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Post by reformation on Feb 26, 2006 9:08:27 GMT -5
Article in this Fridays Hoya www.thehoya.com/news/022406/news9.cfm1)Seems like overall applications to GU have been flat for a while now-they have been increasing steadily over the past 5 years at most other elite Univ's. This is a bit worrying and seems to have gone unnoticed- 2)The male female ratio at Gtwn seems to be trending very heavily female, all univ's are facing this to a degree but gtwn seems to be at the extreme end of the curve. 3)Will be interesting to see if apps jump next year because of increased basketball hype, I know many have commented with some studies to back them up that bball has no influence on admissions--Iwill be interesting to see what actually happens
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eagle36
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Post by eagle36 on Feb 26, 2006 11:39:22 GMT -5
I believe that Georgetown needs to improve on their financial aid packages for need based applicants. We are not competing on that front with other elite universities. Next year tution will increase 5%. Our endowment is amongst one of the lowest for a elite institution. It will soon become a school of the haves and have nots
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Jack
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Post by Jack on Feb 26, 2006 13:00:39 GMT -5
Increases in raw number of applications is not a very helpful way of viewing admissions trends- it is akin to saying Georgetown's offense is bad and defense is great just by looking at points per game. There are plenty of ways to increase number of applications that do nothing to improve the quality of students you enroll.
To me what is most important is looking at your market share of the top applicants, and that is an area where Georgetown has continued to gain ground year after year. Given the specific demographic that Georgetown seeks in its applicant pool, maintaining the current size of the pool is not such a bad thing- simply put, there are fewer high school seniors with very high scores this year than there were last year.
Now that is not to say that the raw number of applicants is not important at all, but if Georgetown wanted to have 2,000 more applicants next year, all we would have to do is go to the common application. The question is what do you really gain when you do that? Yield becomes less predictable and many of the "new" applicants are going to be either unqualified or applying without much thought about GU specifically.
Much better to increase the pool by dedicating more resources to recruiting the very top students into the pool and perhaps focusing some attention on under-represented markets. You can be sure that discussions are taking place in response to larger demographic trends, and the recent commitment to raising money for need-based aid is certainly a response to what eagle36 points out. If the money is really there, you can make a much stronger commitment to recruiting kids from all socioeconomic backgrounds. It does help to be Harvard and tell the poorest kids that they will not have to take any loans to attend.
As for the other points, the male/female problem at Georgetown is real, and it is exacerbated by the particular programs GU offers undergrads. Virtually every other top university in the country has an engineering/hard science program which is dominated by men. Few have a school of nursing and a faculty of languages and linguistics that are dominated by women. And even the great majority of applicants to the SFS and Arts and Humanities are female. Only MSB has a positive balance for men.
Hard to say what to do about this issue, but it could be that reformation's third point regarding basketball will help. It is true that no study has been able to show a real correlation between athletic success and increased applicant pools, but the buzz around campus this year is undeniably different, school pride and spirit are clearly improving, and I can only imagine that the 300 accepted students attending the Syracuse game saw something there that they will never see if they attend Brown or Columbia.
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nychoya3
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Post by nychoya3 on Feb 26, 2006 14:03:08 GMT -5
Good post Jack. Thanks for the perspective.
How does one measure "market share of top applicants?" Do you mean how many choose GU over admission to Ivys, Duke, Stanford et al?
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Jack
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Post by Jack on Feb 26, 2006 14:19:46 GMT -5
Good post Jack. Thanks for the perspective. How does one measure "market share of top applicants?" Do you mean how many choose GU over admission to Ivys, Duke, Stanford et al? When discussing the applicant pool and market share, I am just talking about whether top kids actually apply to Georgetown, and to do that you can look at annual data supplied by ETS for SAT and PSAT scores to see how many kids have high scores, then look at your pool to see how many of them are in it. Over the years, Georgetown has made significant gains in this percentage. It is tough to do right now, ETS has not released the final data, but the PSAT data definitely shows fewer students in the high score category this year than in previous years, which should lead to a smaller applicant pool. That the pool is roughly the same size and same quality as last year probably means we have done well with that market share. As for comparisons of where kids choose to go to school, that data is interesting and somewhat useful, but also harder to obtain for the entire applicant pool. There was an interesting study on "revealed preference" done two years ago that attempted to look at where top students were actually choosing to enroll when given the choice, and those numbers showed GU significantly outperforming the USNWR rankings, #16 overall in a ranking that also includes smaller liberal arts colleges not a part of the USNWR ranking, and ahead of peers like Duke, UVA, and Northwestern. If you want to take a look at the data, you can find it here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105
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Post by reformation on Feb 26, 2006 18:37:13 GMT -5
Jack, thanks for the informative reply!
I'm still a bit(though less so) concerned because Gtwn seems to be a real outlier on the apps # trend--is our approach to really that different than all the other top univ's(i wouldn't be surprised to see schools like duke and penn go to great lengths to jack up their scores) but I'd be pretty surprised to see places like Columbia, Stanford et.al. use a lot of gimmicks to jack up their #'s.
Re: the m/f imbalance I expect the univ to announce a joint engr initiative soon so maybe that will help a bit, but I think that the univ shouldn't ignore the "signal" re its general lack of more rigorous program in the "hard" subjects that appeal to an important subset of top quality applicants.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Feb 26, 2006 23:02:52 GMT -5
1)Seems like overall applications to GU have been flat for a while now-they have been increasing steadily over the past 5 years at most other elite Univ's. This is a bit worrying and seems to have gone unnoticed- Georgetown may have plateaued in reaching the ultra-competitive applicant pool...well at least within the Northeast. GU is still a bit underrepresented in the Southwest and West and applications could stand to increase from places like Texas. It's very politically incorrect to say so, but there needs to be an effort to bump those male numbers up and push closer towards 50/50. Studies show that a lot of high school aged males aren't thrilled by the liberal arts, and gravitate to engineering and sciences that GU doesn't offer. Still, some schools are considerably more off-kilter in this regard. A Jesuit school out west is trending almost 67% female in its applications. Among the 1400+ SAT crowd, I don't think basketball has the bump effect on admissions it did a generation ago, but that's just my opinion. Any other thoughts out there?
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SirSaxa
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Post by SirSaxa on Feb 27, 2006 15:15:36 GMT -5
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Nevada Hoya
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Post by Nevada Hoya on Feb 27, 2006 16:34:53 GMT -5
Article in this Fridays Hoya www.thehoya.com/news/022406/news9.cfm2)The male female ratio at Gtwn seems to be trending very heavily female, all univ's are facing this to a degree but gtwn seems to be at the extreme end of the curve. Gee, why wasn't that a problem when I was there? I surely notice that in my interviewing - I have about two or three males students in the past 10 years, the rest are all females (today I have yet another young lady).
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Post by AustinHoya03 on Feb 27, 2006 17:41:18 GMT -5
Among the 1400+ SAT crowd, I don't think basketball has the bump effect on admissions it did a generation ago, but that's just my opinion. Any other thoughts out there? When I was younger, more immature, and applying to colleges, I primarily wanted to go somewhere far from home where I could drink beer with other smart people. I also wanted to go to a place with a nationally recognized sports program, because I love college sports. I applied to Duke because it met all these criteria. I applied to (and attended) GU for the same reasons. I had a 1400+ score on my SATs. Most of my friends from high school had 1400+ SATs as well, and some of them went to known party schools because they wanted an 'Animal House' like experience in college. Everyone's looking for something different. Re: the Southwest being under-represented, I think it's more appropriate to say California is over-represented when it comes to the Southwest (even though CA is on Southwest double-secret probation). When I was on campus there were not a ton of kids from our second most populous state. I wouldn't ever expect a ton of kids from New Mexico, Nevada, or Arizona, because of their lower populations, but Oklahoma and Colorado are probably under-represented. What's most surprising to me about Texas and its under-representation is that most applicants to GU from Austin seem to be white or Asian. The Hispanic community in Texas is large and almost 100% Catholic. There are plenty of Hispanic kids in competitive high schools. There is no Catholic school of Georgetown's caliber in Texas (the largest Catholic university in the state is tiny St. Mary's in San Antonio). It makes me wonder -- are all these kids going to Notre Dame? They're not going to UT -- Hispanic numbers are down even after introduction of the Top 10% rule. I should say that things may be different in Dallas and Houston, where there are large Catholic high schools. Anyone care to comment?
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Jack
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Post by Jack on Feb 27, 2006 19:07:59 GMT -5
Certainly true that Texas is dramatically underrepresented at Georgetown, but the reasons behind it are harder to pinpoint and may be endemic to what makes Texans Texans. I don't think I will offend anyone here when I say that Texas is different. In some ways, it feels like getting kids to leave Texas to go to college is like getting kids to leave France to go to college- some small percentage are very interested in seeing what else is out there, but a whole lot of kids, even very bright kids, are content to get a great education at UT, or A&M, or Rice, or SMU.
Georgetown does a fair amount of recruiting in TX, doing joint presentations in Dallas, Ft. Worth, 2 in Houston, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, Laredo, McAllen, and Corpus Christi. We also visit several schools in the DFW and Houston areas, and get some great applicants from schools like Strake, St. John's, Jesuit, and St. Mark's. But in the end they make up a smaller percentage GU applicant pool than they should, and yield at a lower rate as well. My anecdotal conversations with admissions people at other top schools indicate this circumstance is not unique to Georgetown.
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Post by AustinHoya03 on Feb 27, 2006 22:14:43 GMT -5
Thanks for the response, Jack. Have to say I can't disagree with your observation. When I was in high school the UT-Austin formula for admission was fairly formulaic, and a lot of kids would only apply there if they knew they had the grades/test scores. SMU and TCU are practically "neighborhood schools," where it seems like half the people that go there are locals, and half the people who graduate from those schools remain locals. And it's a state tradition for any kid with decent grades and boards to apply to Rice. Surprised GU even holds meetings in McAllen and Laredo -- even UT and TAMU have a tough time getting kids to leave the Valley.
What I'm a bit more interested in, though, is how effective "widening the net" in searching for applicants in Texas might be. I'm guessing it's not inaccurate to say most Georgetown applicants are middle-class white kids who went to competitive high schools. There are enough of these kids in Texas who want to go to Texas schools (or simply choose other competitive schools -- I know a few people who applied to only Ivys + UT) that it might benefit GU to use different tactics down here. I think GU has a competitive advantage in marketing itself as a Catholic university to a growing Hispanic middle class, especially because there are no comparable schools in this region. I don't really know how GU builds relationships with/targets high schools, or if they do at all. But if GU focused on schools like Clark and Churchill, two public high schools in the growing northern suburbs of San Antonio with a decent number of middle-class Hispanic kids, maybe there would be more interest?
But back to your original topic, I guess what's really surprising is the number of kids that GU gets from California compared to Texas. I think most Californians would like to think their state is "different," too. The Golden State boasts an even better public university system than Texas, it's got excellent weather, and great job markets. So why do so many leave the left coast for GU? Are they all aspiring politicians? Have you hoodwinked them, Jack?
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Jack
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Post by Jack on Feb 27, 2006 23:06:31 GMT -5
If GU aims to have a truly national student body, ideally we would have an applicant pool that is a microcosm of the larger college bound population. To that end, if, eg, TX kids represent 10% of all college bound kids, they would also be 10% of the applicant pool and 10% of the student body. Instead, they are more like 4% of the student body and can thus be considered underrepresented.
States like NY and even moreso NJ are clearly overrepresented. CA is really just about proportional- it is not that GU has done particularly well with CA, it is just that CA kids seems more inclined to leave the state than TX kids, even with their great options closer to home. Certainly Californians have their own identity and own culture, but there is no one like Texans in that respect. I suspect you will find more folks in CA who are east coast transplants and still have family back east than you will in TX. I also don't think I have ever seen a bumper sticker that said "Don't Mess With California."
As for the points about recruiting Hispanic Catholic kids in TX, your ideas make sense in principal, but I don't know what specifically what school we are visiting in TX. I also don't really know how big that middle class is- costs are a huge issue, and those outreach trips to McAllen, Laredo, etc. are hard sells to locals with the nearly $50K sticker cost. I have never worked with that area directly myself.
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SirSaxa
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Post by SirSaxa on Feb 28, 2006 9:18:23 GMT -5
Would Texas kids go to a University without big time football?
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Post by AustinHoya03 on Feb 28, 2006 14:52:06 GMT -5
Would Texas kids go to a University without big time football? Well, a lot of them do go to A&M...
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Gold Hoya
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Post by Gold Hoya on Feb 28, 2006 19:02:45 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure that Admin is a big A&M fan, so you may be inviting wrath, Austin.
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Post by AustinHoya03 on Feb 28, 2006 22:08:04 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure that Admin is a big A&M fan, so you may be inviting wrath, Austin. I'm well aware of Admin's allegiances, but I've got less than a year to gloat and plan on getting my fill.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Feb 28, 2006 22:41:56 GMT -5
As for the points about recruiting Hispanic Catholic kids in TX, your ideas make sense in principal, but I don't know what specifically what school we are visiting in TX. It's not so much schools that aren't being visited but large portions of the state where there are no applicants whatsoever. Thre are 1,100 public high schools in the state (growing by about 15-20 a year) and Georgetown probably gets apps from no more than 30 or 40 a year. Applications remain heavily concentrated among 15-20 private schools in Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio. Georgetown can't settle for just thinking that Texans won't travel. If Texas can be among the top five states for Duke applicants, it can be at Georgetown, too. The future of growing the applicant pool isn't found in Northern Jersey or Westchester, but untapped school districts like Grapevine, Cypress-Fairbanks, Round Rock, and Pharr-San Juan. Texas is the second largest state in the Union and needs to be sending a lot more kids to the Nation's Capital.
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Jack
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Post by Jack on Mar 1, 2006 9:36:55 GMT -5
It's not so much schools that aren't being visited but large portions of the state where there are no applicants whatsoever. Thre are 1,100 public high schools in the state (growing by about 15-20 a year) and Georgetown probably gets apps from no more than 30 or 40 a year. Applications remain heavily concentrated among 15-20 private schools in Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio. Georgetown can't settle for just thinking that Texans won't travel. If Texas can be among the top five states for Duke applicants, it can be at Georgetown, too. The future of growing the applicant pool isn't found in Northern Jersey or Westchester, but untapped school districts like Grapevine, Cypress-Fairbanks, Round Rock, and Pharr-San Juan. Texas is the second largest state in the Union and needs to be sending a lot more kids to the Nation's Capital. First, I should be clear that these are my own opinions and do not represent any kind of official position of the university or the admissions office. I am just not sure how Georgetown can dedicate any more resources to recruiting in TX when we are stretched so thin and we get so little in return. We visit more cities in TX than anywhere other than CA, and we end up with around 500 applicants a year. We travel with Duke to those cities, so those kids are hearing from both of us and not surprisingly (to me) more of them are choosing the southern school. Even if we could return to visit more of the public schools in more remote areas, we get very little return on those visits- the kids who come see us on high school visits already know who we are by then, and the public schools often do not have a counselor there to meet us, so we don't build any relationships. This year TX is neck and neck with IL for 9th most applicants, and they will almost certainly yield lower than every other state in that top 10. I know DFW has a personal investment in TX and he has done great work for us in terms of recruiting. I think we should do better there too, but I don't think it is from a lack of effort, at least not relative to the rest of the pool. We aren't exactly beating the bushes in Westchester Co. either, and the schools we visit there have a lot more to do with maintenance than with building the pool, same as the schools we go to in TX. Additional outreach is great, and TX is one logical place to go, but it is not the only place to go, and it might not be the best use of resources. Continuing to expand financial aid and being able to make a loud statement that Georgetown is open and affordable to everyone has the potential to do far more than visiting 100 or even 1000 additional high schools.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Mar 1, 2006 20:08:51 GMT -5
I agree with the post above--it's infeasible to reach every school out there. The last sentence above is important ("...being able to make a loud statement that Georgetown is open and affordable to everyone") but the key is to get the attention of these 2,000+ valedictorians and salutatorians out there and grow from there.
There's more that alumni can do down here to make that happen and I hope to have the time to do so this spring and summer.
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