University of Richmond. We really liked the school when we visited (perfect size, good academics, D1 sports + related school spirit) but assumed it would be a safety/low match for a London kid with good grades. We were slightly surprised that he was waitlisted. Watch this one go up in USNWR ratings from low 30’s into the 20’s.
It seems that here on CC the attitude is: commuter school = mediocre. It reflects the elitist attitude that if a student can’t afford to spend an additional $14,000/year on room and board and chose to commute then they are doomed to a mediocre education and life. Some people need to venture out of their gated communities and see the real world.
Boston University, Boston College, USC, NYU, WUStL and many other top colleges were commuter schools in the not so distant past.
I currently attend a uni that’s got a significant percentage of commuters (I’m one of them). It really affects the spirit and cohesiveness of the school when people don’t live on campus. I show up, I go to classes, I go home. I don’t do anything on campus (and some of the stuff looks fairly interesting even to someone in my age bracket).
The kids who do live on campus complain that the dorms are neglected (one kid with asthma has black mold seeping through her walls!), and not a priority for the school. To give the school credit, they are building new dorms and trying to become less of a commuter school. It’s a valid issue. Kids who aren’t a part of the learning community outside of the classroom really suck the life out of the school as compared to on-campus schools.
I agree with @GMTplus7 that most could not get into their alma maters today. I might be able to since CMU (my first college) still requires a portfolio review for admittance to the fine arts dept, and my work now is significantly stronger than when I was 18, but you never know because now the competition is a LOT stronger.
I was surprised to find that Washington and Lee had an admit rate of under 20% - think it hovers around 17 to 19% depending on the year.
And many wonder why the cost of college has increased and the student loan crisis exists.
@TomSrOfBoston, WashU hasn’t been a commuter school for a very long time. As in, a century or so. So I don’t know where you are getting your information from.
Like Harvard, UPenn, Columbia, and other privates in metro areas, it always has had a big adult education division. Is that what you are referring to?
For me, it’s been more about schools that have transformed themselves over the course of my career and become selective. Northeastern is certainly one of these. GW is another. They would take anyone with a pulse from my private school 20 years ago. Boy, have times changed. Vandy and Wash U went from strong regional privates to major national powerhouses in what feels like a snap of the fingers."
Yes, NEU and GW accepted anyone who breathed when I was in high school and I’d add Emory to that list too - and BU was a school for very average students. U of Miami was for very average students who liked to party.
Vandy was always an excellent and highly selective school - just not popular outside the south. My brilliant cousin from Louisville went there in the late 60’s and when my sister (the smart one) was looking, my parents suggested Vsnderbilt but she would have nothing to do with it knowing our brilliant but very nerdy cousin. She ended up at Smith ( my mom’s alma mater.)
One of the biggest differences now from way back when is that student’s resumes weren’t so bloated so it probably doesn’t seem now that the students who got accepted to the elite schools were so special. Just very good students who got A’s in the classes they took and scored high on the SAT and achievement tests. I was a solid B student (I was very lazy) and I applied to and was accepted at Skidmore. I had virtually no EC’s, either. But, since I wasn’t an A student the highly selective schools were completely out of my reach. From my graduating class of 35 - two kids were accepted at MIT. They were both extremely smart and played with the one computer my school had - which was as big as garage.
The NESCAC schools were always highly selective - even though most people never heard of them.
Most of the highest ranked schools on USNWR today were the most selective schools way back when - with the few exceptions already noted. People just were much more parochial when it came to “knowing” schools. But people who knew a lot of colleges, knew.
Also most of the non-selective schools of the past had low retention and graduation rates. They were easy to get into, hard to graduate from. If a student couldn’t do the work, they flunked out.
I think there are still parents around here who are surprised to find out that the main campuses at Penn State and Pitt are not all but open admission for entering freshmen, or that there are students who are admitted to University of Pennsylvania, yet turned down at Schreyer or not offered a full tuition merit scholarship at Pitt.
Definitely Northeastern! I had heard surprising things about it so took my high stats son to visit when he was a high school junior and was just shocked by the lovely urban campus and the offerings for computer science students. I had no idea its 75% SAT scores were in the mid 700s and that top students were being turned away. When I was applying to schools back in the 80s, it was a place anyone could get into.
Fast forward and my son is a very satisfied honors student at NEU. We shake our heads that less than 18 months from his high school graduation, he had a co-op offer at his dream company on the west coast where he is now in the midst of an 8-month co-op and making amazing money.The entire interview process and work experience has been invaluable. He has studied abroad in Europe in the summer and he has befriended and collaborated with extremely intelligent and focused peers. At Northeastern, the opportunities are endless and the school is structured so it’s easy to take advantage of them. We can’t imagine him having a better, more diverse experience any where else.
@emilybee - I totally agree on difference in students and packaging. 30 years ago I was accepted to several “elite” schools- (including one ivy- though I chose an LAC instead). I had good grades (though not perfect) and a really good test score. No unique ECs, special skills, national awards. I did all my apps in a day, my essays were handwritten! And I know my story is not unique. Virtually every adult I know who attended an elite school says “I would never get in today”
Ditto. I turned down an ivy for a LAC. Applied to 3 schools. Got into 2 (the ivy and LAC)
And WL at my safety, LOL.
The mentioning GWU creating a new image reminded me of this article.
ALL schools are much more selective now than, say, 30 years ago. Ivy League colleges used to have admit rates hovering around 30%-35%. And that was considered selective.
Every thing is a bigger deal now. I was the only national merit scholar in my graduating class. No big deal was made of this by my school, my parents didn’t really understand what it was, they knew I got a good scholarship but didn’t really connect it to my PSAT. Now my kid is a junior at my old high school and the kids selected as semi-finalists were rock stars. On the school, district webpage, at assemblies, etc.
Have lived in or near Philadelphia my whole life and until recently, never knew Haverford was selective (thought it was for rich prep school kids who couldn’t get in somewhere “good”).
Also Villanova has become much more prestigious. 30 years ago it was a safety for any reasonably bright Catholic school or Main Line public school kid who could afford the tuition. Now it is a tough admit, especially the B school.
But they didn’t get nearly the number of applicants and also many of the tippy top were single sex. The students who got accepted were still the top students. The percentage of high school students who even applied to college was also much lower.
Yup. In large part, it is the denominator that has changed, not the numerator.
UChicago was very well-respected for its intellectualism and intensive academics among many NYC area HS classmates and neighbors I knew.
In fact, some high achieving kids I knew who ended up attending other peer elites…including Ivies(including HYPS) didn’t apply/matriculate there because they feared its reputation as one of the schools with a ginormous workload & rigor far and above that of the most elite US colleges*.
With the exception of the Eastman School of music which is elite in its own right, URochester wasn’t elite, but very well-respected, especially among aspiring engineers/STEM majors.
- Other schools with similar rep among HS classmates/NYC area neighbors included MIT, Caltech, CMU, GTech, Cornell, Harvey Mudd, Reed, Swat, etc.
Back in the early-mid-'90s, GW was considered an academic safety for those at the bottom of my and prior graduating HS classes…especially for kids whose stats were so poor even NYU CAS* wouldn’t take them.
Even after GW greatly improved its rep in the '00s, the perception of GW being a school for those near the bottom of my public magnet’s graduating class still held in the mid-late '00s as recounted by a couple of younger HS alums who attended GW on partial scholarships and recounted the ribbing they received from some jerky HS classmates and even a few teachers who felt it was to be expected judging by their mediocre academic performance in their respective classes.
- Considering NYU Stern and CAS accepted over 1/3 of my graduating class including yours truly, one's stats would have to be pretty bad(talking C+ cumulative average and below and exceedingly low SATs for our public magnet).
Back in the '80s and '90s, my Californian relatives and their Chinese-American suburban neighbors…especially those who attended Stanford, Cal, and UCLA popularly dubbed USC “The University of Stupid Chinese”.
There was another popular with their multi-generationed American upper/upper-middle class neighbors which I can’t post because it would violate TOS.
NYU Stern School of Business and Tisch School of the Arts were the two gems of NYU in the '90s and before.
Every other branch including CAS weren’t very selective and were regarded by many HS classmates and NYC neighbors as being for B- level rich kids who wanted to attend a private school slightly above the CUNYs/most SUNYs(except Bing and Stonybrook for STEM).
One interesting thing about college admissions in the early-mid '90s was that it was possible for students with talents strongly lopsided in favor of STEM to be accepted to Columbia SEAS and rejected by NYU Stern and SUNY Bing* because their GPAs were below the range/minimums of what they’d usually accept.
Similarly, I’ve known HS classmates who were accepted to schools like Midd who were rejected by SUNY Bing for the same reasons.
- SUNY Bing had a hard HS GPA cutoff of ~3.5 or a 90/100 HS GPA even if one's in-state. Fall below that cutoff and it was an automatic reject.
Those who were unaware of UChicago’s greatness never read about the Manhattan Project.