unwelcoming out of state public university info session/tour

Parents Forum
61

I object strongly to the assumptions of post #46. The gross generalizations about public versus private are off base. It all depends on the school. Large/small etc. There are good academic reasons to attend some of the Midwest’s public flagships instead of many private LAC’s or one’s own flagship. Harvard is known for TA’s and large lectures- and being an elite private U.

Michigan has become popular- not so sure it is actually any better than a couple of other Big Ten schools, but rather comparable. You do not see students of the region wishing they could go to Michigan instead of other flagships- it is east coast people looking for something and creating a name it seems.

I would expect anyone willing to pay more for being OOS would be among the better students. And the best public U’s outshine most private schools in their academics. Perhaps the whole “private is better than public” attitude comes from the large populations on the east coast whose citizens are surrounded by private colleges and never worked to establish top public U’s like happened in the Midwest. Regional biases.

Regarding post #58. A college education isn’t just about getting a job. It is about spending four years learning academics and about yourself. Life is so much more than a job. People at the same firm can have vastly different experiences based on the wealth of the college experiences- thinking at a higher level (and I include STEM majors here, my experience was so much more even in chemistry courses than just facts) that you may not appreciate.

Where do those socalled better private school professors come from? Look at their resumes. perhaps someone with too much time on their hands could catalog the public school backgrounds for those professors. Oh- while you’re at it, look at the textbook authors’ school affiliations listed for required texts at those schools.

62

UPenn is an Ivy. Private. Penn State is the state flagship for Pennsylvania. No use trying to compare the two. But there are some very highly selective publics such as UMich, Berkley, etc that can afford to be picky.

63

This time I’ll just say thank you:)

64

Agree with @wis75’s post. For Engineering, state/publics offer the best bang for the buck. The LACs are disappointing and some of the privates are too expensive for the full-fare paying kinds. The only privates my D2 applied for ChemE were MIT, Stanford (did not get into either) and RPI . The rest were all OOS publics (GTECH, UMich, UWisc, UCB, etc)…she got accepted at all and some with large merit scholarships. She just completed her freshman year at GTECH and I am happy to pay full tuition (we are from PA). Other than the course workload, my D has never complained about class size or the standard/quality of instruction. She is going to be a 3rd generation Engineer, both my dad and I studied MechE.

65

Also, @i012575, if she studies abroad, she pays the in-state rate.

66

Hey, my less than perfect stats kid got into Chicago and was very, very tempted to go there. Loved the school - never thought he’d get in.

It is baffling why sometimes admissions offices seem determined to shoot themselves in the foot. We all left a Bard session many years ago shaking our heads. Great tour, totally ruined by the admissions office presentation.

67

Yes, and the US News rankings are distorted by the fact that most private research universities misreport their s/f ratios. Look at their Common Data Sets, work through the numbers. It’s appalling. I gave you the example of Penn. do the math. I could give you a dozen more if I had the time. The stats college submit to Us news are not verified or audited, by the way. US News just runs with whatever the colleges give them.

No, you’ve got it backwards. Michigan and the other publics are following instructions to a tee and calculating their s/f ratios just exactly the way the CDS instructs them to, because as public institutions they place a premium on accountability and transparency. It’s the privates who are turning in distorted numbers to make themselves look good. It’s a pretty shameless tactic, but they know there are lots of gullible people out there who will just read the numbers in US News and take them at face value.

The number of big classes v, small classes is easily manipulated and very misleading. A former administrator at one university admitted that one of the first things they did when they decided to “fix” their US News rankings was to arbitrarily cap a bunch of classes that had previously served 20 to 29 students at 19. It meant more students were closed out of classes they wanted to take and thus had fewer choices–a negative educational outcome, in my estimation–but Presto!, suddenly they had a significantly higher percentage of small classes. Next thing they did was to consolidate some classes that were previously in the 50-70 student range into a smaller number of 100+ classes; again, fewer choices for students, and the “big” classes were suddenly much bigger, but they dramatically reduced the percentage of classes that were 50+, which is all US News cares about.

Concededly, most publics have more big classes than most privates. But not all publics are alike, nor are all privates. At UNC Chapel Hill, for example, 13% of classes have 50+ students. That’s a significantly lower percentage than Cornell (18%), the same as USC (13%), just a smidge more than Stanford (12%) and MIT (12%), and not far off the pace set by Princeton (11%). In fact, Cornell has a higher percentage of large (50+) classes than Georgia (11%), Iowa (12%), Miami U (OH)(12%), Penn State (13%), U Vermont (14%), Binghamton (14%), Clemson (14%), Florida State (15%), Nebraska (15%), UC Berkeley (16%), University of Florida (16%), UDel (16%), University of Colorado-Boulder (16%), Mizzou (165), UConn (17%), Maryland (17%), Indiana (17%), NC State (17%), and Michigan (in its latest Common Data Set Michigan’s figure is 17.57% v. 18.06% for Cornell, though both round to 18%). William & Mary has only 8% of classes with 50+ students, less than Harvard (10%) and for that matter any Ivy except Yale (7%)… At the other extreme you’ve got schools like UC San Diego (35%), University of Texas-Austin (26%), Texas A&M (25%), Georgia Tech (25%),and UC Santa Cruz (25%), That’s a huge range among publics, but the fact is, the publics at the lower end of that range are much more similar to Stanford and MIT in their percentage of large classes than they are to the publics at the high end of the range, and it’s the latter that best fit the widespread stereotype held by poorly informed fans of private higher education as to what public universities are like.

I won’t even get into spending per student. That’s a topic that’s been explored ad nauseum on CC

Well, I did go to a big state U for my undergrad, and I did get a whole lot of individualized attention. So there’s that. It’s there to be had if you want it, but generally speaking, no, the people who most want or need individualized attention don’t seek out large public universities. But many of those people make the mistake of thinking they’ll automatically get a lot of individualized attention at a big private research university. Not so. Think about what those class sizes really mean at a Stanford, MIT, or Princeton, much less a Cornell. I can walk you through the math if you like, but it’s likely students at those schools are on average spending at least as much time in large (50+) classes as in small (<20) classes. (Hint: you can’t just compare the percentage of large classes to the percentage of small classes because by definition it takes more students and more student-hours of class time to fill each large class than each small one). So if i wanted small classes and a lot of individualized attention, I’d do what both of my daughters elected to do: I’d look for a high quality liberal arts college where students spend virtually no time in large classes. At my D1’s LAC, for example, only 2.53% of classes are in the 50-99 student range, and no classes have 100 or more students. Princeton, Stanford, MIT, and Cornell are far more similar to a whole bunch of public research universities in the amount of time their undergrads spend in large classes than they are to the leading LACs, which is where you go if you truly want small classes and individualized attention. I’m not saying you can’t find small classes and individualized attention at private research universities, but you may need to work at it–pretty much the same as at the better public flagships.

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BC – can you pro forma UM’s numbers using the method Penn uses?

Or can you pro forma Penn’s numbers using the method UM uses?

My guess is that BOTH Penn and UM do the numbers in the way that makes them look best. I’d be surprised if UM picks a method to do the numbers that makes them look comparatively worse.

If you can’t pro forma the numbers of either school, then both of us are just guessing.

P.S. I happily attended a large state school and also a large private school.

69

@northwesty,
In fact, I will walk you through the math, because this is an important point: class sizes are widely misunderstood. Stanford’s latest Common Data Set reports that in the Fall of 2014 it had 1,174 small classes of fewer than 20 students, of which 635 had 2-9 students and 539 had 10-19 students. At the other end of the scale, Stanford had 191 large classes of 50+ students, of which 122 had 50-99 students and 69 had 100 or more students. Lots of small classes, not so many large classes, right? [Keep in mind these figures are a snapshot of the Fall 2014 semester, not an annual total].

But take a closer look. Those 69 classes of 100+ students took a minimum of 6900 student registrations to fill; that’s assuming there were just exactly 100 students in each class, the bare minimum for them to count as 100+, though the actual average was almost certainly higher, perhaps in the 110-120 range. Similarly, the 122 classes of 50-99 students took a minimum of 6100 student registrations to fill, again assuming the bare minimum of 50 students in each class, but the real number was almost certainly higher, perhaps around 75, the midpoint of that range. Adding 6900 + 6100, we get a total of exactly 13,000 student registrations in large (50+) classes in the Fall of 2014. Interesting figure. Stanford had only 7,019 undergraduates in the Fall of 2014, which meant on average each undergrad was taking nearly 2 large (50+) classes that semester (1.85, to be exact). Whoa, that’s a lot of time in large classes! Of course, some upperclassmen probably took no large classes that semester, and some were probably away on study abroad, but then the math dictates that some other Stanford students must have taken 3 or 4 large classes that semester.

At the other end of the scale, the 635 classes in the 2-9 range took just 5,715 student registrations at most, and that’s assuming each of those classes had exactly 9 students; the actual figure is almost certainly lower, perhaps around 7. Meanwhile, the 539 classes in the 10-19 range held a maximum of 10,241 students, assuming each of those classes had exactly 19 students, but the actual figure is almost certainly lower, perhaps around 15, the mid-point of the range. Adding 5,715 + 10,241, we get a total of 15,956 student registration in small (<20) classes in the Fall of 2014, or again roughly 2 per undergrad (2.27, to be exact). So it looks like Stanford undergrads could have spent slightly more time, on average and in the aggregate, in small (<20) [15,596 registrations] than in large (50+) [13,000 registrations] classes.

But that’s assuming each large class had exactly 50 or exactly 100 students, the bare minimum, and each small class had exactly 9 or 19, the absolute maximum. The actual numbers would push the amount of time spent in large classes closer to, or possibly to surpass, the time spent in small classes. Let’s go with some reasonable estimates. Let’s assume the 100+ classes averaged 110 students; then it took 7,590 student registrations to fill those classes. Further assume the 50-99 classes averaged 75 students, the midpoint of the range; then it took 9,150 student registrations to fill those classes. Adding 7,590 + 9,150, we get 16,740 student registration in the large (50+) classes, or 2.38 per undergrad. That’s more time spent in large classes than in small classes, even without adjusting our assumptions for the average sizes of small classes. Let’s be generous and assume the 2-9 classes averaged 8 and the 10-19 classes averaged 16; then we have 5,080 + 8,624 = 13,704 registrations in small classes, or on average 1.95 per undergraduate. (Even that figure seems high since there are still another 308 classes in the 20-49 range to account for, but we’ll let it go). That’s about 3,000 more registrations in large classes than in small ones.
Of course, the actual numbers probably differ a little from these estimates, but any way you cut it, it’s pretty clear that Stanford undergrads spend about as much time, if not more, in large classes v. small classes. This, despite the fact that Stanford reports only 12% of its classes are large (50+) and 68.8% of its classes are small. That doesn’t translate into students spending 12% of their time in large classes and 68.8% of their time in small classes, because by definition the big classes have many students and there aren’t many students in each small class.

If you want small classes, look at LACs.

70

BC – the data is exactly what you would expect.

UM (47% under 20; 18% over 50) has bigger classes than Stanford (69% under 20; 12% over 50). Stanford has bigger classes than Williams (75% under 20; 3% over 50). The data is what the data is…

So what is UM’s s/f ratio if you do it the way the privates do? Stanford is 5/1. Williams 7/1.

Big state schools aren’t bad (I attended one). But they are big.

71

Easy as pie, and I’ll show you the math. Penn counts ALL of its FTE faculty (full-time + 1/3 of part-time) and ONLY its FTE undergraduates (full-time + 1/3 of part-time) to calculate its s/f ratio. Using that methodology, the figures for Michigan are as follows:

Total f/t faculty 2,660
Total p/t faculty 599, of which 1/3 = 200
Total FTE faculty = 2,660 + 200 = 2,860

Total f/t undergrads 27,395
Total p/t undergrads 1000 of which 1/3 = 333
Total FTE undergrads = 27,395 + 333 = 27,728

s/f ratio = 27,728 / 2,860 = 9.695 / 1, rounds to 10/1

No, because Penn doesn’t tell us now many of its faculty are in stand-alone graduate/professional programs, and how many of its 10,799 graduate students are not in stand-alone graduate professional programs. But assuming the ratios of stand-alone to non-stand alone graduate students and faculty are similar to Michigan’s, a rough guesstimate would be that 7,088 grad students at Penn would be counted in, and 198 faculty eliminated from, the s/f calculation, giving you a total of 16,228 students and 1,412 faculty, for a s/f ratio of 11.77 / 1, which rounds to 12/1. That’s still a good s/f ratio, but roughly double what they now claim.

Nope. Michigan follows the instructions to a tee. Penn deviates from those instructions by including ALL of its faculty and excluding ALL of its graduate students, despite clear CDS instructions that say:

Note that this does not allow you to choose alternative methodologies. Either you can fill it out accurately, following the instructions (Michigan’s approach), or you can fill it out inaccurately and misleadingly, ignoring the instructions by, e.g., including faculty in stand-alone graduate and professional programs like law and medicine, and excluding all graduate students, including those who are not in stand-alone programs but instead are in the arts and sciences, engineering, etc., where faculty typically teach both graduate students and undergraduates (Penn’s approach). I assume the Penn administrators can read, so I must assume they are deliberately filing fictional data by devising their own methodology that deviates from the instructions, then holding that number up against others who filled out the form correctly and saying, “Gee, aren’t we wonderful!”

72

This mischaracterizes the better state flagships. It’s true that UC Berkeley and UNC Chapel Hill are mostly in-state, because they’re governed by laws and/or policies that require them to be. But California is a huge state; many students at UC Berkeley are from hundreds of miles away, very few commute, and the campus doesn’t “empty out” on weekends. At Michigan, about 60% of entering freshmen in recent years have been OOS or international students, and Ann Arbor certainly doesn’t “empty out” on weekends. Neither does Madison, or Boulder, or Austin, or Chapel Hill, or Charlottesville; these are all extremely lively and fun college towns, the public universities there are as residential as any private college or university (though in some of these towns many upperclass students choose to live off-campus in the residential neighborhoods surrounding campus), and because the schools are larger than most private universities, there’s more going on both on-campus and in town on weekends.

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But it isn’t just Penn, right? Didn’t you say all the privates do it the same way?

The CDS is used for the purpose of evaluating undergrad programs, not grad programs. So that would seem to suggest that the way the privates are doing it is more appropriate, no?

74

Class size doesn’t always matter or mean better/worse education. Think of a large lecture hall filled by students who want to hear an excellent professor. Better than being in a small room with an average prof stating his/her views. Think of top notch TA’s- tomorrow’s professors leading discussions or some average professor who has been there forever. Think of being able to choose from several different professors in a department instead of having X for multiple classes. All sorts of ways to look at things/distort them. Consider the peer group, which is why some students choose small or large. Think of course availability- how many different freshman chemistry courses or foreign language/literature courses available. And of course, one’s proposed major counts- math at an LAC or with honors at top twenty math grad program flagship U taking grad courses (several) while an undergrad. Public schools are generally two-tired, serving the typical college student and the gifted ones whereas private schools tend to serve one group or the other. Could go on and on some more, but you get my point.

Fortunately there is not one-size-fits-all education in the US.

75

Where did you get the numbers? For admission, there are more OOS than in state at UMich due to the 2.5 to 3 fold difference in yield rate. But for enrolled freshmen, there are still more in state than OOS (around 40% from OOS).
http://admissions.umich.edu/apply/freshmen-applicants/student-profile
http://www.annarbor.com/news/university-of-michigan-sees-increase-in-out-of-state-students/

76

In contrast to OP’s experience, I found UMich may have gone the other extreme. We we attend the info sessions (actually 3 of them), there were questions from the audience about the OOS admission. The Adcom keep saying the criteria are the same for in state and OOS applicants (which we know for sure is not true). They are actually trying to convince more students to apply.

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I won’t get into debating student body quality and faculties ranked at the top of their field; suffice it to say by many measures Michigan is a cut above other Big Ten schools, but concededly Wisconsin’s faculty is also very strong almost across the board, as is Illinois in some areas, and every Big Ten school has its academic strengths. We can debate the specifics elsewhere.

I just want to point out that Michigan doesn’t just draw from the East Coast. Its top OOS feeder is New York (1,654 undergrads), but that’s followed by Illinois (1,438), California (1,396), New Jersey (904) and Ohio (607). So quite a few Midwesterners are electing to attend Michigan; just not so many from Wisconsin (58). And every large-population state is well represented; in addition to those mentioned, you have Maryland (419), Pennsylvania (396), Connecticut (361), Massachusetts (348), Florida (344), Texas (204)., Virginia (195), Georgia (147). Even little Minnesota chips in 135, almost triple the number of Wisconsinites, though the states are comparable in population and Wisconsin is closer to Michigan; followed by Colorado (116), Indiana (102) and Washington State (94). Yes, there’s maybe a slight East Coast tilt; more than 10% of Michigan’s student body comes from the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut tri-state area alone, but it also draws well almost across the board with the exception of some parts of the Deep South (Mississippi 3, Alabama 6, Arkansas and Louisiana 9 apiece).

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No, they don’t all do it the same way. Many elite privates, possibly most, exclude all graduate students from their s/f calculation. But some also exclude the faculty in stand-alone graduate/professional programs, as per the instructions. Harvard, for example, counts only undergraduates, but excludes about half of its faculty–presumably all the law school, med school, business school, divinity school, and Kennedy School faculty as those are all graduate-only programs, and probably more that I’m not thinking about right now.

No, for two reasons. First, they are plainly violating the instructions, so they are putting up numbers that simply aren’t comparable to those put up by schools that do follow the instructions. That’s extremely misleading, and that must be their intent. Second, graduate students do take faculty time and attention–probably more, on a per capita basis, than undergraduates. So even if you’re using the CDS primarily to evaluate schools at the undergraduate level, you’ll want to know how many students are competing for faculty members’ time and attention, and that includes graduate students as well as undergrads. Look, if you have a LAC with no graduate programs and no graduate students, you can get a pure s/f ratio: just compare the number of FTE students, all undergrads, to the number of FTE faculty, all teaching only undergrads, and that’s your s/f ratio. But as soon as you start adding graduate programs, faculty in those programs are going to start to devote some of their time and attention to the graduate students, and that means they’ll have less time for undergrads. That’s why the CDS draws the line where it does. It says if the faculty are teaching only graduate-level students, as in a law school or a medical school, neither those faculty nor those students should be included in the s/f ratio, because they’re just irrelevant to the undergraduate experience. But if the chemistry department or the political science department is teaching both undergrads and graduate students, you need to assume some of the department’s faculty time is going to be devoted to the grad students, so you need to count the grad students along with the undergrads and the faculty in the s/f ratio. That strikes me as eminently sensible and a fairer representation of how much time faculty are likely to have for undergraduates. A history professor at Amherst is going to spend 100% of her teaching, supervising, and mentoring time with undergrads. A history professor at Harvard is going to spend only a fraction of her teaching, supervising, and mentoring time with undergrads, and the rest with grad students. You can’t count them the same way. But by deliberately excluding the history grad students from its “student” count for purposes of its s/f ratio, Harvard is creating the impression that its history faculty work only with undergrads, and that simply is not the case.

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@bclintonk When you look at the OOS enrollment at UMich, you need to pay attention to the population of those states too. The main reason to have more students coming from California and New York are mainly because of the population and applicant pool. The same reason for much less students from Wisconsin. While the higher OOS enrollment from Illinois is likely due to the proximity and poor financial aid of their in state flagship in addition to the population (UIUC).
I also want to restate that your OOS enrollment percentage at UMich is incorrect. OOS enrolled freshmen is only around 40%, not 60%.

80

BC –

So you are saying that most elite privates do the calcs the way Harvard does?

If I am following, Harvard’s calc seems the most reasonable and transparent to me. Basically the ratio of non-professional school faculty to undergrads.

But you are saying that Penn’s calc is different than Harvard and not fair/logical? Because they don’t back out their grad only law, biz and med school faculty?

And you are saying that UM does its calc a third way? Non-professional school faculty to undergrads plus non-professional grad students? That calc seems goofy to me, but you think it is better?

Last thing. If most of the elite privates that UM competes with do it Harvard’s way, isn’t UM being dumb to do it their way?

Thanks much for the explanation.