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Our NJ upper middle class to affluent kids

zappaa

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I'm sure we all agree they go anywhere but Rutgers...for the most part.
The reasons have been discussed many times on this board and we all know what they are.
They range from a campus filled with students that look and dress nothing like them, to the place simply doesn't resemble a college atmosphere like a our sister schools in the B1G, or a UNC or Virginia do.

This was not the case before 1975 so something happened? What was it?
As for the remedy...winning athletic teams would do more to change the perception than anything else..IMO
The school we root so passionately for has two chicken and egg scenarios it seems to me. In order to recruit well for your sport you need to win, and in order to become attractive to upper class kids who are non athletes, you need to win at sports as well.

Strictly my opinion, If there was a winning atmosphere surrounding are athletic teams around our campus, it would greatly improve perception, which in turn might help us get affluent kids. I'm not even saying getting those kids would make it a better school, but it would make us like other flagship state universities that for the most part are all priority destinations for their instate kids.
 
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Two main drivers (and I'm sure this will get parsed by the usual crowd here):
-They dropped admission standards in the late 90's which brought in different demographics, so RU is seen as a gateway to a less desirable education.

-Generally, upper-middle class and affluent families can afford out-of-state tuition and their kids have better access to primary/secondary education so they get better grades and SAT scores so they can go to other higher ranked schools.

How do you fix it? It requires more money that we have:

1)Become more selective in your student admissions (can RU do that given the fact it NEEDS more students, not less, to break even)
2) Overpay to get better professors/faculty (does RU have the funding?)
3) Invest in campus beautification and infrastructure enhancements (some of it is being done already)
4) Invest heavily in athletics (I think this has been covered here thousands of time).

THAT BEING SAID, the ultimate goal is not to attract upper-middle and affluent class NJ kids but to make RU a top university from a education and experience standpoint.
 
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This is discussed a lot with my friends...many times it comes back to the lack of a true RU brand...criticize others like PSU but the We Are and white outs and Happy Valley are powerful..RU needs something...I always say if they find a Flutie they can go to next level...the top tier guys go elsewhere so gotta hit home runs with under the radar guys and then you can shift to top guys...so far no big time jersey guys have decided to be the lead guy to the next tier outside of Davis...and unfortunately he didn't pull a lot of others with him...and that was a long time ago now...
 
I'm sure we all agree they go anywhere but Rutgers...for the most part.
The reasons have been discussed many times on this board and we all know what they are.
They range from a campus filled with students that look and dress nothing like them, to the place simply doesn't resemble a college atmosphere like a our sister schools in the B1G, or a UNC or Virginia do.

This was not the case before 1975 so something happened? What was it?
As for the remedy...winning athletic teams would do more to change the perception than anything else..IMO
The school we root so passionately for has two chicken and egg scenarios it seems to me. In order to recruit well for your sport you need to win, and in order to become attractive to upper class kids who are non athletes, you need to win at sports as well.

Strictly my opinion, If there was a winning atmosphere surrounding are athletic teams around our campus, it would greatly improve perception, which in turn might help us get affluent kids. I'm not even saying getting those kids would make it a better school, but it would make us like other state schools that for the most part are all priority schools for their instate kids.

Good post, Zappa, but as someone who was there at the time, I must tell you that even before 1975, the demographics of the school also reflected a disproportionately small percentage of upper middle class students. Very few students from the towns with the high economic demographics were there even before 1975 - and I was very familiar with those towns since as an undergrad and after my senior year, I worked for a Rutgers research arm and prepared a statistical data book for use by the state legislature that, among other things, had all of the pertinent data reflecting the per capita income and other data for each of the then 567 NJ municipalities. The high income towns as reflected in that book were very much under-represented at RU, but you didn't need that book to know that. Even then you could, anecdotally, among other things, look at the cars parked at the dorms and in the commuter lots and compare them to others at schools (even non-elite state Us) that I been to and see the difference. Again, historically, Rutgers is the only flagship State U in the country where the per capita income of the students' families is lower than that of the state as a whole. were there then, and are there now, some kids from upper middle class families at RU? Yes. But are those kids very much in a tiny minority on the banks? Absolutely yes.
 
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RC...
Affluent kids who attend private schools in other states still consider their flagship university a propriety destination, we are one of the only states that differs.
Now they may opt out and pay big bucks to go an Amherst, but if they did choose to attend their home school, no none would ask why?
 
Hard to put a finger on the precise reasons, but I'm sure the true answer will be a combination of many things posted in this thread. My hunches:

1. NJ identity crisis & "eat our own" mentality.
2. High Catholic population leading to the Notre Dame & BC infatuations among many of our residents (I think this is dwindling -- only a little bit, but dwindling nonetheless)
3. Northeast private, liberal arts mindset
4. We're an affluent state: people can afford to send their kids out of state

And yes -- a high performing athletic program would certainly go a long way.
 
RC...
Affluent kids who attend private schools in other states still consider their flagship university a propriety destination, we are one of the only states that differs.
Now they may opt out and pay big bucks to go an Amherst, but if they did choose to attend their home school, no none would ask why?
I agree. I'm just saying that the issues that make rich NJ kids go somewhere else are the same things that are stopping RU from being viewed as one of the top state schools in the country.

It would take a over a generation of investment for us to get to UVA/UNC/Michigan/UCals level but we could get to the Wisconsin/Illinois/PSU/Fla level in 10 years if the money was there.....
 
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Sports definitely help. I look at Maryland as an example. Having grown up in the Maryland, the university isn't viewed a whole lot different than Rutgers is in the state of NJ. Said another way, it isn't some feather in your cap to say your kid goes to Maryland. It isn't UNC for example where kids dream of going there that grow up there.

The one huge difference is athletics, especially basketball. These have always been a source of pride at Maryland and for Maryland, which extends beyond its borders, as well. It is why kids in NJ think going to Maryland is something they don't have access to in NJ, which outside of athletics, just isn't the case. Those two schools are very, very similar, save the gorilla in the room.
 
Zappa, Are you a Rutgers alumnus?
No sir, I was recruited hard by Frank Burns and Jim Taiga, but went with baseball.
My obsession with NJ high school sports and Rutgers evolved from playing minor league ball with kids from Alabama, Florida, Texas, California etc...
All of them talking about their illustrious football careers and busting my chops NJ didn't play representative football. And so it began, I assured them my Montclair team would have kicked their ass, and our NJ kids could play with anyone...if we all stayed home we'd win the National Championship.

Sound familiar, you've all heard that story before, mine is 100% true, I've been waiting 40 years and I'm still obsessed.
 
Hard to put a finger on the precise reasons, but I'm sure the true answer will be a combination of many things posted in this thread. My hunches:

1. NJ identity crisis & "eat our own" mentality.
2. High Catholic population leading to the Notre Dame & BC infatuations among many of our residents (I think this is dwindling -- only a little bit, but dwindling nonetheless)
3. Northeast private, liberal arts mindset
4. We're an affluent state: people can afford to send their kids out of state

And yes -- a high performing athletic program would certainly go a long way.

NJ has gotten increasingly wealthy, and its in an area with lots of elite private school competition plus a handful of decent public schools that draw more middle range students away. This board has proven over and over again that people with money will spend it on a perceived better quality education - starting as early as preschool. Why would they stop spending that money at the college level?

Athletics will provide no real boost. No kid who was going to Harvard or NYU is going to select RU because of good football. If we are relying on kids who would have gone to Delaware or PSU - well thats not really getting us better kids, just more selective. The only thing that will help RU is pouring BILLIONs into the campus and reducing enrollment. Athletics might help over decades by building increased loyalty, but that is really a long long term proposition, and relies heavily on the unknown of athletics spending actually leading to great teams.

The increasing cost of private school and the stagnation of NJs economy are actually the greatest allies Rutgers has in the short to mid-term, as RU again become seen as a value proposition to some good but not super rich students.

Cali - I think you are wrong. MDers might root for MD in a way that NJans dont - but I dont think they send their kids their because of it. The smarter kids in my school went to MD because it was the best school the could afford. Same with my sister - it was a good value. Had MD had meteorology I would have gone there too, for the same reason. The next town over had richer kids, and fewer of them went to MD. And again the ones who did went there because it was a good school. None of them picked the school because they could see winning basketball. If Towson was the better school, they would have gone there instead.
 
To me the main reasons are:

1 - RU is easy to commute to from most of the state (unlike PSU, UVA, etc.) and that has always led to a high percentage of students with low income and first generation immigrants' kids being able to attend the state's flagship school. Many upper middle kids and their families want their kids to go to college with kids who look and function like them. RU hasn't been that type of place for many generations.

The best evidence as to how few upper middle class people and how few connected people send their kids to RU is the fact that there hasn't been an RU undergrad alum be governor of NJ I believe since the 19th century - wow! And remember, NJ has among the fewest colleges per capita in the country (FL has the fewest).

2 - First generation college kids and commuters don't require the same creature comforts as upper middle class kids, so they are more willing accept what's there and in any event, their families lack the clout to do anything about it. So the creature comfort that attract upper idle class kids have never been at RU.

3 - RU has always been underfunded so there is no one in Trenton historically that cares enough to fund RU in a manner that would create the kind of environment that would attract upper middle class kids- vicious circle.

4 - The is a syndrome among RU alums that it seems that the more successful the alums are, the less they are likely to care about or donate to RU. I can't tell you how many times I have encountered this my professional life. It's a big number. My assumption on this is that the RU Screw and other non-user friendly aspects of RU emanating from its underfunding and being populated for the most part by kids without economic or other clout to change things leaves a bad taste in many alums' mouths, especially when they compare this to the feelings that other successful professionals that they encounter feel about their alma maters - I have never met a PSU alum who didn't feel very positive about their experience there (though I'm sure there are unhappy nittany lions out there).

If RU had true consistent nationally recognized athletic success in FB, MBB, etc., this could help bring successful alums back in the fold, but that athletic success, especially for the moribund MBB program will need the funding that, catch-22 like, is the thing lacking that is the subject of this thread.
 
Hard to put a finger on the precise reasons, but I'm sure the true answer will be a combination of many things posted in this thread. My hunches:

1. NJ identity crisis & "eat our own" mentality.
2. High Catholic population leading to the Notre Dame & BC infatuations among many of our residents (I think this is dwindling -- only a little bit, but dwindling nonetheless)
3. Northeast private, liberal arts mindset
4. We're an affluent state: people can afford to send their kids out of state

And yes -- a high performing athletic program would certainly go a long way.

Add in to that mix -
For many college bound students there is a desire to head out to explore new frontiers - to get away from home - and often the local institution is held in lower regard - simply because it is local - and does not appear to afford the opportunity to explore a whole different world -


 
Rutgers is the State University of NJ. It's a public institution and I don't believe it's "mission" is to try to lure the very affluent or whatever. The purpose should be to serve the overall population of the state. I'm not sure what this all has to do with football. I was at RU in the late 70s and come from a blue collar, middle-lower middle class backround. At the time, there seemed to be a pretty diverse population of students at RU..from many different types of backround. I had good relationships with people from different backrounds. I also met some who in my opinion were kind of snobby and overly judgemental...I don't think there is anything new to that. I believe in those days the culture in many ways was a little more tolerant, people were more accepting of different folks. A lot has changed, I think the larger society is much more segmented now and people seem to want to label everything. Anyway, as for football...getting maybe some less touted HS players from smaller and public schools isn't a bad thing. I've found in my kind of casual following of recruiting over the years many of the kids from the power, private HS football programs tend to get overated because of what "program" they are in. I certainly don't think RU should try to become or emulate Duke (God forbid) or anything.
 
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Add in to that mix -
For many college bound students there is a desire to head out to explore new frontiers - to get away from home - and often the local institution is held in lower regard - simply because it is local - and does not appear to afford the opportunity to explore a whole different world -
This is an excuse that applies everywhere, only difference is the local institution is not held in lower regard, like RU is, it's simply considered a choice. Here if you choose RU, it's mocked.
 
zappaa:

I think there is a distinction that needs to be made here...

With New jersey public school system considered among the best in the country and so few schools to chose from within NJ...there is always going to be a good amount of migration out of state...

For what I see looking around campus...I think there are MORE kids from middle to upper middle class distinction at Rutgers than ever before...and I think that is driving up applications and admisision standards. $100,000 of post tax money for 4 years to go to RU if you are middle to middle upper class is not spare change, especially if you have multiple kids

So...for what I see....I see more of that

however...from the upper class...It's probably not going to be in our DNA to draw these kids to RU anytime soon...not with the Ivies leagues, and lot of very very good private schools in the northeast that are not regliious affliated at all.

Get more of the middle and upper middle class for a generation...that's a good start and it is something I am seeing already.
 
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Rutgers is the State University of NJ. It's a public institution and I don't believe it's "mission" is to try to lure the very affluent or whatever. The purpose should be to serve the overall population of the state. I'm not sure what this all has to do with football. I was at RU in the late 70s and come from a blue collar, middle-lower middle class backround. At the time, there seemed to be a pretty diverse population of students at RU..from many different types of backround. I had good relationships with people from different backrounds. I also met some who in my opinion were kind of snobby and overly judgemental...I don't think there is anything new to that. I believe in those days the culture in many ways was a little more tolerant, people were more accepting of different folks. A lot has changed, I think the larger society is much more segmented now and people seem to want to label everything. Anyway, as for football...getting maybe some less touted HS players from smaller and public schools isn't a bad thing. I've found in my kind of casual following of recruiting over the years many of the kids from the power, private HS football programs tend to get overated because of what "program" they are in. I certainly don't think RU should try to become or emulate Duke (God forbid) or anything.
In my circles, if a parent said his kid is going to RU, the immediate question would be why there? Sorry, but it is what it is. I don't think that happens in Michigan or Ohio....it would be more like, great, wonderful, cool...not here
 
Does anyone have any real data on this? I can find numbers on how many New Jersey students go to college and how many go out of state, but how many of those are going to schools that are equal or better academically. And how many of those are mocking Rutgers? I have the feeling that this perception mostly exists in people's heads. Two people say something negative and someone decides to exaggerate that to equal everyone.
 
Rutgers is the State University of NJ. It's a public institution and I don't believe it's "mission" is to try to lure the very affluent or whatever. The purpose should be to serve the overall population of the state. I'm not sure what this all has to do with football. I was at RU in the late 70s and come from a blue collar, middle-lower middle class backround. At the time, there seemed to be a pretty diverse population of students at RU..from many different types of backround. I had good relationships with people from different backrounds. I also met some who in my opinion were kind of snobby and overly judgemental...I don't think there is anything new to that. I believe in those days the culture in many ways was a little more tolerant, people were more accepting of different folks. A lot has changed, I think the larger society is much more segmented now and people seem to want to label everything. Anyway, as for football...getting maybe some less touted HS players from smaller and public schools isn't a bad thing. I've found in my kind of casual following of recruiting over the years many of the kids from the power, private HS football programs tend to get overated because of what "program" they are in. I certainly don't think RU should try to become or emulate Duke (God forbid) or anything.
I hear you, but if RU does not succeed in attracting a fair amount of upper middle class students, it will never be able to compete with Michigan and other top State U's for its share of the best and brightest. And while as a state U, RU should not, of course, gear itself solely to attracting the children of the elite, if it does not attract a significantly greater amount of those kids, it will continue to founder under economic stress.
 
Upper-Middle Class kids care about education, not sports teams. If winning sports teams were the cure, you'd see all of the kids from Holmdel running over each other to get into Alabama.
 
Upper-Middle Class kids care about education, not sports teams. If winning sports teams were the cure, you'd see all of the kids from Holmdel running over each other to get into Alabama.
I agree but successful sports programs can, in certain instances, make a big difference. Georgetown (I have an advanced degree from there) is a great example - until Patrick Ewing and their Big East Success - late 70s, early 80s, , Georgetown was a very good school and competitive to get in. But once the BB team received national attention, the number of applications went through the roof and it went from being hard to get in, to very hard to get in. Successful sports programs provide great free advertising and if it is over a multi-year period, generally results in increased applications and that includes, for schools like GTown, upper middle class kids. So while these applicants may or may not be basketball junkies, the name recognition brought about by success of GTown's BB program had a big positive impact on getting more applications and when you get more applications, you invariably get more good students applying, thus raising the academic profile of a school.
 
In my circles, if a parent said his kid is going to RU, the immediate question would be why there? Sorry, but it is what it is. I don't think that happens in Michigan or Ohio....it would be more like, great, wonderful, cool...not here
Michigan is a better school than RU.

I would venture to guess that the elite and rich students in Ohio get that question though. Oh, you ONLY got into OSU. Um - well good luck. They just have fewer college grads, wealthy people, etc.

GT is a small private school, and before the internet information about non-local schools was hard to come by. So it possible that a GREAT basketball team could make a difference when you only have to find a few hundred (if that) extra students nationally in a given year to make a big difference. And even then - it took a championship level team with one of the transcendent talents of his generation to get that attention. And even then - you either have to continue at that level, or turn that into real investment to keep it going. If kids get there and realize that Georgetown is shit, then they wont keep going.

A counter example is ST Johns. Similar quality of basketball (not quite championship, but very good). But less elite to begin with (I cant imagine Bill Clinton ever considered St Johns for example.) Worse location. Less wealthy. Did basketball do anything major for it, or would it have been better spending most of that money on improving its dorms and classrooms?

RU being a large state school is always going to draw from this state and the ones next door, where we already have high visibility and needs alot more students to change the tide than GT needed circa 1985.
 
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Upper-Middle Class kids care about education, not sports teams. If winning sports teams were the cure, you'd see all of the kids from Holmdel running over each other to get into Alabama.

Upper middle class kids don't care about education; they want opportunity. They go to plenty of schools that are not as good as Rutgers but may offer greater post-graduate opportunities. IMO, the issue at Rutgers is an alumni networking issue. There are many ways to build that network, but very good sports develop a real connection between a student and a school that can continue beyond graduation.
 
FWIW, I have a friend from Ohio that went to Ohio U., but is a huge Ohio State fan. I poke fun at him for being a front runner, because he actually didn't go there. His response is that A LOT of people would never go to OSU (there actually is a negative stigma to it in some circles), but root like heck for the OSU sports teams.
 
A huge thing, IMO, is the size and spread out nature of the campus. Taking a bus everywhere is not an attractive option when you can go to schools like OSU, PSU, UNC, etc. and walk from one end of the campus to the other. Rutgers needs to build up Livingston to be the center of undergraduate student life.
 
Upper middle class kids don't care about education; they want opportunity. They go to plenty of schools that are not as good as Rutgers but may offer greater post-graduate opportunities. IMO, the issue at Rutgers is an alumni networking issue. There are many ways to build that network, but very good sports develop a real connection between a student and a school that can continue beyond graduation.

I tend to agree. Rutgers needs a rallying point from both the Alumni base as well as the NJ community at large. What it gets instead is a mish-mosh type of reception with as much denigration as it receives support. Part of the problem is that NJ is a melting pot type of state when it comes to almost everything....so there are many people here who went to a diverse cross section of universities and with a portion who are constantly sniping at RU. This board to me is reflective of how the NJ community feels about Rutgers. No universal (or at least majority) undying support....but rather a very segmented and vocal base all catering to their own agendas with at least 50% focus on what Rutgers "isn't" instead of what Rutgers "is". Also, the NJ media does not help the situation - with a large majority of negative focus.

Outspoken Negative opinions & Bad Press = Bad Perception.........and perception tends to be everything these days.

If you are deciding on joining a club, team or group....are you swaying to the one with positive vibes or negative vibes??
 
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When I graduated HS I had been accepted to all 8 schools I applied to. I was looking at a couple of out of state schools (1 being private that I really wanted). My parents told me if I went there I would have 50-75k in student loans vs. them paying for everything at Rutgers or Trenton St. I chose Rutgers for that reason. Rutgers was in my top 3 all along.

Now during my freshman year I had 2 hs classmates in my dorm. In the 2 neighboring dorms there were 2 more hs classmates. Overall there was about 20 hs classmates on campus. My hometown was 25 mins away so some of them were commuters. I would guess there were 60-70 individuals from my hs on campus. As I look back I have no issues with Rutgers but think I may have been better at a school like a Delaware or Maryland where there may have only been 3-5 individuals from my hs on campus. The main issue was it seemed everytime I was out making new friends there would always be a connection to one of my old hs classmates. It is tough to break away and make a new start when your past always comes back. At the time Delaware was only a few thousand more as an out of state student vs. being in state at Rutgers.

Based on where I am in life now I think I would have achieved similar success no matter where I went to school.

Based on my discussion above I can see why some kids prefer to go away to school and their parents may look at Rutgers as high school plus.
 
I agree but successful sports programs can, in certain instances, make a big difference. Georgetown (I have an advanced degree from there) is a great example - until Patrick Ewing and their Big East Success - late 70s, early 80s, , Georgetown was a very good school and competitive to get in. But once the BB team received national attention, the number of applications went through the roof and it went from being hard to get in, to very hard to get in. Successful sports programs provide great free advertising and if it is over a multi-year period, generally results in increased applications and that includes, for schools like GTown, upper middle class kids. So while these applicants may or may not be basketball junkies, the name recognition brought about by success of GTown's BB program had a big positive impact on getting more applications and when you get more applications, you invariably get more good students applying, thus raising the academic profile of a school.

Case-by-case evidence is never good in these situations.

For example: North Dakota State has gotten really good in football and basketball in the last five years. Do you hear about any semi-competant kids from NJ trying to get into NDSU? How about WVU when it was on top?

Also, for all the shit that Syracuse is given on this board for what it was in the 1970's, do we want Rutgers to follow in that path? Syracuse has gotten a lot better since then.
 
FWIW, I have a friend from Ohio that went to Ohio U., but is a huge Ohio State fan. I poke fun at him for being a front runner, because he actually didn't go there. His response is that A LOT of people would never go to OSU (there actually is a negative stigma to it in some circles), but root like heck for the OSU sports teams.

You're on to something there. A branch of my family is from (and mostly still lives in) Ohio. As opposed to OSU they all went to Miami of Ohio, which at the undergrad level is the better school academically. But they are all rabid OSU football fans. Rutgers has never occupied that place in New Jersey.
 
I tend to agree. Rutgers needs a rallying point from both the Alumni base as well as the NJ community at large. What it gets instead is a mish-mosh type of reception with as much denigration as it receives support. Part of the problem is that NJ is a melting pot type of state when it comes to almost everything....so there are many people here who went to a diverse cross section of universities and with a portion who are constantly sniping at RU. This board to me is reflective of how the NJ community feels about Rutgers. No universal (or at least majority) undying support....but rather a very segmented and vocal base all catering to their own agendas with at least 50% focus on what Rutgers "isn't" instead of what Rutgers "is". Also, the NJ media does not help the situation - with a large majority of negative focus.

Outspoken Negative opinions & Bad Press = Bad Perception.........and perception tends to be everything these days.

If you are deciding on joining a club, team or group....are you swaying to the one with positive vibes or negative vibes??


But an issue that is not one of perception is that RU doesn't attract the kids of the upper middle class or the politically connected (often the same group). And it hasn't for many, many years. This is not perception. Walk around the campus and you see this in the cars, in the clothes, in the number of commuters, etc. And the reason that upper middle class kids don't go there isn't perception either. It's that RU doesn't have the funds to create the creature comforts, user friendly campus, facilities, and lavish frat houses that typify the other major State U's (inculding non-elite ones) that get far more upper middle class kids than we do. Heck, even OSU is far from elite and is filled with non-upper middle class folks but it also gets its share of affluent kids. This is anecdotal, I know three women down here in Florida who are OSU alums and to my surprise when I first met them over a number of years, each of them came from very comfortable backgrounds - anecdotal, but I can tell you that I don't remember meeting more than a small handful of RU undergrad alums in my many years since leaving the banks that grew up in a decidedly upper middle class home and I've met hundreds of RUers through the years in various contexts. Of course not only does UF down here have a very large segment of affluent kids for a state U, but over the last 25 years, FSU has joined that group. The very polished and well-travelled prep-school grad daughter of our CEO here turned down a number of schools (albeit none of them elite academic schools) to go to FSU.

Now of course, these examples are consistent with the general truism that outside of the Northeast, where State Us are historically poor step children of private schools, kids with financial flexibility often choose their own state Unversities rather than go away to private schools and FL has no elite private schools though UM is getting better each year.
 
This is an excuse that applies everywhere, only difference is the local institution is not held in lower regard, like RU is, it's simply considered a choice. Here if you choose RU, it's mocked.

Oh you would be surprised - the local schools are not universally held in low regard ( and neither is Rutgers ) - but - there is a good sized (somewhat elite) segment of the local population that is dismissive of the local institution option - for example, there are kids in Connecticut within 30 miles of UCONN who would turn up their nose at the thought of "going off to college" in Storrs ... ditto for Massachusetts kids regarding UMASS .... have also heard derisive comments from locals about numerous other school that have fine reputations - the comments come from the kids living close by who want to go 'anywhere but xxxx' ( xxxx= Clemson, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Texas A&M, Arkansas and on & on)


Maybe it is exacerbated here because New Jersey is so densely populated & Rutgers is not far away for most of the state population, so there probably is a bit of a "mega"- town vs gown kind of thing going on on some levels.
 
Which other B1G schools would you send your kids to over Rutgers? I can only think of 3 schools (Northwestern, Mich and Wisc).

Upper middle class or affluent in Florida vs NJ is very different.
 
Which other B1G schools would you send your kids to over Rutgers? I can only think of 3 schools (Northwestern, Mich and Wisc).

Upper middle class or affluent in Florida vs NJ is very different.
Yes they are. In Florida, we get our poor to buy lottery tickets to fund our kids college education to our great flagship state university. In NJ,they pay high taxes to teach their kids to count to 100 and learn their ABC's then send their kids to mediocre overpriced private schools or out of state universities for college.
 
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Which other B1G schools would you send your kids to over Rutgers? I can only think of 3 schools (Northwestern, Mich and Wisc).

Upper middle class or affluent in Florida vs NJ is very different.
I don't have kids at the college age but if I did I would not steer them away from too many of the P5 schools. While Rutgers may be better academically I understand college is more than straight education. I would not be against PSU, Mich, Tosu, Purdue, Wisconsin, Arizona, Clemson, MD, Delaware, UMass, etc... The main thing I would look at is the makeup of the population. A place like Arkansas may be tough for a northeastern kid who never held a gun or bow / arrow. Some of the bible belt schools in general could be tough for a northeastern kid.

The value to going away is experiencing a different region / area of the country. They can create a network that they could not in NJ. I come across many people in business that have never been outside of the NY/ NJ / Philly area from the time they grew up through their adult life.

There is value to being able to go to college and living more than 50 miles from where you grew up.
 
RUfinal4, I agree with you on the value of going away but is it greater than the difference between in-state tuition vs out-of-state tuition?
 
The increasing cost of private school and the stagnation of NJs economy are actually the greatest allies Rutgers has in the short to mid-term, as RU again become seen as a value proposition to some good but not super rich students.

I think this particular economic factor has and will continue to play a large part in attracting more affluent families. The cost of college tuition continues to rise and has no end in sight until major universities are forced to close down. Eventually some of the families that could afford more expensive undergraduate educations will be forced to give Rutgers a harder look.
 
For the sake of discussion, let's say the household annual income of a 40-ish "upper middle class" in NJ is $300K, with a ten-bagger net worth nearing $3 million, this in a household with a high school sophomore or junior, who is assessing colleges.

Dad and mom move in a professional and social circle where "RU" is a non-starter in the competition for their child's college education. A school with a winning athletic program (RU or otherwise) means little or nothing to them. What does matter? They want "the best" for their kid, in terms of the quality of the child's education (real or perceived) and the post-grad opportunities (professional and marital), and for how the child's school will also reflect on them, as parents. They demand this. Rutgers will never get those folks to attend. But so what?

Want to make Rutgers a stronger institution all the way around? Focus on ensuring NJ's flagship state U gets the financial support that other states' flagships receive, and then some. Compete in that regard. That's critical. Demand it of your elected officials. Recruit more alumni to run for state house and senate office. That will make an impact.

And donate to RU academics as well as athletics. . . .
 
Which other B1G schools would you send your kids to over Rutgers? I can only think of 3 schools (Northwestern, Mich and Wisc).

Upper middle class or affluent in Florida vs NJ is very different.

One key factor would be the kid - if you have a son / daughter who really knows exactly what they want to study & what they want to be - you have many strong choices in the B1G - depending upon the area of study - Purdue / Minnesota / Penn State and all the others have areas of study where they are top- notch.

If they are going off as "major - not yet selected" - well, you might see it differently
 
Is the situation really unique to RU? I see this being taken for granted in this thread but don't see any provided evidence. Not arguing, but a serious question. I know other state schools are held in higher regard, but I'm sure kids wanting to go out of state is a fairly universal trend. Upper middle class+ kids can afford to do it.

It wouldn't surprise me if it's more an issue in NJ, a state that gets ragged on all the time, where the state university is within an hour drive or so of most of the population, but I would think that affluent kids going out of state is a fairly common trend across the country.
 
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