Why do UVA and Michigan attract such affluent student bodies?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both these schools have tons of out of state students. With the insane competition for private T20s, schools like Michigan and UVA have benefitted by sweeping up affluent kids that missed out on the Ivy/T15 sweepstakes.

Michigan has been popular for decades with wealthy coasties. This is nothing new at all. Michigan has nearly as many OOS undergraduate students as the entire undergraduate population of UVA. It is in a league of its own in that regard.

Michigan is not a state school. It is a.school that gives a discount to people who live in Michigan.

- a Michigan grad who lives in Michigan.

Of course it’s a state school. It currently gets over 365 million/year for the Ann Arbor campus that comes from Michigan taxpayers. I do agree though that it runs more like a semi-private school compared to most state universities

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just to compare public universities (from the NYT):

Students from top 1% of families

Michigan 9.3%
Virginia 8.5%
Illinois 2.5%
Penn State 2.3%
Wisconsin 1.7%

Students from top 10% of families

Michigan 49%
Virginia 49%
Illinois 30%
Penn State 27%
Wisconsin 19%

For starters, WI as a state does not have a huge pocket of wealthy people (most would end up in Chicago, not Madison or Milwaukee). Whereas VA has NoVa with a very large population of rich/UMC people.

MI is likely the same. Then for OOS---MI is extremely popular, but most are not paying $75K+ for a state school(or any school) if they are not well off.

Are you just making things up? Wisconsin has a number of Fortune 500 companies and closely held corps. It has the paper industry, SC Johnson, Miller Coors, Harley Davidson, Rockwell, Fiserv, Kohls, Johnson Controls, Oshkosh Corp, the biotech industry in Madison. I could go on and on. Not everyone with money goes to Chicago, but I am nit surprised that some ignorant DCUM poster jumps to this conclusion. Milwaukee and Madison have a number of beautiful wealthy areas and suburbs by the lakes that make everything in the DMV look like a dump. There is no shortage of money or wealth here. Sorry that blows your narrative.

Have a kid who has been in both of those cities for the last 8+ years. The wealth there simply does NOT compare to Chicago or a DCUMland. Yes it exists but not nearly at the level of other states. And have you been to the rest of WI? Largely rural, smaller towns. SO as a state, there is NOT as much wealth as say a Va

And Virginia isn’t mostly “rural, smaller towns”? Have you been to “the rest of” Virginia? Most of it is not very wealthy except the ugly Northern part that is adjacent to DC.

So true. Virginia is Appalachia east.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've always wondered how the NYT purported to know income of all students (not just federal aid recipients) if they don't have aid. How did they get income information and link it to a school?

+1
Still waiting for a link to this.

From the article-

The researchers tracked about 30 million students born between 1980 and 1991, linking anonymized tax returns to attendance records from nearly every college in the country.

Why can't you simply provide a link? Do you know how to do this?

Do you have a Google Machine at home?

[Anonymous]

There are more rich preppy people in Michigan and Virginia?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are more rich preppy people in Michigan and Virginia?

Lots of wishcasting up in here. Sorry, Virginia does not have the reputation as being rich or cool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One reason U of Mich got so good is that the Detroit area was one of the wealthiest in the world for a while due to the auto industry. And even after the American auto industry sagged in the last 35 yrs of the 20th century, there was/is still a lot of money in the state. There are suburbs of Detroit you wouldn’t believe.

I can never figure that out..tons of high level jobs are gone from the Big Three. And suppliers usually have piss poor margins. So where do all the people in Bloomfield Hills or Grosse Pointe work? Or is a lot of it inherited money? Everybody can't own an insurance company or be a financial advisor.

The big 3 are still very big. And they make electric cars now. Also false that all suppliers make piss poor margins. Also there are many adjacent industries that depend on the big 3: ad agencies, trade show vendors, etc. Everyone in the Detroit area is impacted by the auto industry. In the western part of the state there are other industries.

[Anonymous]

NOVA parent with DCs at both Michigan and UVA (and also a Michigan and Ivy alum), offering some subjective opinions on the two schools.

Michigan

1. As discussed, Michigan was open to admitting Jews and later Asians who were blocked from the Ivies. Many of these folks were full pay, and their families became loyal to the school.
2. Yes, there are some very wealthy folks from Grosse Pointe, etc., but also from Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Traverse City. The old money stayed.
3. Michigan has a large, with many full pay, international student population.
4. Michigan has lots of Federal and industry research money coming in.
5. There are a few celeb kids (kids of Obama, Madonna, Eminem, Kelly Ripa, Jake Tapper, etc.) but of course not all stay (although I heard Eminem's kid was a very good student).

The place thus has more like an NE/California (but not the weather!) vibe than most of surrounding area because of the OOS folks. And many of the in-state folks are pretty wealthy.

Virginia

1. Jefferson and his crowd were pretty rich. Rich Southerners have sent their kids to Charlottesville for generations. UVA has its own resort and polo club!
2. Charlottesville has some pretty high net worth people in the surrounding countryside.
3. UVA has been popular with the NE prep school and day school crowd also for generations. UVA admissions has a couple of regional reps who focus on this market.
4. There are Asians, but they are more likely to be in-state folks (like us). UVA has fewer international students but is looking to increase them.
5. UVA for a long time gave cheap in-state tuition for grad school to folks who lived in Virginia for a year and paid taxes. A lot of value-minded Ivy grads worked in DC but lived in Arlington and Alexandria to get in-state tuition for law or business school. This ended a while ago, though. But these folks are still loyal to UVA.
6. UVA acts more like a private school in terms of parent communications and overall attitude. Michigan really felt like the massive public school that it is.

UVA thus feels more WASPy, old money than Michigan. But it still feels very wealthy indeed.

[Anonymous]

“There are Asians, but they are more likely to be in-state folks (like us). UVA has fewer international students but is looking to increase them.”

Good luck with that. Being weak in STEM is why UVA has a dismal world ranking. Nobody outside portions of this country have much of an opinion of the school. It’s an afterthought.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“There are Asians, but they are more likely to be in-state folks (like us). UVA has fewer international students but is looking to increase them.”

Good luck with that. Being weak in STEM is why UVA has a dismal world ranking. Nobody outside portions of this country have much of an opinion of the school. It’s an afterthought.

I have lived in various portions of this country, and UVA is not an afterthought, including the northeast. Give it a rest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The top 1% number from UVA will probably go down because the VA legislature is stupid and they banned donor admission preferences. They should have banned donor, legacy for in admissions for in-state students, but allow it out of state students. Then cap OSS 1/3rd of the student body. OOS donor and legacy admits subsidize the university for in state students, so this was a very short-sighted decision.

While legacy won’t help you anymore, you can still move the needle provided your donation is big enough.

The bill actually banned donor admission as well. There might be a workaround that is technically legal, but I suspect it will effectively eliminate any advantages conferred by donations for all but the wealthiest people that have family names on buildings. Someone whose family is wealthy enough that the admissions office recognizes their last name might benefit from since they can unofficially consider it without leaving any evidence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've always wondered how the NYT purported to know income of all students (not just federal aid recipients) if they don't have aid. How did they get income information and link it to a school?

+1
Still waiting for a link to this.

From the article-

The researchers tracked about 30 million students born between 1980 and 1991, linking anonymized tax returns to attendance records from nearly every college in the country.

Why can't you simply provide a link? Do you know how to do this?

Do you have a Google Machine at home?

Did you know that when you spout claims and/or "information," the burden is on YOU to provide an accompanying link? Otherwise, we'll just assume you've pulled the numbers out of your a$$.

[Anonymous]

Michigan was an attractive name at my NOVA public school and is a big recruiter of the NYC specialized public high schools.
I don't associate those with wealth at all.
On the other hand, UVA does not bother to show up at the specialized high school college fairs (but U. of Richmond did, bless their heart).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Michigan was an attractive name at my NOVA public school and is a big recruiter of the NYC specialized public high schools.
I don't associate those with wealth at all.
On the other hand, UVA does not bother to show up at the specialized high school college fairs (but U. of Richmond did, bless their heart).

Huh? UVA did attend my kid’s specialized public high school fairs. Kid is a first year at UVA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of wealthy boarding school kids at UVA, according to our NOVA daughter.

Yes, there are a lot of boarding school kids at UVa. Among my friends were folks who went to St. Paul's, Philips Exeter, Lawrenceville, Hotchkiss, Choate, Deerfield Academy, and Woodberry Forest -- as well as Wellington (in England) and TASIS (in Switzerland).

I first learned of UVA from The Preppy Handbook.

[Anonymous]

It's hard to overstate the legacy wealth in the detroit suburbs. IYKYK.