Reply to Hypothesis: Peak UVA

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[quote=Anonymous]OK Maryland booster, or UVA hater, here we go.

[quote=Anonymous]Here are my supporting arguments:

1.  After many years of large increases in the number of apps, 2018 yielded just 423 more than 2017, a paltry number.

UVA's applications are up 27% over the last three years.  More than 37,000 applications were received.  https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-tops-admission-application-record-third-straight-year  Acceptances for EA and RD reached a new low of 26.7%

2.  There are only 40-50K high school students in the country who score 33 or above on the ACT and/or 1450 and above on the SAT.  Competition for those students is more fierce now than ever before, with so many schools offering generous merit aid, both public and private.  UVA will face increasing competition for its OOS portion of these students, even in state kids at this level will have options they never previously had.

With private institutions' costs continuing to rise, there will be only more in-state applications to UVA for the 58% in-state seats.  You are forgetting the applications that come in from 147 international countries.  We are just beginning to see what will be an avalanche of international students.  Over 1 million international students came to the USA to study this year.

3.  Population growth in Virginia is not what it once was, it has become a net exporter of people to other states.

Tysons is booming.  Amazon may be coming.  Population growth is still upward.  1/4 of UVA's accepted in-state students come from FCPS (which includes TJ).  NoVA is exploding.  Anyhow, even if it were true that NOVA applications were to decline, it's irrelevant because there will always be in-state students who want those UVA seats.  UVVA can also decide it will take MORE OSS and international students.

4.  Nationally the number of high school students is expected to decline in over the coming years.

But the internationals are flooding in.  Students are now routinely sending out more than 15 college applications.  That will just continue to grow as the stakes get higher.

5.  UVA is not the bargain it once was for OOS students.  For full pay OOS its costs are very similar to an Ivy or other higher ranked universities.

It's $16,781K for tuition.  How can you beat that?  Students turn town premiere tech schools and Ivies because their parents can't afford $70K a year in after tax dollars.  The number of donut hole families are increasing as well.

6.  As the minority population grows, high school students will be less interested in "Mr. Jefferson" and the "Charlottesville air" as the Fiske guide puts it.

Well, that was bigoted.  No one purchases the Fiske guide anymore.  Mr. Fiske is quite old and happy at the Hoover Institute.  He also happened to mention those qualities as positives.  Many UVA and OOS students want UVA because it is smaller undergrad population than UCLA and Berkeley.

7.  UVA has been a hot school since at least the nineties.  Nothing lasts forever.  It will never reach the 110k application mark of a UCLA.  Popularity waxes and wanes:  look at the fortunes of Columbia, BU and BC over the decades or Dartmouth in the other direction.

UCLA has 45,000 students. California is destroying itself by not limiting immigration.  The applications will continue to rise at UCLA and Berkeley and the California State Universities and the Cal States.  Now that OOS and internationals have only 20% of the slots out there, the competition will become even more fierce.  The Chines, in particular, are enamored with UCLA and Berkeley.  A friend in the consulting business has parents pay him $100K to get their child ready for a UCLA application.  UVA has only 16,000 undergrads so attracts a different student but is still rated No. 1, 2, or 3 with UCLA and Berkeley but always ahead of Michigan for top public university in the USA.  OOS students prefer it to UCLA and UVA because the undergrad size is half the size of UCLA and Berkeley and the chance of getting in is easier due to UVA's 2/3 rule. 
 https://news.virginia.edu/content/us-news-lists-uva-among-top-three-public-universities-27th-straight-year

8.  And here is my hope:  that as the higher ed bubble continues to burst, it will affect all schools except perhaps HYPSM, and that in the AI driven job apocalypse that is supposedly coming, those who do go to college will decide they want an education on a human scale and realize that a large, research university is not the best place for an undergraduate education.

I don't think there will be a burst.  I'm not saying that it shouldn't.  I'm appalled at how difficult and stressful things have become for our nation's high school students.  But so long as the ratings systems make money for their creators, and so long as people pay attention to these ratings systems, the number of applications will continue to increase from USA and OOS and International students.  It's not right, but that's the way the statistics line up.

So to summarize, my theory is that UVA has reached peak apps and selectivity.  Time will tell.

Just incorrect.  It had peak applications and lowest selectivity ratings ever this year.  Number of AA, URM and low income applications are up as well.  147 countries send their students to UVA.

I do think it is insane that a public high school student has to have a 4.47, 12 AP courses, a perfect ACT or near perfect SAT, perfect SAT subject matter tests and run corporate America at age 17 to get in (with no hooks).  I am by no way justifying the madness  This insanity started when USN@WR started the rankings wars  Now everyone wants to get into the wars because they are money makers.  I'm sure you've all seen how absurd the rankings are ("best food") and now jokers are trying to rank things as obscure as world status.  And parents pay attention.  That isn't going to stop.  Donut hole families who cannot afford the $65-$81K a year to send their kids to HYP will continue to flood the state-sponsored universities.  Perhaps parents in Virginia will get the General Assembly to do what California did and increase the number of seats at UVA to 80%.  Meanwhile, UVA wants to compete as a world-class university so it brings in the best and brightest across the land and the world.  You can't be everything for everyone.  Bills are introduced every year into the VA General Assembly to allocate more seats for Virginians or more seats for FCPS but those bills go nowhere.  It will be interesting to watch what happens now that the UC system is capping OOS and international at 20%.

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