · 05-26-2008, 06:46 PM

I don't see anything different about this billboard and the mass mailings received by many students about free applications, automatic merit aid, etc. It's a way to market.

Northstarmom · 05-27-2008, 05:24 AM

It does seem desperate to me. I wonder what's so wrong at the college that it has to go to such lengths to attract transfers. It's not the fact that it's advertising that I find desperate. It's the fact that it's advertising -- on a billboard no less -- that it's paying students to transfer.
What's the college?

toledo · 05-27-2008, 07:09 AM

The school is Bowling Green State University and their billboard is within 1 mile of the University of Toledo. BGSU actually has higher admission's stats compared to UT and it's located in a nice little town. The only drawback I can see is that it's a 45 minute drive from Toledo, the closest large city. Maybe gas prices are hurting schools that depend on commuters.

Offereing incentives to first-time students doesn't bother me, but I see this as purposely trying to lure away someone else's students.

northeastmom · 05-27-2008, 07:36 AM

It is an instate school, so 2500 on top of instate tuition could be a pretty good deal. They only have a 77% freshman retention rate, so I guess not everyone is happy with the school, or their aid package. Perhaps gas has something to do with it, but I don't think schools have seen the consequences in enrollment because of higher gas prices. I think that they will be hit hard one year from this fall. I do think that commuter schools will be hit hard. It will also be harder to get middle class and poor students to go enroll in schools that require long car trips or flights. Perhaps some schools should start advertising that they are changing transportation cost estimates as they tabulate the real cost of attendance (not a fictional 500/year for the person who resides in NY and is willing to attend a school in Arizona, for example).

coureur · 05-27-2008, 09:35 AM

>>At the end of the day, they need to sell product. Every single one of them has their own version of a Red Tag Special. What do you think Harvard going loan free is?<<

Harvard and the other high-end schools have no need whatsoever of a "red-tag special." They have no trouble filling their freshman classes. This year Harvard had over 27,000 applicants for ~1650 slots in the freshman class. And they abolished their transfer program because there was no room to put any transfer students. Doesn't sound like desperation to "sell product" to me.

MidwestMom2Kids_ · 05-27-2008, 10:05 AM

Oh, well, if they are going to offer this incentive anyway, a billboard uses less paper than a mass mailing. More "green." :-)

interesteddad · 05-27-2008, 10:42 AM

Harvard needs to advertise their red tag special price slashing in order to continue getting 27,000 applicants and maintain their king of the hill acceptance rate position.

If Harvard said, "$50,000. That's our price. No discounts. No sale prices. Take it or leave it", they would still fill their freshman class. They wouldn't get 27,000 applications.

coureur · 05-27-2008, 07:41 PM

^^They would get over 20,000 applications which is what they were getting back in 2004 before they began announcing this series of finaid initiatives. 20,000 applications for 1650 slots is more than enough to keep them among the very top schools for the selectivity and yield contests. Do you really think they spent millions in addtional financial aid just so the admissions committee could spend its time futilely reading an additional 7000 apps? There are much easier and far cheaper ways to pad the number of apps if that's what Harvard wanted to do.

interesteddad · 05-27-2008, 07:43 PM

Quote:

Do you really think they sweetened the financial aid pot just so the admissions committee could spend its time futilely reading an addtional 7000 apps?

Do you really think they actually read 'em all?

coureur · 05-27-2008, 07:56 PM

^^Yes, they have to read them all to at least some degree of scrutiny. If they just dumped a bunch of unopened applications without reading them they'd have no idea what sorts of great students they may have otherwise wanted that were being thrown away. I'm sure that some of the apps at low end may get only a cursory reading, but someone has to make a judgment at some point about each application. And that is going to mean opening it and reading it.