Reply to Which universities have gone DOWN in stature over the years?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]W&M is an obvious answer.

Ranking drop from 32 -&gt; 38.
Acceptance rate went from 33% to 42%, higher than large publics like UT Austin and UMD. While large publics like Berkeley are reaching single-digit acceptance rates, W&M's is increasing.

Student enrollment has increased.

Their law school has gone completely downhill.

W&M used to be more difficult to get into than UVA, due to a smaller number seats. It had higher SAT scores than UVA, the highest among publics comparable to Berkley. It was compared to the smaller Ivies like Dartmouth/Brown and SLACs like Swarthmore. It attracted out-of-staters and wealthy internationals that would never consider a large public for OOS tuition, but would consider W&M due to the size and feel.

Nowadays, UVA is far more tougher to get in, [b]has far higher SAT scores[/b] and far great national and international reach.[/quote]

Per most recent CDS:

UVA 25th/75th percentile SAT - 1330-1490
W&M 25th/75th percentile SAT - 1360-1520

both have average GPAs of 4.3.

Perhaps W&M’s higher acceptance rate is a function of some other factor other than the caliber of students they attract.  Maybe since UVA and has more prominent sports and a better college town and is bigger it appeals to more kids who apply that are more borderline. W&M is bit more niche in that it a very small public, so more like a SLAC. Williamsburg is pretty sleepy too.

Maybe, just maybe, acceptance rate is not a good indication of how good a school is at any rate.[/quote]

Those SAT scores and GPA are either wrong or outdated. As I stated, W&M had higher SAT/ACT scores and GPA than UVA, but that is no longer the case.

This is not regarding W&M being niche or not or its acceptance rate at any given time compared to UVA. W&M has had a higher acceptance rate than UVA for more than a decade now.

It's about the [b]trend[/b].

A decade ago, UVA had an acceptance rate of 29-30% while W&M's was 32-33%. In Fall 2020, UVA's acceptance rate had dropped to 23% and W&M's had increased to 42%. Meanwhile acceptance rates across the country have decreased due to increased applications.

At the same time, W&M's yield has decreased to mid-20's. Yield at all schools has decreased but not to the same extent, and schools with decreasing yields have also seen decreasing acceptance rates, not the opposite.

W&M has not become any more of a niche school than it was before. The number of students preferring a niche academic-focused school over a large sports-focused school has not decreased in proportion, and if anything has increased in proportion when looking at the popularity of schools like U. Chicago, Rice, Tufts, Swarthmore, etc.

Rather, W&M has become less of a niche, academic-focused school. They tried to become a more Greek, sports-focused school instead to attract the type of students that prefer UVA-type school. In the process it lost the students that preferred the Tufts-type school while clearly not gaining any of the former. [/quote]

When did W&M try to become a "more Greek, sports-focused school" and less academic?  The recent renovation/addition to the football stadium was the first in 90 years.   The basketball arena hasn't had a major upgrade since it was constructed over 50 years ago (although one is planned).  These improvements are all through private funds and not school funds.  The size of Greek system hasn't really changed in many, many years.   Meanwhile, the library, business school, science facilities and other academic buildings got major upgrades well before these were initiated.   [/quote]

W&M literally spent $26 million+ building fraternity housing on campus less than a decade ago using university funds, not donations: https://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2011/site-for-new-fraternity-housing-announced.php

[quote]The project is estimated at a cost of $26 million and will be funded principally through room fees[/quote]
[quote]“As the birthplace of the American college fraternity (Phi Beta Kappa was founded here in 1776), W&M has an important role to play as an advocate for and host to a thriving undergraduate fraternity experience,” said Virginia Ambler, vice president for student affairs. “These new chapter houses will affirm and strengthen fraternity life at the College, celebrating a rich tradition in which our students and alumni feel a deep sense of pride.”
[/quote]

BTW, Phi Beta Kappa is an academic honors fraternity, not a social fraternity. The first social fraternities were founded at Union College in NY. These houses that W&M built are for social fraternities, not academic fraternities.

So ironically, despite having actual academic credibility and prestige being associated with the oldest and foremost academic fraternity in the US, W&M tried to use it to peddle a non-existent social fraternity pedigree that it never had in order to build housing for social fraternities using university funds.

Every university that has fraternities have fraternity housing built and maintained by the fraternity organizations themselves through donations directly to the fraternity, not the university.

Spending $26 million of university funds building a total of 187 beds is not only financial mismanagement, but also shows terrible prioritization by the administration. 
Each house, which is the size of a regular McMansion, cost $2.1 million+ to build, on land they already owned.

At the time W&M had less than a $500m endowment, so they spent 5% value of their whole endowment in a hopeless bid to attract social fraternities, for some reason.

As for the football stadium construction, this is another matter of prioritization by the university. The university itself had another half-baked plan to extend the stadium and specifically sought out past donors for that purpose: https://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2016/wm-dedicates-renovated-zable-stadium.php

[quote]The project broke ground in the spring of 2015 and was wrapped up before the start of the 2016 season. The renovation places Zable Stadium in line with the recommendations of the Committee on Competitive Excellence Report, which states that high-quality facilities are necessary to provide Tribe athletes with the best environment for competitive success.
[/quote]

Competitive success in football? Why does the school care about competitive success in a school team that very few students follow competing in a league that doesn't even broadcast on TV and is actually a net negative to the school's finances? They should shut down the football program and focus on basketball, a sport that smaller colleges can actually compete in with a level of success.

The main donor on that project has a major academic building named after him on campus, a building that was failing apart inside at the time of the stadium construction. You don't think that donor would prefer to use his funds towards renovating a building already named after him into a state-of-the-art facility, instead of adding seats to a stadium that is already always empty?

Money is fungible, and money from willing donors should be diverted towards academic causes, not extending an already empty stadium.

Also BTW, to add on to the clown show:
[quote]The William & Mary community believes that such a prominent landmark on campus should reflect the university’s status as one of the country’s top institutions.
[/quote]

Yes, having a prominent sports stadium on campus reflects well on a university's status as a top academic institution. This is why schools like Harvard and MIT spend all their funds on building sports stadiums and why the Ivy League is the most prominent college sports league in the country. What are these administrators drinking?

Worse, that stadium extension is an eyesore and looks extremely out of place on the campus.

So yes, the school administration has doubled down on Greek Life and sports in the past decade, to the detriment of the school. No prospective student sees brand new university-built social fraternity houses along with an oversized extension on an empty sports stadium next to decrepit academic buildings and thinks that the school is in good hands and in an upward academic trajectory. [/quote]

What a long, misleading, inaccurate post.  An utter hack job.

Many universities have Greek housing on their campus (Duke, JMU, CNU, W&L Sororities).  The financial model for this student housing is the same as for dormitories.  The buildings and the bonds that finance them are typically paid for by the associated rental fees.  In the W&M Fraternity housing you cite, the source was 9(c) bonds paid by the rental fees.  It was not funded with endowment, tuition, state general fund appropriations or any other source that was diverted to auxiliary operations from academic operations as you are trying to imply.  If you look at the cost, which you suggest is extravagant, the two story houses are only slightly more on a per bed basis than the new 6 floor UVA Alderman dormitories, which were constructed during a similar time period using the same funding mechanism (bonds paid for by rental fees).   And to put the cost in some context, both the Alderman Road dormitories at UVA and the new fraternity houses at W&M are only about one-fifth the cost per bed of the new residential colleges Yale recently built (over $500M for 800 beds, or $650K+ per bed).

You also didn't get the funding of the football stadium correct, either.  The largest donor was the estate of Walt Zable, the man for whom the stadium was already named.  Walt Zable cited his experience playing football at W&M as instrumental in his development, and he went on to found an 8,000 employee technology company.  He does not have another building on campus named for him.  Do you think Mr. Zable was coerced by the administration to donate to football?  The next two largest donors to the stadium project have given much more money to projects outside of athletics, including donations to the business school, law school, and the expansion of the alumni center.  One of those donors was from the same family that made one of the largest donations for the expansion of UVA's football stadium.

All of this is a distraction on your part.  Among top national public universities, William & Mary ranks highest in USNWR ranking of undergraduate teaching and it has the best faculty to student ratio.  It is also rated highest among publics in student surveys in Princeton Review and Niche for professor quality, preparation, and commitment to student success.   Again among top national public universities, W&M has the highest percentage of undergraduate students that go on to earn PhDs of all types and the second highest that ear PhDs in STEM fields after UC Berkeley.  It has one of the highest medical school acceptance rates for public universities.  Based on student surveys, Princeton Review includes both W&M's library and science lab facilities on its best list.  The investments in academic facilities dwarfs the two projects you cited above during the same period of time.  This includes construction and renovation of 500,000 square feet of science space, a new business building, library renovation and expansion, new arts facilities, law school expansion, and a new school of education facility.  The cost of these alone is about 25X the stadium expansion cost.  [/quote]

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