So thanks to this great forum, I’ve learned about the Common Data Set and College Navigator…but I can’t seem to find a place that shows a statistic on admissions differences for in-state vs. out-of-state students.
As we put together my kid’s list of schools to visit, it is hard to tell which schools are reach vs. target vs. safety once you take into account residency. (For example, my kid is at the 75%ile mark for SAT scores for UVA, but not being Virginia residents, I’m assuming that makes UVA a hard reach instead of a target school?)
Is there somewhere easy to find data on which states have harder admissions access to out-of-staters, and which states want more out-of-staters?
We are Maryland residents (but Univ of MD is so tough to get into), and all I know is that UVA is much tougher for out-of-state students, but Univ of Alabama is favorable to out-of-state students…learned that reading other threads.
Hope this question makes sense and thanks in advance!
I would assume that every state university, except those where the system is under financial stress (like California & Illinois) requires higher standards for OOS student admission.
Yes, virtually all universities have higher standards for OOS admissions - even California.
Some schools have separate admissions statistics for in-state and out-of-state students, although that’s less common. UC Berkeley has them (http://admissions.berkeley.edu/studentprofile). Note that the OOS admission rate is 16% (as opposed to 21% for in-state students) and the SAT average is about 150 points higher, although the GPA is roughly the same. UCLA has similar stats with similar outcomes on their website (https://www.admission.ucla.edu/prospect/Adm_fr/Frosh_Prof15.htm).
UVa says they seek to maintain a 2/3 majority of Virginians in their student body, so while they don’t break out their statistics in this way, it’s almost certain that it’s easier for VA residents to get in because of that. Their Institutional Assessment website does have some [url=<a href=“https://avillage.web.virginia.edu/iaas/instreports/studat/hist/admission/first_by_residency.htm%5Ddata%5B/url”>https://avillage.web.virginia.edu/iaas/instreports/studat/hist/admission/first_by_residency.htm]data[/url] that indicates that the OOS acceptance rate is nearly half that of the in-state rate (in 2016, 23% OOS vs. 44% in-state). (In addition, I conjecture that the OOS applicant pool is already more competitive than the in-state pool - since likely pretty much any average VA resident applies to UVa but only competitive OOS applicants apply. That’s supported by the fact that the number of OOS applicants is almost equal to the number of in-state applicants. So talented VA residents probably have pretty good chances of being accepted to UVa, whereas talented OOS applicants…not so much.)
If your kid is in the 75th percentile for UVa (which is around a 1510), the University of Maryland should be almost a safety for him - he’s quite safely in the top 25% of applicants, and according to their Institutional Research office, Maryland admits 48% of their applicants (although they don’t break it down for in-state vs. OOS, so it might be a bit higher for MD residents).
Michigan (nearly 40%) and Alabama (54%) are two states with large percentages of OOS students. In Alabama, part of that is driven by Alabama’s robust scholarship programs (which were designed to attract talented OOS students) and part of it is driven by students from neighboring states - a lot of OOS students at Alabama are from Georgia or Mississippi. (It’s hard to fully explain the motivations of places like UVa and UNC, though, which are need-blind for all applicants and offers to meet need for all accepted applicants, including out-of-state students.
My sense is that when public universities try to attract lots of out of state students, they are doing it for one of two reasons. The sort of mid-tier universities (like Alabama) are trying to make a play to become tier-one universities by attracting lots of talented OOS students who will raise the university’s profile. The top ones that don’t offer tons of support are trying to pay the bills with the generally full-pay OOS students they admit. I just read an article that says that for every 1,000 in-state students Maryland accepts (instead of an OOS student) they lose $15 million.
I already knew about Alabama and we’re looking at that. I’m intrigued by their efforts to build up the school by attracting kids from out of state with good merit $.
I am worried about U of Maryland- the SAT score was awesome, but the unweighted GPA is a approx 2.8 and weighted is approx a 3.8. (9th and 10th grades were an adjustment- a couple too many C’s on the report card while doing theatre and sports.) I’m not sure how much a big SAT score will carry the kid…???
Not to state the obvious but UW GPA of 2.8 is going to be a big problem for most of these places. So many kids have high test scores + good GPA’s that they don’t need to compromise on it in very competitive admission situations, let alone merit aid. Dig into Common Data Set and find schools that don’t rank Academic GPA as Very Important in C7 section.
Can he get over a 3.0 cum by the end of junior year? That would help give you some choices but probably not at the super competitive UVa’s, UMD’s of the world.