We would like to visit Edinboro in PA for their open house. Recently there was a change in selectivity at Edinboro. They have raised their GPA requirements and SAT scores seem to be extremely important to them. Has anyone applied there recently and been turned down? Is it worth the visit for someone who might not get in due to the new standards?
I am not too familiar with Edinboro…how did you find out that they changed their selectivity?
They seemed in the past to not be very selective at all.
How far away is it for you?
Probably 6 hours, we were really interested in the program before. Our daughter has a beautiful portfolio(though this school doesn’t even use that for college admission just for program admission)
and she’s a hard working student but her GPA does not reflect this. She will have great recommendations but SAT scores and GPA seems to be what counts now. I had seen in the news that the new President as of March of 2017 is changing the standards of admission. I haven’t been able to find out exactly to what degree and if she should pursue going there or not. It’s well in our price range, has support, it was a school that had a great disability program but as of late that seems to be changing, and it’s ranked very high in animation. I was hoping to find someone here who got in for 2019 to let us know how it went for them…
No idea about any changes in their selectivity. Take a look at the other smaller PA state schools too, like Clarion, Slippery Rock, Kutztown, and Indiana. Indiana and California (PA state schools) used to have disability support programs but it’s been a few years. I know Edinboro was a nice campus–one of mine spent a few weeks there for a sports camp.
I think the OP may have some folklore wrong.
First – there was no new president in 2017. There was a new president in 2016, who very publicly tried to tighten admissions standards that had produced a 99% admission rate the year before but also very high non-retention of students after their first year and a trend of sharply declining enrollment. He resigned about a year ago, under a lot of pressure due to unhappiness throughout the university community about the way he was handling almost everything, including admissions. However, the NCES data for the fall 2017 entering class – the only admissions season fully under his control, showed a 93% admissions rate and a 25%-75% SAT split that approximated 960 - 1050. Notwithstanding, it was at about 70% of full enrollment for the university. That doesn’t seem like a university that cared only about GPA and test scores.
In any event, he’s gone. The website is full of quotes from his predecessor; he’s persona non grata. The current Interim President is the former Provost, and a long-time faculty member. The search committee for a new President was just announced last month. There is a new strategic plan the school vaunts, and it says absolutely nothing about increasing admissions standards; it does say a lot about supporting students’ success.
The college’s BFA program is its largest program, in terms of degrees awarded. It can’t possibly be relying on high school grades and test scores to achieve that!
Thank you so much for the research…I had found some local news show interviewing the interim President (I thought)…I’ll see if I can post the link…and he was talking about the current GPA’s and how the students there had high scores…I can’t seem to find a lot on the website or naviance. Except that SAT’s are listed in the important section…but with the high ranking of the animation program, any hope for support and the fact that we could afford this school as we have prepaid tuition that would match the tuition here (long story)…I guess it’s worth a looksee. I will report back here after the open house.
Here’s the link…this was August of 2018, maybe the Interim President? https://www.goerie.com/news/20180825/edinboro-university-welcomes-students-back-to-campus
It looks like they’ll continue to be more selective…not sure exactly what that means. What a bummer if everything is based on GPA and tests…there’s something to be said for recommendations, portfolios, essay etc.
I would apply there and other places too and see what happens.
It does look like they remain committed to higher admissions standards, at the cost of actually shrinking the size of the student body and therefore the revenue, but improving the quality of their programs overall. Other universities have followed that playbook, but it isn’t easy.
On the other hand . . . with the 99% admission rate a few years ago, “higher admissions standards” could mean virtually anything. The old admission standard was pretty much “Can you fill out the application form or get someone else to do it for you?” The 2017 statistics available on the NCES College Navigator site should reflect the first year of the new approach – only 830 students actually enrolled – and as I said above there was a 93% admission rate, and SAT scores with medians not much above 500. Edinboro’s median high school GPA may be 3.5, but the kids with that GPA probably have 1100 SATs
The most selective of the PASSHE colleges has a 70% admission rate and SAT scores about 50 points higher than Edinboro. That probably sets a theoretical limit on how selective Edinboro could possibly get. But Edinboro isn’t going to come anywhere close to that in the short run, unless it’s willing to shrink itself to 200 students per class (and maybe not even then).
There’s no question the school’s BFA program is popular and successful – it’s not one of the things that desperately needed fixing – and I would assume that the students in that program don’t have higher SAT scores, on average, than the rest of the students. How far below 500 are the OP’s child’s scores? How bad is her GPA?
Her PSAT was 800, she has been getting a tutor to help her prepare…which is good and I’m hopeful because of her honesty she didn’t answer 40 questions because she didn’t know the answer (even though we told her a million times to fill them out anyway)…so I’m hopeful that it will go up. We like Edinboro because it’s ranked high for the animation and she could go there without us worrying about how to pay for it and that’s without aid. So how great would that be? Her GPA is 2.82 without any AP’s or Language…she has an IEP and disability (ADHA/ASD) but all of her classes though not AP are mainstream classes in a high school with a higher ranking nationally. When looking at other schools, they will love her portfolio, she is magnetic and at every school she’s visited, she has clicked with staff at the school, they have each told her that she would fit in there and is obviously talented. So it would have been nice if this school that we can afford, that has supports, that is ranked so high and seems to have alumni at the exact places she wants to work, if they could not have changed their admissions this way. If they were changing their admissions maybe it could be so that during the interview they can see the students intentions. But, this way makes us feel like a number quite frankly. Our student is not her GPA or her PSAT scores…she is well rounded, sees the world outside of the box, volunteers and works her butt off for 2.82…seriously. So, I think out of curiosity maybe we’ll go…do you think it would be OK to write or call someone in admissions? I’ve posted this on other boards. But before going, maybe to see what their policies are exactly and what they’re looking for as of late? I don’t want to ask if she’ll get in, I just want to know that she has a chance or what they’re really looking for or where they draw the lines…you know? This school and our in state school are both affordable. Our in state school is really hard to get into and this one seems to be looking for the exact things that our student has a deficit in…ugh. We are definitely looking everywhere so even if we visit, it’s not the end of the world if she doesn’t get in. I wouldn’t want to rule it out just because the program and being able to pay for it would be so good.
I get why you are worried, especially if the portfolio wouldn’t even enter into the admissions package.
Don’t lose hope, though:
- Edinboro still needs to accept about 2,500 kids to come anywhere near an economically viable class, and it's likely to get meaningfully fewer than 3,000 applications. There's lots of room to take a calculated risk on a student.
- There isn't a huge admissions staff. It doesn't take a huge staff to process 2,700 applications and accept everyone, and it's not that much more work to reject a couple hundred people. Their focus is much more on recruitment than exclusion. Your daughter just needs to make certain they know why not to exclude her.
Your daughter and her school counselor ought to be able to make contact with the actual-factual human being decisionmakers in admissions and plead her special case for getting in despite not quite fitting in with the New World Order on paper. They, not you, are the optimal people to do that. But if you can’t resist, I doubt your intervention will poison the well.
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Don’t focus on “what their polices are exactly” or “what they’re really looking for.” You are just running the risk that you will exclude yourself. Focus on why it’s a great place for her to go, and why she is really likely to be successful there, notwithstanding her numbers. They offer interviews – get her in there. Have her school counselor talk her up. Get great teacher recs and have the counselor make certain they are read. All of that should happen this spring, so that she can apply over the summer, or as early as possible in the fall.
She should reach out to faculty she would like to work with and enlist their help, being forthight about her concerns. Most faculty don’t mind at all helping someone who will commit to coming if they are accepted, and whom the faculty member finds interesting. Faculty support will almost certainly get her it.
Without being rude, be a little relentless. Edinboro is lots of people’s last choice. They ought to respond well to someone for whom it’s really the first choice.
And recognize – it may not work. Have a Plan B. Apply as early as possible in the cycle – that means this summer, September at the latest. If the answer is going to be “no,” you should find that out early, so there is time to adjust and refocus. Just don’t slam the door shut on yourself before you even try to open it.
Thank you so much. This really helps. I’ve never heard of enlisting our HS counselor…we belong to a large school and we met with her once this year and then we meet on a yearly basis with the team. Since we are 6-7 hours away there is no scattergram for this school at ours, and they have never visited our school. So there’s not really a rapport but I guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk to her counselor. Thank you again, I’ll keep you posted.