WSJ article on students from the Northeast choosing southern publics

I think U of A cut due to budget issues…they had no choice and they’ll feel it in enrollment.

I think with TO and more and more schools coming on Common App, that alone raises the # of applications a school gets.

I wonder if there’s a study on the # of schools each student applied to - by year. I’m guessing it’s meaningfully higher than 10, 15 years ago.

And some schools send out fee waivers and no essay apps - making it really easy.

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College Board reports on what it sees in Common App. This is incomplete, of course, since people can apply outside of Common App. But the average number of applications per applicant has in fact been increasing. It has not increased enough, though, to explain the really high increases in applications experienced by certain colleges.

I haven’t seen that, do you have a link?

Common app does reports that have some data, like this:

Has CC expanded into new submarkets or are they getting the kinds of kids who used to apply to the northeast LAC’s that now add them to their list as a safety? How much of the increase in apps is due to more kids applying to more schools? Obviously both schools would be part of this increase so that doesn’t necessarily mean that either school tapped into new submarkets.

However, we do know that kids are moving from the north to the south. Is that rate matched the other way? If not, then the increase does seem to be one directional. There doesn’t seem to be as much appeal for a Connecticut College to many who would have only applied to Charleston back in 2000. The other way has a lot of appeal as there’s weather and price. Couple that with increasing interest in engineering, nursing and other majors that have become more popular and you can see how state schools are becoming increasingly more popular and ones that make the cost more reasonable would have growing appeal.

By the way you cited previously statistics that show the big losers are the regional publics but over the last decade, the big winners in all of this have been state schools. They have increased by 15% enrollment. National privates have only increased by 2%.

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Yes different schools focus on different strategies but the point is that moving towards need-iad means that a school is usually not trying to court better stats students to boost the academic profile of the school or to just fill in seats with students who have met a specific academic threshold. That Pitt is moving in this direction implies that it’s already meeting interest from the profile of students they are interested in. The same could be said of Purdue with a tuition freeze which benefits all applicants rather than just those with need. However, with that model, Purdue has enough interest that they don’t need to give out merit much if at all.

Increasing merit aid is usually a sign of the reverse at least from what I have seen. It means a school needs to pay students to fill in their seats because there may not be enough interest from the student body that the school wishes to have, at least not at the price they are charging.

Yes, I was referring to such reports. At the top, they say:

Through March 1, 2024, 1,313,763 distinct first-year applicants had applied to 834 returning members (an increase of 6% from 1,243,246 in 2022–23). a. Total application volume to returning members through March 1 rose 7% from 2022–23 (7,041,256) to 2023–24 (7,541,148). Applicants were also applying to slightly more members in 2023–24 than in 2022–23 (+1% from 5.66 to 5.74 applications per applicant).

That 1% increase in applications per applicant is much less than the increase in applications some colleges saw yoy, and I think that is also true cumulatively.

That to me actually would be a form of expanding into a new submarket. But if you are asking whether they are getting more applications now than they got in 2000 from, say, Maryland or South Carolina, that I don’t know, and I am not sure that data is publicly available.

I think given the patterns in who is applying to more schools, these may actually be different facets to the same underlying trend.

This is an interesting study:

The increase in applications per applicant was not even, it depended on various factors. And one of those factors was jut being in the Northeast, so that could be part of what happened at Connecticut College. But other drivers included International applicants, private high school students, early decision applicants, high test score applicants, and in fact just applicants who were already high volume.

Then as the report explain, these high volume applicants are flooding selective privates. Again, that could be partially a Northeast specific effect for Connecticut College, but I think students fitting the profiles above but not in the Northeast could also be contributing.

The picture I get from all this is applicants who would also have been Connecticut College applicants in the past are in fact likely to be applying to more other colleges these days. But the same is true in reverse–applicants who would also have been applying to various other colleges in the past are now more likely to also apply to Connecticut College.

The degree to which this increase in cross-applications actually includes specific states, or colleges within those states, is not something I see addressed in this data. So I don’t actually know if Connecticut College applicants these days are more likely to apply to, say, Charleston in the past, nor do I know if Charleston applicants are more likely to apply to Connecticut College.

But I wouldn’t bet against it either way.

Again, if you are talking about actual enrollments, then we know that Connecticut College is not the source of a net move of enrollments anywhere else.

Off hand this seems pretty obvious, right? We saw this as a microcosm in states like PA, CT, and MA. We are also seeing this nationally. There is a net loss at more regional/local publics, and a net gain at flagship/national publics. It seems plausible that whole dynamic actually doesn’t much involve national private colleges at all.

Again to be clear, on an individual level anything could be happening. But in terms of large net flows, the net flow doesn’t seem to involve national privates. It seems to involve mostly publics of different levels.

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I think it depends on what they are doing.

Something like Purdue’s tuition freeze is actually going most to the benefit of families who are full pay. Some wealthier colleges these days are giving quite a bit of “need aid” to families well into the upper part of the US household income distribution. And so on.

Rarely are the students not still paying something.

I would categorize this as a form of price competition. Your college and another college both admit a student you want. To hopefully win that competition, you offer them merit. These days, you may use a sophisticated yield model to help you figure out where to use your merit offers most efficiently.

Price competition does mean there must be other colleges out there the admittee is considering (or so you assume). But that doesn’t necessarily indicate a fundamental lack of interest, it just means there are other interesting colleges too, in fact other colleges they may be engaging in price competition themselves. So, you need to compete on price sometimes to get them to yield.

OK, so if a college transitions from no or little merit to a robust merit program, I think it is fair to conclude that means they have calculated that price competition will help them get more of those cross-admits to yield. But among the many explanations why that could be happening is that their markets have evolved to include more competition.

And I think the data suggests this is happening to many different sorts of colleges. One way or another, their markets have evolved to become more competitive, and so one way or another, they are competing more on price.

Which is great for consumers who are cost sensitive.

Depends on what you mean by full pay. Full pay at Purdue sure. Full pay at an Ivy, maybe not. Notice that publics when they get to a certain level change from merit to need or do a blanket tuition freeze for all like Purdue rather than picking specific students to entice because they get those students in the pool through need or through a blanket tuition freeze rather than having to entice them.

Note also that wealthier schools usually only offer need (some do offer merit but it’s to entice kids away from even higher ranked schools usually). They do not need to entice wealthy students with merit however they do recognize that at 80k, the expense is probably not doable or even if doable may not favorable enough for those at certain price points. For instance, for a family earning 250k, some can afford to pay 80k but it would be a stretch and other options that are less costly would perhaps be enticing. This is not the case for a family earning 1 million. This is why what Purdue and the Ivies are doing is in my view similar vs those colleges that are no longer only need based but are starting to offer merit. The latter are realizing that students at that high level income bracket or higher might dole out 80k for an Ivy but would give a pass to a school without the same kind of clout if they are expected to pay 80k. Ergo, they have to entice students that would be full pay and are not need-worthy with merit That’s more akin to what the publics in the south are doing. Sure, UT Dallas could offer a very cheap out of state price to all the out of state applicants but will it net them the kind of student body they want to draw from? I’d say probably not so to increase the number of students that meet their desired academic criteria, they offer full rides to those students or other academic scholarships. Other southern schools use GPA and SAT cutoffs to draw the students that they want.

Ironically, increasing merit aid can also be a sign of a reduced financial aid budget. It costs less overall to give lots of 10K “merit awards” to upper middle class kids than to fully fund the need of low income kids. Some colleges have responded to a cut in available aid by switching to merit, or increasing merit. (raise those 10K awards to 15K and you’re still saving money). Nice talking point despite the fact that it typically will not help diversify the student body in a meaningful way. (You’ll get plenty of affluent kids- even if they aren’t the uber-rich who don’t care at all about the price tag). Gives parents bragging rights at the tennis club too.

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I always believed that D3’s field a bunch of sports for the same reason. No athletic scholarship costs and with most recruited athletes, if not full pay, relatively high pay vs the general student body. Recruitable kids in many sports come from affluent enough families that can afford travel/club teams and private coaches.

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Makes sense. D25 had an opportunity to go to a good name NESCAC school for volleyball. She decided against that for a number of reasons, one being that there were more than 20-some girls on the team. That would mean little playtime. Why would they have so many?

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Illinois kids are flocking to Purdue, Miami OH, Mizzou, Iowa and Iowa State for significant merit $ as UIUC is one of the most expensive in-state universities. I know Iowa State OOS is less than UIUC in-state when included the auto-merit.

Northeast kids are heading to U of SC, UTK, Clemson, UGA, UA, Auburn, and FSU. UF and GT are more selective. Remember that Virginia and North Carolina schools cap OOS enrollment by law. Full-pay students get more bang for their buck down south. But off-campus housing is soaking the parents as the kids scoop up luxury apartments.

There is no Power 4 school in the NE that is good in both Football and Basketball and has awesome school spirit (I was born in NY, and we refer to PSU and Pitt as almost midwest; Syracuse, BC and UConn football are not good). Sun and fun down south.

Here in Arkansas we have Texans (mostly DFW) filling U of Arkansas, with Oklahoma, Ok State, and LSU also having to take the Texas kids who can’t get into UTA and TAMU.

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Every family has a different set of circumstances. Full-pay families want OOS publics, and families with lower income and assets want a full-ride (merit + aid) at in-state public or private that meets need. One of our son’s friend’s is only looking at private schools that meet need.

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Illinois kids are actually going to Bama too - over 1500 a year. But also 1900+ from Texas, 1100 from CA and 2K from NY/NJ/CT.

Interestingly all those states (sans Texas) are losing residents too.

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Most likely the trend will continue with many of these kids choosing to stay in the South after graduation

For sure, in part because it’s where the jobs are.

Heck, I’m in TN because my company left California…so it makes sense others will - and yes, CAs population is falling, albeit slowly. And many end up here and Idaho and other places of job growth.

So it makes sense for the future adults too.

My older son went south for college and never intends to come back to New England. My younger son went south as well, but he may come back.

Even though I am a UIUC alum, my son applied to Purdue, but not UIUC in large part because he had seen the Illinois campus while there for Science Olympiad competitions. While beautiful from the main quad, the buildings he saw were run down and it was obvious money had not been spent to renovate or even maintain them. In contrast, the buildings for engineering or physical sciences at Purdue - some of which were constructed close to a hundred years ago - were either completely renovated or well maintained. We concluded that Purdue was a better resourced UIUC.

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Huh, UIUC engineering campus looks pretty good to me. Great education, research opportunities, internships and jobs. No shortage of applicants.

We too found the campus not nice. Not engineering but just the campus when I was flown in by them in 95 or 96 and when I took my son in 2018. He couldn’t wait to leave.

Loved Purdue.

Others have commented similarly.

Aesthetics are really subjective so every individual thinks differently.