In-State vs. Out-of-State Enrollment

gpo613
Thu, 08 Aug 2019 20:27:32 +0000

At the end of the day this whole issue just becomes a math problem.

The administration at all State flagships need to show improvement or at least being as good as they were last year and before. Good or bad one way to judge this is US News ranking. We all know one of the major factors in that ranking is average ACT/SAT or middle 50% of the class. So how do you improve or at least stay the same is by getting kids with higher scores. In a state that has a low population you just won’t have enough in-state kids with high scores to move the needle. So start enticing OOS kids with merit money. Those kids bring up the average, but the school has to deal with the cost because we know they only have a finite amount of money.

Two states that are on the opposite sides of the spectrum are CA and MS. You can be the highest scoring kid around but if you are OOS for CA you just aren’t going to get much money. Conversely if you have a 34 ACT the COA for Ole Miss will be under $12K most likely. Along the way you have other states that aren’t as far on the edges of the spectrum. But the biggest factor usually is population.

Everyone in IL knows that if you have like a 33 ACT you can go to Alabama cheaper than UIUC. There tons of IL kids at Bama. We can argue all night about which school is better, but money is still a huge factor.

So in the end if you want to go to college on the cheap be a smart kid in a small state. If I would have had my daughter live with her grandparents for senior year HS in Oklahoma and get residency she would have saved $5-6K a year for college.