Originally posted by derleider:
ed - tat would be harder to come by (its been 25 years now) and probably less of an effect if there is one, because PSU was playing big boy level football before they went to the Big Ten.
For the rest, RU has only about 500 Midwestern kids enrolled. So maybe 600 apply a year if that (for RU as a whole about 20% of kids who apply end up at the school). So it wouldnt be surprising if RU had increased its appeal to Midwesterners. But a 20% increase there is only 120 extra students applying. Out of half a million graduate of Midwestern HSs its not that unbelievable that increased coverage of RU would have turned on 100-150 kids to the school that wouldnt have previously have thought to apply there.
But that demographic isnt nearly enough to account for the big increase, even among OOS applicants.
There are two potential effects of the Big Ten.
1. Is increased profile. Being in the BIg Ten brings news coverage, etc. But RU, as the top school in the state, is already about as high profile as its going to get. No HS senior in NJ with top 100 school ambitions isn't aware of RU. They might have written it off for various reasons, but they still know of it. Thats as opposed to the Midwest, where they might literally know nothing about RU, or think that RU is a small private school, etc.
2. Better sports schedules brings the prospect of having a better time. But as I said on the free board, that was already largely the case versus the schools we compete most against. RU has better sports than everyone in the region except Cuse, MD, and PSU. * And it wouldnt explain the increase at Newark and Camden.
I think its simply that people are becoming more cost conscience, as the recession drags on among new graduates. RU has spent alot of money to make itself a better option. The Big Ten is a part of that, but almost surely a small one. It reinforces the narrative RU is trying to spin about itself, but it doesn't make that narrative.
Think about the Livingston Apartments. They opened in Fall 2012. That means kids applying for 2013 really didnt get to experience them. A kind applying for 2014 did however - they would get to see them, and get feedback from older kids who came back for breaks that RU was much more livable.
People have a kind of magical thinking about athletics. That we can do what would normally take hundreds of millions of dollars with just a few tens of millions of dollars (or even ZERO dollars via entering the Big Ten). Logic tells you that that isn't the case.
