I’m biased because my son goes there, but I think Binghamton University is pretty hot right now, and it looks set to get hotter.
They’ve just received a $60 million donation to build a state of the art baseball stadium. They’ve just opened the Harriet Tubman Research Center. They are recruiting more heavily out of state and internationally. The kids around here are all applying and excited when they get in. And the Binghamton thread here on CC has been super active for at least a couple of months, lol.
I don’t want to sound like a valley girl right now LOL but my sister just gradjuated from UCLA. She really enjoyed it and felt at home. It was an amazing fit for her. At first she was extremely nervous leaving so far away from home (we live in ohio). It was very hard to get to though, she applied as a freshman but didn’t make it since its so “hot” but did make it in as a junior! goodluck!
University of Tampa has grown in leaps and bounds the past 10 yrs or so. When we moved to FL in the 90s, I believe the school attendance was approx 4500. Now it’s 8k. I vividly remember reading articles in the local paper that kids were having to live in hotels in downtown Tampa due to lack of housing. Fast forward and there are many new dorms and constant construction of new buildings going on. The whole downtown area is exploding with NEW. Actually don’t know much about the school but have some friends up north who have sent their kids here.
At our Catholic HS in the South, Notre Dame, Vandy and Tulane have always been a hot choice with top students. Recently, Alabama has been huge due to merit aid and proximity. Recent players include FSU, Clemson, UT-Dallas, South Carolina and Fordham.
@MWolf and @privatebanker Yup, Denison apps were over 9000 this cycle, I’ve heard. Also, a lovely campus, Olmstead designed, set on a hill above a picture perfect village, all 30 minutes from Columbus airport, which is an easy in-and-out airport
It’s not the selective schools. The hottest schools are the state flagships and regional universities. As selective schools tighten their admissions and become more hyper-competitive, it’s caused a big rise in in-state schools, especially with the rise in tuition. In Texas, for instance, regional liberal arts schools like UT-Arlington, Texas State U, UT-Dallas, and UTSA have all doubled in size. In 2000, UTSA barely had 12,000 students. The enrollment is now around 34,000.
San Diego State University. The number of applications has increased from 79,000 in 2015 to 94,000 this year. Since they have also increased the number that they have accepted, their acceptance rate hasn’t dropped.
UIC. In 2015 UIC had 15,660 applicants, in 2019 they had 23,580. The freshman class of 2015 was 3,485, versus 4,407 in 2019.
The University of Massachusetts/Amherst is experiencing this over the past few years. CS, Engineering and honors college is off the charts competitive. And the decisions thread this year on CC was very very active.
James Madison University - new business school building coming online for next fall - https://www.jmu.edu/cob2020/vision.shtml. Beautiful campus and content kids. Great alum network in NOVA and DC. Football is a perennial power - the team narrowly lost in the national championship game (plays at FCS Div. I level). Affordable OOS tuition
UIC has definitely been taking a lot of students that used to go to the non-UIUC public universities in Illinois over the past several years. UIUC has had intentionally modest enrollment growth over the past decade, Illinois State has held steady, the directional public universities have plummeted, and UIC has skyrocketed. I believe that it’s a combination of UIC’s relative strength in STEM disciplines (which more students are focusing on today), its West Loop location in Chicago going from was used to be a liability when I was growing up (when it had a legit reputation of being a dangerous area) to now being one of the hottest urban neighborhoods in the country (with the large tech firm concentration in the area, particularly Google, and tons of great restaurants and nightlife nearby), and becoming more of a residential campus compared to a commuter campus leveraging that now-hot location (although it still has a bit farther to go there).
While the in-state tuition rates at Illinois public universities aren’t that great compared to other states, they are still going to come out less expensive than out-of-state options for the vast majority of students (despite popular perception to the contrary). As a result, UIC is starting to solidify itself as the #2 public university option in the state.
From my observation, “hot schools” in the upper middle class context generally combine (a) predictable (or at least non-lottery level) admissions, (b) lower cost (whether it comes from merit aid or lower rack rate tuition), and (c) name brand (e.g. Power Five conference sports school and/or solid-to-great academic rankings). Bonus points are given to what’s perceived to be an attractive location (e.g. good weather, nice college town or major city). As a result, it’s not a surprise that a lot of state flagships or other top level public research universities (e.g. Pitt and Purdue technically aren’t flagships but they academically look like flagships), whether in-state or out-of-state no matter where you live, are generally hot. It’s also not a surprise that US News Top 50 schools in good locations that have a history of giving material merit aid to a fair amount of people, such as Northeastern, Tulane and Miami, are hot, too.
My S attends an all boys Catholic prep school in the Boston area. His school just posted the acceptances thus far for the class of 2020. University of South Carolina, Clemson and Alabama are the stand outs for “hot”.
@LTmomof2 Those are big in FL too for those that want to go out of state but still attend big state U with big time sports program. FL is very inexpensive but these schools offer some nice merit programs for OOS kids that make it very reasonable.