<p>I just read an article with an interview of the guy that runs my son’s state university and he said that average SAT scores rose over 200 points in the last two years for entering freshman students. That’s a pretty amazing improvement over a very short period of time. There were record enrollments too. Are others seeing a big jump in student quality at their state universities?</p>
<p>what school is this? i ask because ‘pretty amazing’ would be a gross understatement for that kind of improvement.</p>
<p>Got a link for that? A 200 point jump sounds almost too high over a two year period. Even if the person quoted was citing a figure based on all three sections of the SAT that is a jump of nearly 70 points a section. While the SUNYs have seen an increase the change has been closer to 20-30 points total (based on CR and M only) over the past two years.</p>
<p>[UML</a> eyes surge in enrollment, technology - Lowell Sun Online](<a href=“UML eyes surge in enrollment, technology – Lowell Sun”>UML eyes surge in enrollment, technology – Lowell Sun)</p>
<p>There has been a jump at many of the in-state schools here in Michigan. While the number, (200+), sounds high, given the economy and the relative “cheapness” of an in-state university education, it’s not a completely surprising statistic.</p>
<p>This sounds like something that can be attributed to the recession: high-scoring students flocking to the publics in search of lower cost.</p>
<p>Wow! I wonder what the average SAT score for the incoming freshman class at UMASS-Amherst was?</p>
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<p>I’m assuming that this is out of 1600. Freshman retention rate has jumped to 81%–which is VERY good for a public college.</p>
<p>BCEagle, didn’t I also read somewhere that applications to places like Fitchburg State had skyrocketed?</p>
<p>I generally don’t follow Fitchburg State though we considered it for dual-enrollment classes many years ago. We’ve had several threads on higher enrollments at publics this past summer.</p>
<p>It is the economy. The 40% plus increase in tuition over the past few years has ill-prepared the private universities for the reality of the recession. Many state universities are offering full-rides for in-state applicants who have very high GPAs (the same kids who have the very high test scores). Mom and dad are telling DDs and DSs that they can’t use the equity in the house to pay for the private college because there is no equity in the house and the value of the college savings mutual fund is down 35%. Tuition did not go down 35%. The honors programs in the state U’s are pretty strong. This is economic reality.</p>
<p>It is really difficult to believe that UMass-Lowell had a 200-point gain in average (median?) SATs on a 1600-point scale over the past two years, or that the average (median?) score on CR and M for its entering students this year is around 640. For comparison, the medians last year at UMass-Amherst (generally regarded as the flagship) were around 560 and 590, and 640 scores would have placed a student into the highest quadrant of UMass-Amherst students.</p>
<p>My hypothesis is that this was a typo. I’m sure there was an increase, just not 100+ points on each component.</p>
<p>I have a call into admissions requesting confirmation of the numbers. The numbers don’t feel right to me so we’ll see. Lowell does have an interesting advantage over Amherst in that it is within commuting distance of affluent cities and towns along Route 3 up into Southern New Hampshire and some of the cities along the Route 128 technology corridor.</p>
<p>I recall watching the average SAT score rise when I was an AAC at BC and the numbers generally went up rather slowly.</p>
<p>Yes, but with that same advantage two years ago the Lowell medians were below the Amherst medians by 20-30 points per component. I am perfectly willing to believe the recession has made Lowell a little more attractive (although I suspect that the people in those affluent towns are still able to swing the cost of UMass-Amherst). Just not so much more attractive that half of Lowell’s entering class would have been in the top 25% at Amherst. Given the sizes of the schools, it would take A LOT of kids to make that shift – a pretty big percentage of the kids in Massachusetts with those scores. If there were that kind of stampede to Lowell, it might have been noticed by someone other than the Lowell newspaper.</p>
<p>It was either a typo or hyperbole. The 75th percentile score (M&CR) for incoming freshmen at UMASS-Lowell reported last fall was 1170. If 75% of the freshmen scored 1170 or below that pretty much makes it an impossibility that the average score was 1283. The link is here:</p>
<p>[Common</a> Data Set: UML Information Technology : : UMass Lowell](<a href=“Data Analytics & Institutional Research | UMass Lowell”>Data Analytics & Institutional Research | UMass Lowell)</p>
<p>Maybe the newspaper edited its article (a problem with online information sources):</p>
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<p>12 points - that’s still huge!</p>
<p>And 51% increase in diversity? Much more of that and it will become very homogenous.</p>
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<p>Sure was. It was supposed to be 1083, not 1283. The article has since been corrected. [EDIT: Like sorghum already said. Must have been typing our posts at the same time.]</p>
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<p>That’s the quote I got from the article - 1083, not 1283.</p>
<p>The article said 1283 when BCEagle and I saw it. Glad it was corrected.</p>
<p>I meant to comment on that “51% increase in diversity”, too. What the heck does that mean? Last year they enrolled 100 URMs, and this year it was 151? It’s really, really hard to image there was some massive shift in the demographics of the college between last year’s class and this year’s, but it’s also hard to imagine that their “diversity” numbers were really so low that a “51% increase” would be achievable without hell freezing over. Another typo?</p>
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<p>This is so true…very well put</p>