Scholarship table
Those of you with children college aged, did MU's neighborhood factor at all in their decision? Obviously, the parents on this board have a different opinion on things then those that didn't attend. I remember hearing a story that MU's enrollment was down in the mid-90s in the Milwaukee newspaper distribution area. That's where many outside of the Milwaukee area were getting their information about the MU neighborhood. With the internet, any one can look up stories on anything and maybe that is a part of it too.I was thinking about this thread last week when I went to the volleyball match here in Madison. My daughter and I parked a few blocks away from the FieldHouse, walked down Monroe Street. I was thinking of the Office episode where Darryl tells Michael he lives a "Nerfy life." That's what living in Madison is: "Nerf Life." I miss the grittiness of Milwaukee and it prepared me for my career more then anything else. That to me is a big selling point of the school, but not sure how you can sell that to students, who really like fancy dorms and rec centers.
Thanks everyone. Lot's of good discussion and information being shared.One question: I read frequently, and have had the inclination to agree with, the sentiment that MU will never be "X", "Y" or "Z" school academically. But I ask, why not? When I attended MU in the early '90s schools like Iowa and Wisconsin were a few of the 'safety' schools for me and my MU friends and schools like Michigan State and Ohio State were not thought of highly at all for undergraduate degrees, but now I see those schools in the 100-50 range in the rankings. If those schools can raise their profile, why not MU?To be clear, I don't think MU has to move from 80 to 50, but I don't view it as impossible.
Here are two MU Wire articles that shed a little more light on the enrollment goals. One from early May of this year about 2 weeks before the deposit deadline, the other from just a couple of weeks ago. Their enrollment goal for this fall's incoming Freshman class was 2,077 according to the Provost in the May article. Their actual enrollment according to the August article ended up at 1,975, 102 short of goal. I don't know much about higher education finance and budgeting but from everything I've read a 100 student shortfall can have a pretty significant impact on a tuition dependent school like MU. How much did that play into the 2.5% cut? Is it more than they're claiming and the future demographic stuff is just spin, as some on here believe?The August article also says that incoming numbers from IL, although still the largest feeder state to MU, are down this year and that the IL market in particular has become increasingly competitive. For those of you that live there and have high school age kids, I'd love to know your take on why you think that is. Does it have anything to do with the state's recent conversion from ACT to SAT? Might this have encouraged more kids to apply to schools out east that wouldn't have previously? It's not like more colleges are opening in IL or anywhere else, so what is your take? Links to both articles below, and kudos to the students' very solid reporting.https://marquettewire.org/4012913/news/university-academic-senate-discusses-enrollment-and-democratic-national-convention/https://marquettewire.org/4014920/news/total-enrollment-down-for-the-class-of-2023-college-of-communication-on-the-rise/
Down 1 w 5 seconds left. Doable.
Marquette won't move that high since they are not a research university.
For someone who said they saved 30K in loans for a child by going to UW versus Marquette, I think I'd go with Marquette under those circumstances unless there was a particular major that Marquette did not have. Marquette does a great job with undergrad education and job placement and for my kid the 30K difference would be worth a Marquette experience, values, etc... Since UW was compared a few times, I do believe that US News, since they are a main topic, ranks MU ahead of UW for undergrad teaching and MU ahead of UW for best value. If I can find the info quickly, I'll post it, otherwise if someone else has time they can verify.
The trend towards wanting to be in urban areas/cities is a big plus for MU. Thirty years ago the neighborhood was not as nice, and a lot of people avoided cities. Now, it seems that everyone wants to be in cities and the MU neighborhood has improved a lot. Two nice trends for MU.For some, yup. My daughter and many others...cringe at the idea. Definitely a plus for some.
I agree with you completely on this! What I don't understand is why MU doesn't want to increase their pool of viable and qualified applicants. The overwhelming majority of applicants to ivy's and their ilk are academically qualified to attend there. Yes, they receive some lark applications from kids who have no chance, but that's a relatively small percentage and in most cases 80% of the applicant pool for the most elitist of elite institutions meet the academic criteria required and these schools overwhelmingly resort to non academic metrics or what they refer to as intangibles to decide who they accept and who they don't. Granted MU is never going to have the same demand that those schools do but if you compare MU to a place like say Fordham University in NYC, they're roughly the same size as MU, a little larger but that's due to their graduate students who comprise close to 40% of their enrollment. Undergrad enrollment is only marginally more than MU, they're not ranked that much higher than us, yet they have over 40,000 applications and we have 15K? Even more frustrating, Athletics are a non factor there, and given their location in the philanthropy capital of the U.S, their endowment isn't much more impressive than ours. Other than being in NYC which is certainly a selling point I'm not sure what makes them so much more popular??????
I don’t think you understand how expensive increasing the pool of “qualified applicants” would be. That’s not easy nor is it inexpensive.
I'm sure it's challenging and expensive but if they truly want to be the "National University" that they claim to want to be, they need to figure out a way. Diversity is more than just racial and socio-economic. Geographic diversity is important as well and I know it's not a high priority for them, but if the pool of college age students will be shrinking as much as they say, especially in the upper midwest, they have to figure out a way to both grow and maintain quality of the applicant pool.In the 70's (I assume for obvious reasons) almost 40% of the student body hailed from the Northeast and Mid Atlantic region. It remained that way until the mid 80's but there was a precipitous decline starting around 1986 and it never recovered. The 2003 Final Four run provided a brief respite in the early 2000's but those gains were not short lived, and the damage had already been done.There just aren't enough Alums in this area any more to help it seems.
...but if they truly want to be the "National University" that they claim to want to be...
The trend towards wanting to be in urban areas/cities is a big plus for MU. Thirty years ago the neighborhood was not as nice, and a lot of people avoided cities. Now, it seems that everyone wants to be in cities and the MU neighborhood has improved a lot. Two nice trends for MU.
Agreed. For both of my daughters, the urban location was more of a plus than a minus. When I attended in the early 80s, it was much more of a concern.
Is this documented anywhere, or is this your guess? That sounds way high to me. I know that in the early-to-mid-80's, about 25% of the students were commuters. If 40% were from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, that means only 35% were from everywhere else - including Chicago, Wisconsin, and the rest of the country.
That's what I've been told, although admittedly I haven't seen any official data. Anecdotally though it seems accurate and I tell you why. For the first probably 8-9 years after I graduated in the early 90's I was even more active in the NYC area alumni club then as I am now, and at that time the overwhelming majority of alums you would encounter were originally from the Northeast and just went to MU for school. If they weren't from the NYC area originally they tended to be folks from Boston, Philly, Baltimore, or DC but working in NYC and most were considerably older than me and graduated in the late 70's / early 80's. Of course there were some Midwestern transplants working in NYC as well but they were a minority in the Alumni club at the time.Today, it's the complete opposite and the overwhelming majority of active participants in the NYC club are Midwestern transplants from the midwest, and folks originally from the NE are rare outliers.
As I mentioned before, Miami of Ohio is the #1 most popular school for students in my town to apply too.
Could that be because it’s thought of as one of the top party schools in the country?
I'm sure it's challenging and expensive but if they truly want to be the "National University" that they claim to want to be, they need to figure out a way.