TU #195 US News 2024 rankings.

[chito_and_leon]

I saw that article last week but thanks for sharing again. I mean MIT gets 65000 applications annually and accepts about 1000 and waitlists about another 200 for their "yield rate". So an acceptance rate of about 1.5%. When you think about it, you've got 65000 uber smart kids who all probably have 4.00 GPAs and several 5's on AP exams in classes that count, oh and they're likely 35-36 on ACT (or 1350-1400 on SAT or whatever their new corresponding scale is), you're trying to pick out 1000 Nemos with the special fin out of a school of 65000 clown fish. It's a daunting task I'm sure. My son took the MIT news better than I did....I was disappointed for him.

And he knows stuff now that he wishes he knew 3 years ago. The stuff about doing research or, and this one seems to be a big deal for the Ivys and MIT/CalTech types, starting your own business or non-profit in HS, even if it's mowing lawns, tends to move the needle at those places.

Well, having spent some time at the dump up Mass Ave from MIT, I can tell you, there are a lot of things in life more important than schools or brass rings. Your kid will do fine academically and in his career regardless of where he goes to school. That'll never be his problem. Maybe it's just the crowd I run in, but of the people I know who wish they had taken a different path, it's never (like literally never) "boy, I wish I had just worked harder and done more hard stuff."

Kids should start a business or non-profit if they have a passion for it, not as a box to check for college (it's not fun to do). They do it but don't really want to and then they end up with a bunch of kids who do have a passion for that and then what? I talked to my freshman about starting a non-profit and she's not interested so I didn't push it. She's a kid, she should do what she has fun doing. She's smart and works hard, she'll be successful no matter where she goes to college, I want to pressure her to have fun, she has plenty of pressure on achieving.

 

[TU_BLA]

Well, having spent some time at the dump up Mass Ave from MIT, I can tell you, there are a lot of things in life more important than schools or brass rings.

Are you referring to Harvard? So funny story, my first year at BU, biology professor is telling a story about a professional conference at Harvard, and he goes into the bathroom, does his business and walks out. Colleague from Harvard is right behind him and as the professor tells the story "This snoot Harvard professor comes after me and says 'At Harvard we wash our hands after using the lavatory.' Professor responded with "Well, at BU we make it a point to not piss on our hands". 350 plus Fr Bio students in an uproar over that one.

Another Harvard story...my sister traced our family lineage back to Sir Thomas Dudley as direct descendants of him. Gotta love Massachusetts, if you have any Irish, English, or Scottish blood in your family, there's a really good chance you're related to someone important in history. Weird thing was, as my mom told us things growing up about our family history, information somehow came through the "telephone" line that made it really difficult to trace the ancestry back because my great great grandmother's maiden name was not O'Malley as we had been told...it was Dudley. My sister did the research and found it. My son (tongue in cheek) did ask the Harvard admissions rep if there were any scholarships available for direct descendants of Thomas Dudley and she looked at us like she had no idea why we were asking that question or who Thomas Dudley was.

 

[Clong83a]

Some updates: My son did not get into CalTech (he didn't think he would), waitlisted at MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech (weird), and is accepted to Tufts. He should hear from Stanford, the Ivys, and Duke this week.

I say the waitlist part of Georgia Tech was weird because a classmate of his was accepted (they have virtually identical academic resumes and he has more AP 5s, and they have participated in similar amounts of extra curriculars and community service). Only thing we can think of on that one is the college he applied to (Engineering) and major were high demand and he didn't fit a demographic they wanted/needed more of at this time. Statistically, it's harder to get accepted to the Illinois and Michigan engineering schools as an out of state student than it is to get accepted at Georgia Tech.

Tufts is a great school, he should be excited by that one (assuming engineering based on the other schools applied to).

I used to do academic interviews for area high school students for Vanderbilt. I stopped doing it because on two separate occasions in consecutive years, I interviewed students that I thought were amazing young scholars with a lot of potential. I wrote them the best letters I knew how to write. Both were rejected outright, not even waitlisted.

But to put a finer point on it, both of those students went on to win the prestigious Gold Scholarship from the Los Alamos Employee's Scholarship Fund, which is a fund set up by Los Alamos employees to help kids from anywhere in Northern New Mexico go to college. Awards are based on merit, with a few special categories where need-based weights are also applied.

In short, there are about a hundred of different scholarship amounts you can win, from a few hundred dollars to $30k/year. The Gold scholarship is the top award, and is given to 1-3 students a year out of the thousands of applicants, depending on funding availability.

So both of these kids earned the Gold award, and both were flat out rejected by Vandy. One of those kids went on to Tufts and did quite well and I stopped doing interviews entirely.

TL;DR: Admissions is often a crapshoot at higher end schools, but Tufts got it right at least one time. (Well, two now)

 

[TU_BLA]

Tufts is a great school, he should be excited by that one (assuming engineering based on the other schools applied to).

I used to do academic interviews for area high school students for Vanderbilt. I stopped doing it because on two separate occasions in consecutive years, I interviewed students that I thought were amazing young scholars with a lot of potential. I wrote them the best letters I knew how to write. Both were rejected outright, not even waitlisted.

But to put a finer point on it, both of those students went on to win the prestigious Gold Scholarship from the Los Alamos Employee's Scholarship Fund, which is a fund set up by Los Alamos employees to help kids from anywhere in Northern New Mexico go to college. Awards are based on merit, with a few special categories where need-based weights are also applied.

In short, there are about a hundred of different scholarship amounts you can win, from a few hundred dollars to $30k/year. The Gold scholarship is the top award, and is given to 1-3 students a year out of the thousands of applicants, depending on funding availability.

So both of these kids earned the Gold award, and both were flat out rejected by Vandy. One of those kids went on to Tufts and did quite well and I stopped doing interviews entirely.

TL;DR: Admissions is often a crapshoot at higher end schools, but Tufts got it right at least one time. (Well, two now)

So Tufts was a late add to his list due to them being at a highly selective college fair he went to and he liked what he saw in their engineering dept., the ability to do research right away, AND a study abroad program in Japan where he could do some hands on robotics stuff. It's also in the greater Boston area where a lot of cutting edge robotics stuff is happening.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

Some updates: My son did not get into CalTech (he didn't think he would), waitlisted at MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech (weird), and is accepted to Tufts. He should hear from Stanford, the Ivys, and Duke this week.

There was one other school I remember your son got into. One you might have been more excited about than him. Wondering why you didn't put that in your list of accepted/not accepted/wait list schools.

 

[TU_BLA]

There was one other school I remember your son got into. One you might have been more excited about than him. Wondering why you didn't put that in your list of accepted/not accepted/wait list schools.

So his list so far:

Accepted:
TU
Worcester Polytech
Illinois
Michigan
North Carolina State
Tufts

Waitlist:
Carnegie Mellon
MIT
Georgia Tech

Not Accepted:
CalTech

The 3 state schools I know you apply to a specific school so he is accepted to their respective engineering colleges. WPI is an unabashed STEM school....they like to consider themselves a peer of MIT, and academic wise they may be, and even have some of the same academic policies in place, they play in the same athletic conference as MIT, but we all know reputationally, they've got nothing on MIT. We did tour WPI and I really liked everything about campus and it's connected enough to Boston via the commuter rails and subway, he can go into the city pretty easily if he'd like or if he needs to get to the airport, it would be easy enough.

He has toured NC State and he and my wife both liked the engineering school a lot. If it comes down to Michigan and Illinois, we'll probably have to plan a weekend to go see them. I'm not sure he saw enough of NC State to realize how big some of these state schools are and how spread out they are. I mean he felt that way about Boston U which is not really a giant school per se, but it's contained in a 2 block wide stripe down a 2 mile strip of Comm. Ave. in Boston.

I think Thursday is when all the Ivys are set to release their admissions stuff and he's waiting to hear from Cornell, Yale, and Columbia. He may have actually eliminated Cornell from his options though. He's been doing some research on campus life and he's been reading that a lot of students develop some pretty serious mental health issues there and many attribute it to how isolated Ithaca is. My wife is unsure about Yale because of crime statistics in New Haven. She actually thinks Columbia, in the heart of NYC would be safer (and we have friends whose kids went to Columbia and had a great experience). Duke comes out at 6pm Thursday. If it's good news he can celebrate with his soccer teammates as they'll be in OKC for a game against NW Classen. Then the last school to hear from is Stanford.

 

[HuffyCane]

The data on campus health is pretty compelling. Sample sizes of up to 100,000 amongst carefully constructed cohorts has consistently shown about half of college students since the end of the pandemic have sought mental health counseling and received treatment. Though the number of women seeking the treatment is larger overall on a proportional basis than men even after accounting for women being a majority in the sample.

There’s lots of theories on this. Difficulty obtaining illicit drugs like Adderall from friends, ease of obtaining mood altering drugs during the pandemic they wish to continue, chronic cannabis abuse, a desire to avoid abusing alcohol and seeking other mood altering drugs, social media isolation, lack of engagement from other people around them who are stuck on their phones or engrossed in their own studies, hopelessness over the economy and politics, lots of environmental factors.

Cornell doesn’t have an isolation problem, they just need an explanation that doesn’t involve them. Watch four college kids at dinner. It’s Friday at 8pm. They are all on their phones and one may occasionally make a declarative statement on what they are viewing or information they received. There is almost no conversation or even an invitation for others to view what they are doing.

Which explains partially, imo, why the mental health treatment rate at Cornell is no different than Chicago or Chadron State or amongst Ole Miss sorority girls.

That’s a long way of saying he shouldn’t avoid Cornell due to mental health concerns. But I’d put them about 4 or 5 on the list. It’s Yale and Columbia then everyone else and it’s not close.

You need to take him to Michigan for an extended stay. The moon is closer to Tulsa than Ann Arbor. More so than the Ivys it’s another world up there. It’s his best choice by far amongst his admits, head and shoulders above Illinois and NC State. Tufts is a great school, but its not Michigan.

 

[TU_BLA]

The data on campus health is pretty compelling. Sample sizes of up to 100,000 amongst carefully constructed cohorts has consistently shown about half of college students since the end of the pandemic have sought mental health counseling and received treatment. Though the number of women seeking the treatment is larger overall on a proportional basis than men even after accounting for women being a majority in the sample.

There’s lots of theories on this. Difficulty obtaining illicit drugs like Adderall from friends, ease of obtaining mood altering drugs during the pandemic they wish to continue, chronic cannabis abuse, a desire to avoid abusing alcohol and seeking other mood altering drugs, social media isolation, lack of engagement from other people around them who are stuck on their phones or engrossed in their own studies, hopelessness over the economy and politics, lots of environmental factors.

Cornell doesn’t have an isolation problem, they just need an explanation that doesn’t involve them. Watch four college kids at dinner. It’s Friday at 8pm. They are all on their phones and one may occasionally make a declarative statement on what they are viewing or information they received. There is almost no conversation or even an invitation for others to view what they are doing.

Which explains partially, imo, why the mental health treatment rate at Cornell is no different than Chicago or Chadron State or amongst Ole Miss sorority girls.

That’s a long way of saying he shouldn’t avoid Cornell due to mental health concerns. But I’d put them about 4 or 5 on the list. It’s Yale and Columbia then everyone else and it’s not close.

You need to take him to Michigan for an extended stay. The moon is closer to Tulsa than Ann Arbor. More so than the Ivys it’s another world up there. It’s his best choice by far amongst his admits, head and shoulders above Illinois and NC State. Tufts is a great school, but its not Michigan.

My wife has done a lot of reading on some of these places too...Cornell seems to have been hit by an above avg. number of student suicides since the pandemic as well (maybe 12 or so but don't quote me on that). They're also experiencing some of the same backlash that Harvard did after the Hamas attacks and Israel's response. There are donors who want the president gone and the board that supports her.

University presidents are in a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation right now. No single policy will make everyone happy and if you don't do anything, then you just don't care enough. And there is a very fine line on college campuses between free speech and what crosses over into the hate speech and what, if anything, can universities do against hate speech that doesn't squash an individual's/group's free speech rights.

 

[chito_and_leon]

Ithaca isn't really more isolated than Urbana-Champaign and Ithaca and the surrounding area are gorges unlike U-C, which is a disgusting $hithole surrounded by board flat farmland.

 

[chito_and_leon]

The data on campus health is pretty compelling. Sample sizes of up to 100,000 amongst carefully constructed cohorts has consistently shown about half of college students since the end of the pandemic have sought mental health counseling and received treatment. Though the number of women seeking the treatment is larger overall on a proportional basis than men even after accounting for women being a majority in the sample.

There’s lots of theories on this. Difficulty obtaining illicit drugs like Adderall from friends, ease of obtaining mood altering drugs during the pandemic they wish to continue, chronic cannabis abuse, a desire to avoid abusing alcohol and seeking other mood altering drugs, social media isolation, lack of engagement from other people around them who are stuck on their phones or engrossed in their own studies, hopelessness over the economy and politics, lots of environmental factors.

Cornell doesn’t have an isolation problem, they just need an explanation that doesn’t involve them. Watch four college kids at dinner. It’s Friday at 8pm. They are all on their phones and one may occasionally make a declarative statement on what they are viewing or information they received. There is almost no conversation or even an invitation for others to view what they are doing.

Which explains partially, imo, why the mental health treatment rate at Cornell is no different than Chicago or Chadron State or amongst Ole Miss sorority girls.

That’s a long way of saying he shouldn’t avoid Cornell due to mental health concerns. But I’d put them about 4 or 5 on the list. It’s Yale and Columbia then everyone else and it’s not close.

You need to take him to Michigan for an extended stay. The moon is closer to Tulsa than Ann Arbor. More so than the Ivys it’s another world up there. It’s his best choice by far amongst his admits, head and shoulders above Illinois and NC State. Tufts is a great school, but its not Michigan.

I have no data at all, but purely anecdotally, I think much of the younger generation has lost any stigma associated with mental health care. Kids talk openly to each about their counselors. If I had gone to a counselor as a high school kid (which I NEVER would have done), I sure as heck wouldn't have told anyone about it. I suspect the reduction in stigma has led in part to the increased usage. Which is definitely a good thing.

Everyone I know who went to Michigan loved it, fwiw. Not quite Ohio State or Iowa (??) level, but definitely stands out as a place that people seem to love.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

Ithaca isn't really more isolated than Urbana-Champaign and Ithaca and the surrounding area are gorges gorgeous unlike U-C, which is a disgusting $hithole surrounded by board boring flat farmland.

Assuming a.c.

 

[chito_and_leon]

Assuming a.c.

A stupid joke.

The Cornellian Behind the Slogan ‘Ithaca is Gorges’

 

[TU_BLA]

A stupid joke.

The Cornellian Behind the Slogan ‘Ithaca is Gorges’

I would assume the region (Finger Lakes) around Ithaca is beautiful but it's a small town and at least an hour away from even a medium sized city like Syracuse

 

[Clong83a]

You need to take him to Michigan for an extended stay. The moon is closer to Tulsa than Ann Arbor. More so than the Ivys it’s another world up there. It’s his best choice by far amongst his admits, head and shoulders above Illinois and NC State. Tufts is a great school, but its not Michigan.

My wife is from the Detroit area, and I am glad I am not alone in finding it perplexingly difficult to get to Eastern Michigan. Chicago is easy enough to get to, so why does Detroit always feel like it might as well be in Alaska? I've never figured it out, but Michigan is like a weird black hole for travel.

But agree that Michigan is top notch for engineering. I've had very good interactions with Michigan engineers and a couple of the professors out there. They also have a whole program for Robotics, which is more than most schools can say.

I am headed to UI-UC in a few weeks on business, actually. I discovered there are flights to Urbana on American from either Dallas or Chicago, so I can get there with only one megahub layover. Not bad.

Edit:

I also have a professional collaboration with a professor out at NC State, and recently wrote a subcontract for him. He put a couple of undergrad students to work on the project. I've been impressed with them. TU_BLA's son has some very very good options in front of him.

Edit again:

Just for funsies, I put a flight to Detroit from ABQ into Orbitz for a random day in May.

Out of the top ten results, 8 of them are 14 hours or longer travel time. One of the suggested flights is a 27 hour trip! The fastest was a shade under 9 hours, and the last one was still close to 12 hours.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

Ithaca isn't really more isolated than Urbana-Champaign and Ithaca and the surrounding area are gorges unlike U-C, which is a disgusting $hithole surrounded by board flat farmland.

Both jokes went over my head. My subconscious mind was having too many problems with the on first glance, hilting grammatical issues & spelling errors to think about funny. I've seen that joke once before,(gorges) and completely forgot about it.

 

[HuffyCane]

My wife is from the Detroit area, and I am glad I am not alone in finding it perplexingly difficult to get to Eastern Michigan. Chicago is easy enough to get to, so why does Detroit always feel like it might as well be in Alaska? I've never figured it out, but Michigan is like a weird black hole for travel.

But agree that Michigan is top notch for engineering. I've had very good interactions with Michigan engineers and a couple of the professors out there. They also have a whole program for Robotics, which is more than most schools can say.

I am headed to UI-UC in a few weeks on business, actually. I discovered there are flights to Urbana on American from either Dallas or Chicago, so I can get there with only one megahub layover. Not bad.

Edit:

I also have a professional collaboration with a professor out at NC State, and recently wrote a subcontract for him. He put a couple of undergrad students to work on the project. I've been impressed with them. TU_BLA's son has some very very good options in front of him.

This is so true. I was referring mostly to culture and social norms, but your point is well taken. Not long ago it was cheaper to fly to Paris from Tulsa than it was to Ann Arbor.

 

[chito_and_leon]

I would assume the region (Finger Lakes) around Ithaca is beautiful but it's a small town and at least an hour away from even a medium sized city like Syracuse

Definitely true but everything you say about Ithaca is also true about Urbana Champaign. I can certainly see not wanting to go to school in a small college town but I'd definitely take Ithaca over Urbana Champaign.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

Definitely true but everything you say about Ithaca is also true about Urbana Champaign. I can certainly see not wanting to go to school in a small college town but I'd definitely take Ithaca over Urbana Champaign.

You quit talking bad about Champaign Urbana, I was born at the hospital there.

 

[TU_BLA]

So yesterday was a big day for many kids with Ivy aspirations. Of course these schools along with Duke admitted a record low number (% wise) of applicants his cycle. My son did not get accepted at Yale, Cornell, Columbia, or Duke. Out of his peer group, the group he called the lunch group, only 2 got into any combination of those schools. Hell, none of them got into Rice even. One got into Penn, one got waitlisted at Cornell. That was it. My son missed being a National Merit Scholar semifinalist by 1 index point. This peer group he hangs out with were all seminfinalists and most moved on to Finalist. An article I read yesterday said Duke admitted a record low 4% of applicants out of 47k applicants. That's slight under 2000 kids and my guess is they're hoping for a freshman class of 1600 out of that. Weird thing is my son wasn't super disappointed and neither were his classmates really saying they all sort of expected this as it will be tougher, even for the smartest of the smart kids, to get admitted to these schools, for the next few years until kids born in 2010 and later reach that age. Why? Because the birth rates went up in the early 2000s and stayed on slight increases through 2009. More kids for steady spots at those schools. I had to find that out from him.

They all face times when the decisions came out at 6 so they could celebrate/commiserate together. My son was on the bus to a soccer game when this happened. Good thing for these kids is they all have good options at this point. One of the girls was accepted to Penn, her brother was the kid from Union who got accepted to all 8 Ivy's like 3 years ago. They live like 2 houses over from us. Nice family. My son and this girl have been friends since 3rd grade an actually made one of the kids from Holland Hall's academic bowl teams in 7th grade, cry at the beat down they gave them 😂.

 

[chito_and_leon]

So yesterday was a big day for many kids with Ivy aspirations. Of course these schools along with Duke admitted a record low number (% wise) of applicants his cycle. My son did not get accepted at Yale, Cornell, Columbia, or Duke. Out of his peer group, the group he called the lunch group, only 2 got into any combination of those schools. Hell, none of them got into Rice even. One got into Penn, one got waitlisted at Cornell. That was it. My son missed being a National Merit Scholar semifinalist by 1 index point. This peer group he hangs out with were all seminfinalists and most moved on to Finalist. An article I read yesterday said Duke admitted a record low 4% of applicants out of 47k applicants. That's slight under 2000 kids and my guess is they're hoping for a freshman class of 1600 out of that. Weird thing is my son wasn't super disappointed and neither were his classmates really saying they all sort of expected this as it will be tougher, even for the smartest of the smart kids, to get admitted to these schools, for the next few years until kids born in 2010 and later reach that age. Why? Because the birth rates went up in the early 2000s and stayed on slight increases through 2009. More kids for steady spots at those schools. I had to find that out from him.

They all face times when the decisions came out at 6 so they could celebrate/commiserate together. My son was on the bus to a soccer game when this happened. Good thing for these kids is they all have good options at this point. One of the girls was accepted to Penn, her brother was the kid from Union who got accepted to all 8 Ivy's like 3 years ago. They live like 2 houses over from us. Nice family. My son and this girl have been friends since 3rd grade an actually made one of the kids from Holland Hall's academic bowl teams in 7th grade, cry at the beat down they gave them 😂.

Just gonna throw this out there, seems like your son has a healthier attitude toward his college search/future than maybe you do . Getting into Yale or Duke isn't an automatic ticket to being happy or having a fulfilling life and that should be the goal, and he seems to have a pretty highly functional attitude about that. Would it have been worth it for him to have been 20% less happy as a teenager to do whatever crazy stuff he would have needed to do to get into Duke given that he obviously worked very, very hard already, just to avoid having to "settle" for Michigan? That math seems pretty clear to me...

My first job out of law school after clerking, I sat next to a guy who went to an above average but not great state law school. I've done beyond fine but he's done better in his career because he's a lot more extroverted and less of a d*ck than me. The reality is that 99.999% of jobs need you to be smart but the difference between being 2 SDs above the mean in IQ and 3 SDs above the mean is minuscule compared to other things. Unless he wants to be a professor, his degree of success will be based on things other than his IQ or college. Like his ability to get along and be liked. He's better off having spent time with friends rather than cramming to get a point higher on the PSAT.

 

[chito_and_leon]

This might be interesting if you haven't seen it.

“The global state of the art in engineering education,”

https://www.rhgraham.org/resources/Global-state-of-the-art-in-engineering-education---March-2018.pdf

 

[drboobay]

I picked TU over Rice and Northwestern and have never felt a second of regret.

That's not to say everyone should pick TU. Just to reiterate there are many great options and that where you graduate from college is not all that limiting in career or grad school choices in most cases.

Just pick and don't look back.

 

[TU_BLA]

Interesting. More interesting is someone from Olin called my son and sent info emails and encouraged him to apply. He had never heard of them and the only thing I could tell him about Needham is it's outside of Boston and really close to the marathon route. My wife is an engineer and someone in her circle said he should take a look at it and apply. I think by the time we learned of it he was sort of in that burned out mode of applications and essays. I'm not 100% but it seemed they had more of an emphasis on a practical approach to engineering education vs theoretical.

As for me, I know he'll be fine wherever he ends up because he's done his research and they all have reputable engineering schools. I know his dream was MIT and I just really wanted him to be able to see that.

 

[chito_and_leon]

Interesting. More interesting is someone from Olin called my son and sent info emails and encouraged him to apply. He had never heard of them and the only thing I could tell him about Needham is it's outside of Boston and really close to the marathon route. My wife is an engineer and someone in her circle said he should take a look at it and apply. I think by the time we learned of it he was sort of in that burned out mode of applications and essays. I'm not 100% but it seemed they had more of an emphasis on a practical approach to engineering education vs theoretical.

As for me, I know he'll be fine wherever he ends up because he's done his research and they all have reputable engineering schools. I know his dream was MIT and I just really wanted him to be able to see that.

I haven't looked at the report for several years but what I got from it was they asked engineers what skills they use on a regular basis and like 8 of the top 10 were "soft" skills and 2 were "hard" engineering skills. They asked what they learned in school that they use and it was very little, but they wished they had a lot more training in working with people, managing, etc. The difference in life outcomes your son will get from going to a "better" school is going to be tiny or zero, he works hard and is smart. He should go where he'll be happy, everything else will take care of itself.

The truth is your son doesn't know what he wants. He's too young and doesn't have enough life perspective. He wants what society tells him to want based on goals that he probably doesn't have the perspective to evaluate. one of the only benefits about getting old, you get perspective.

 

[chito_and_leon]

I picked TU over Rice and Northwestern and have never felt a second of regret.

That's not to say everyone should pick TU. Just to reiterate there are many great options and that where you graduate from college is not all that limiting in career or grad school choices in most cases.

Just pick and don't look back.

Amen, brother. I started at a much better school, wasn't happy, transferred to TU and had opportunities at TU that I'd never have had at the "better" school. You get out of it what you put into it, assuming you're at an at least fairly decent school.

 

[drboobay]

Interesting. More interesting is someone from Olin called my son and sent info emails and encouraged him to apply. He had never heard of them and the only thing I could tell him about Needham is it's outside of Boston and really close to the marathon route. My wife is an engineer and someone in her circle said he should take a look at it and apply. I think by the time we learned of it he was sort of in that burned out mode of applications and essays. I'm not 100% but it seemed they had more of an emphasis on a practical approach to engineering education vs theoretical.

As for me, I know he'll be fine wherever he ends up because he's done his research and they all have reputable engineering schools. I know his dream was MIT and I just really wanted him to be able to see that.

That's a different thing. We hate to see our kids disappointed! But it's how we learn about life.

 

[HuffyCane]

So yesterday was a big day for many kids with Ivy aspirations. Of course these schools along with Duke admitted a record low number (% wise) of applicants his cycle. My son did not get accepted at Yale, Cornell, Columbia, or Duke. Out of his peer group, the group he called the lunch group, only 2 got into any combination of those schools. Hell, none of them got into Rice even. One got into Penn, one got waitlisted at Cornell. That was it. My son missed being a National Merit Scholar semifinalist by 1 index point. This peer group he hangs out with were all seminfinalists and most moved on to Finalist. An article I read yesterday said Duke admitted a record low 4% of applicants out of 47k applicants. That's slight under 2000 kids and my guess is they're hoping for a freshman class of 1600 out of that. Weird thing is my son wasn't super disappointed and neither were his classmates really saying they all sort of expected this as it will be tougher, even for the smartest of the smart kids, to get admitted to these schools, for the next few years until kids born in 2010 and later reach that age. Why? Because the birth rates went up in the early 2000s and stayed on slight increases through 2009. More kids for steady spots at those schools. I had to find that out from him.

They all face times when the decisions came out at 6 so they could celebrate/commiserate together. My son was on the bus to a soccer game when this happened. Good thing for these kids is they all have good options at this point. One of the girls was accepted to Penn, her brother was the kid from Union who got accepted to all 8 Ivy's like 3 years ago. They live like 2 houses over from us. Nice family. My son and this girl have been friends since 3rd grade an actually made one of the kids from Holland Hall's academic bowl teams in 7th grade, cry at the beat down they gave them 😂.

It’s tough this year. Being one point from a semi-finalist would place you in the 60th percentile at TU. Perhaps lower amongst STEM admits.

 

[drboobay]

It’s tough this year. Being one point from a semi-finalist would place you in the 60th percentile at TU. Perhaps lower amongst STEM admits.

Our bribery is working!

 

[drboobay]

Let me add to that. When I ask my daughter why her classmates came to TU, she says that most have told her "it was free."

Fortunately she gets to join that club in January once my wife has officially been an employee for one year.

Edit - TCC is free too, and lots and lots of kids don't go there. So you need to have something appealing to offer to National Merit Semifinalists and not just a free ride.

 

[TU_BLA]

Edit - TCC is free too, and lots and lots of kids don't go there. So you need to have something appealing to offer to National Merit Semifinalists and not just a free ride.

None of the NMSFs from Union are going to TU despite the free ride offer. As far as my son is aware, the majority are going to other schools and paying some to do so. Only 1 he is aware that is going to a top school on their dime. She got into Duke and is a QuestBridge scholar.

He mentioned 1 of the kids in his group did not get accepted to any of the top flight schools despite being maybe the smartest kid in the class. They suspect it's because of the major he wanted to do, Computer Science, being so in demand that schools just aren't taking as many in the past. My son has also heard some of the those schools are including an encouragement to apply as a transfer student in a year when they would anticipate having spots in those programs after 1 yr departures. Again, some weird college admissions stuff going on.

Right now my son is between WPI, Tufts, and Michigan. He takes some solace knowing he got into Tufts which had a lower acceptance rate than even Duke this year.

He also showed me a post someone had made. It showed the applicant as waitlisted at UCLA, UCSB, UCI, UCSD and Clay Poly SLO, but accepted to UC Berkeley and the kid couldn't make sense of it.

And none of his peer group got accepted to Stanford.

 

[HuffyCane]

Is it really a selective school if 25,000 kids apply who had no reasonable shot put their name in?

It’s not like there’s a code of ethics with the reps at the college fairs and campus tours leveling with parents.

Every app pushes their numbers up and makes them look good.

 

[drboobay]

Looks like 1000 kids are coming to TU so someone is interested. Moybe not from Union.

 

[HuffyCane]

Looks like 1000 kids are coming to TU so someone is interested. Moybe not from Union.

I don’t know that we will get to 1000. Paid deposits are up over this time last year though and last year was close to a record. Kids who are taking the bag are signing on early. We always lose a few of those over the summer to the Ivys or the big STEM schools. That’s to be expected. There’s a lot of forces that push and pull Union kids away from TU.

One of the problems with the local parents is many want to shop around and TU quite rightly isn’t going to price its product down to attract them while they shop for a better deal. Having a realistic expectation for the process with your child and a mature conversation about costs and parental boundaries once school starts just doesn’t seem to happen. So kids apply to highly selective schools far away not realizing that they would be an average student at TU or they aren’t quite mature enough to move more than a short drive away from mom. So late in the process they come around TU looking for a late admit and a competitive offer when Harvard doesn’t want Junior. TU wants kids that are a good fit that want to be here and they want them to commit early to bring a level of predictability to the process. And they will pay to attract kids who do that. And the word is getting out on that.

 

[drboobay]

Word on the street (meaning via my wife) is they expect 1,000.

But she works at Fab Lab not admissions.

 

[HuffyCane]

Word on the street (meaning via my wife) is they expect 1,000.

But she works at Fab Lab not admissions.

That’s the stretch goal they announced two years ago with the expectation it would be reached by the high school class of 2026.

If you are correct, there’s been a substantial uptick in paid deposits in the last month or so. Much higher than expected.

An entering class of 1000, over a five year period, with a 90% retention rate I’m told would fill up the available housing and fuel addition housing construction. Which is needed. But that’s the rub in higher ed. You have to build it before they come. As housing choices become less competitive with other institutions it becomes harder to maintain that 1000 number. As BLA points out indirectly, kids won’t come even if it’s free if they have to have a roommate in the John.

 

[TU_BLA]

Most of the issue with these smart Union kids is they all want to experience something outside the Tulsa bubble. They also are driven somewhat by the political climate in the state. These are the kids when Ryan Walters scream kids shouldn't be reading this book or that book run to the nearest book store to grab it. I know at least in part, my son wanted not to be in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, or Missouri. I really wanted him to apply to Arkansas and Mizzou. No dice. He knows TU is a good school and has a great engineering school. He's worked with LoPresti some and knows he could get a great education there with plenty of options for after undergrad. These kids want to experience different parts of the world and they can't do that in Tulsa. I finally understand why local athletes like to choose other locations that may be comparable basketball or football programs even though Tulsa is the superior school overall.

And TU did give my son the most $ so far, but my son also has a grandmother who may have told him she'll pay for where he wants to go. I don't know for sure because I wasn't in the room where it happened.

As for TU getting to matriculating classes of 1000 or so, that's great. I'm not so worried about the housing situation for a while. There are plenty of students who want to move off campus as soon as they can because it's a cheaper option. Instead of a 2 yr requirement they could move to 1. John and Lottie hold about 250 students each, Twin West holds about 120 (used to be 180). Twin South has a capacity of about 180 but that building needs to be razed and rebuilt. LaFortune can hold about 160. I don't know what the newest residence hall holds, maybe 200? Before it was built you had a residence hall capacity of about 1200. I would think it's close to that still. I'm trying to remember what USA apartments held. I feel like I hade about 700 residents in the 3 areas. I think the new apartments hold slightly more than that so maybe 1500 total spaces assuming everyone is in a single bedroom in the apts. Sorority row holds 180 students (30 per house, 6 houses). No one really knows what the capacity of fraternity row is. Maybe assume roughly the same. Between all on campus housing options, you have roughly 3000 spaces give or take a few based on room reconfigurations that have occurred since I worked there. Assuming TU is able to raise its UG population to about 4500 through all of these increases in admissions, you are still in good shape guaranteeing about 67% of UG students a space on campus. Right now there is a good number of grad students who take up apartment space. The question would be where would TU put additional housing? There's not much space left. At one point there was talk of expanding Twin to 6 floors. The building was built such that they could if they ever got to that point. Don't think that would be economically feasible any longer given the age of the building. You might as well do the Vegas business mod, tear down Twin South and build a 6-8 story high rise and double the capacity. That doesn't get you a ton more capacity though.

 

[drboobay]

Some kids certainly want to move. My daughter decided the financial aspects were more important than moving right away. We travel plenty, and she can move anywhere she wants after getting her degree. Or not if she chooses!

Again, though, to each his or her own. We all need to follow our own path in life.

 

[Clong83a]

None of the NMSFs from Union are going to TU despite the free ride offer. As far as my son is aware, the majority are going to other schools and paying some to do so. Only 1 he is aware that is going to a top school on their dime. She got into Duke and is a QuestBridge scholar.

He mentioned 1 of the kids in his group did not get accepted to any of the top flight schools despite being maybe the smartest kid in the class. They suspect it's because of the major he wanted to do, Computer Science, being so in demand that schools just aren't taking as many in the past. My son has also heard some of the those schools are including an encouragement to apply as a transfer student in a year when they would anticipate having spots in those programs after 1 yr departures. Again, some weird college admissions stuff going on.

Right now my son is between WPI, Tufts, and Michigan. He takes some solace knowing he got into Tufts which had a lower acceptance rate than even Duke this year.

He also showed me a post someone had made. It showed the applicant as waitlisted at UCLA, UCSB, UCI, UCSD and Clay Poly SLO, but accepted to UC Berkeley and the kid couldn't make sense of it.

And none of his peer group got accepted to Stanford.

I got my Ph.D. from UC-San Diego, and while it is the one most have never heard of (No D1 sports is probably why), it is one of the best schools in the country bar none.

The UCs are weird though. If you are a California resident, you get preferential acceptance to your "home" University. That is, if you live in San Diego and you apply yo UCLA, UC-Berkeley,, and UCSD, you'll get into UCSD before you get into the other schools. You will also pay a lot more if you want to leave your "home" University.

So a lot of regular kids just go to the school that is closest to them because that is what is cheap and easy. Similar to OU (I think OU works this way, anyway), you are guaratneed a spot if it is your home school and you make a certain GPA and test score. It can make the acceptance rate appear deceptively high and can make the number of "at large" spots pretty small. But it can have some variance from year to year.

 

[HuffyCane]

Most of the issue with these smart Union kids is they all want to experience something outside the Tulsa bubble. They also are driven somewhat by the political climate in the state. These are the kids when Ryan Walters scream kids shouldn't be reading this book or that book run to the nearest book store to grab it. I know at least in part, my son wanted not to be in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, or Missouri. I really wanted him to apply to Arkansas and Mizzou. No dice. He knows TU is a good school and has a great engineering school. He's worked with LoPresti some and knows he could get a great education there with plenty of options for after undergrad. These kids want to experience different parts of the world and they can't do that in Tulsa. I finally understand why local athletes like to choose other locations that may be comparable basketball or football programs even though Tulsa is the superior school overall.

And TU did give my son the most $ so far, but my son also has a grandmother who may have told him she'll pay for where he wants to go. I don't know for sure because I wasn't in the room where it happened.

As for TU getting to matriculating classes of 1000 or so, that's great. I'm not so worried about the housing situation for a while. There are plenty of students who want to move off campus as soon as they can because it's a cheaper option. Instead of a 2 yr requirement they could move to 1. John and Lottie hold about 250 students each, Twin West holds about 120 (used to be 180). Twin South has a capacity of about 180 but that building needs to be razed and rebuilt. LaFortune can hold about 160. I don't know what the newest residence hall holds, maybe 200? Before it was built you had a residence hall capacity of about 1200. I would think it's close to that still. I'm trying to remember what USA apartments held. I feel like I hade about 700 residents in the 3 areas. I think the new apartments hold slightly more than that so maybe 1500 total spaces assuming everyone is in a single bedroom in the apts. Sorority row holds 180 students (30 per house, 6 houses). No one really knows what the capacity of fraternity row is. Maybe assume roughly the same. Between all on campus housing options, you have roughly 3000 spaces give or take a few based on room reconfigurations that have occurred since I worked there. Assuming TU is able to raise its UG population to about 4500 through all of these increases in admissions, you are still in good shape guaranteeing about 67% of UG students a space on campus. Right now there is a good number of grad students who take up apartment space. The question would be where would TU put additional housing? There's not much space left. At one point there was talk of expanding Twin to 6 floors. The building was built such that they could if they ever got to that point. Don't think that would be economically feasible any longer given the age of the building. You might as well do the Vegas business mod, tear down Twin South and build a 6-8 story high rise and double the capacity. That doesn't get you a ton more capacity though.

Hardesty Hall holds 300. There’s plenty of space and a ten year master plan. Your figures depend upon double occupancy. Which is out of favor post CoVid. If they get to 4000, they will likely repurpose Fisher and build elsewhere. They know where and how. Your expertise is helpful, but 20 years dated. You’re an old dude, dude.

 

[HuffyCane]

You might as well do the Vegas business mod, tear down Twin South and build a 6-8 story high rise and double the capacity. That doesn't get you a ton more capacity though.

Why stop there? Demo both Twins and put 5 stories of apartments on to top of 4 floors of parking for faculty and sports donors.

The answer of course is that the arc rules prohibit a building higher than McFarlin and both Twins never should have been built at that location because they are isolated from classroom locations. Kids skip lunch rather than walk back to Twin at noon which isn’t good. The new offerings in the Union help off set that. STEM kids won’t live in Fisher with another dorm basically connected to the STEM buildings now. So you’ve got academic isolation/segregation issues as well. And the best part of living on a small campus like TU is you get immersed in your neighbor’s statistics homework even though you are an art major. Doesn’t happen now for a large number of the STEM kids in Hardesty. It’s all STEM all the time.

They’ve got a plan and you’ll like it if and when you see it.