I don't know about significantly, but we basically had our fanbase get the governor to back a football coach. New facilities. SAT numbers through the roof.
At the minimum it's a cultural sea change if not yet a financial one.
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I don't know about significantly, but we basically had our fanbase get the governor to back a football coach. New facilities. SAT numbers through the roof.
At the minimum it's a cultural sea change if not yet a financial one.
"not yet a financial one." Let's see if the state ever increases significantly appropriations for Rutgers to carry out its academic program -- I'll believe it when I see it. SAT numbers are up now largely because of the increasing number of high school graduates, but that number is expected to start to contract after the middle of the decade.https://www.insidehighered.com/news...tes-through-2025-pool-still-shrinks-afterward And even with the increase, we are falling behind other flagship public institutions, e.g. the University of Florida as mentioned above. It remains to be seen whether the Holloway administration will continue the Barchi administration's efforts to improve academics, or whether we will focus on being a "beloved community."
Perhaps they don't have to be mutually exclusive? Not quite chewing gum and walking at the same time but I'd like to think one does not have to be at the expense of the other. But what the heck do I know, academic administration is not my forte.
Maybe I missed it but how many other public schools have an average SAT over 1367? Other than your Michigans and UVAs of the world it's not many.
I had 12 of 15 seniors from my soccer travel team attend RU. They are still playing intramural soccer as a team.
The other 3 went to Penn and Cornell and Navy enlistment.
Very smart group and glad most chose Rutgers. The honors college and Business school seem to be a big draw.
I know my son enjoys being close to home and with in-state tuition and not having a multi-hour drive it is great. A good amount of his friends went elsewhere and now coming back to RU. Grass is not always Greener.....
I attended RU way back and I was from the Crappy Valley State as was my sister.
The other 3 went to Penn and Cornell and Navy enlistment.
Very smart group and glad most chose Rutgers. The honors college and Business school seem to be a big draw.
I know my son enjoys being close to home and with in-state tuition and not having a multi-hour drive it is great. A good amount of his friends went elsewhere and now coming back to RU. Grass is not always Greener.....
I attended RU way back and I was from the Crappy Valley State as was my sister.
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I don't know that SAT scores are a true predictor of later success in life, either financial or being a good and productive citizen? Especially a 100 point difference. As @vkj91 mentioned, a lot of kids want to escape bad Northeast and mid Atlantic weather and go to school in the South. Clemson, UNC, NC State, USC, Georgia, Georgia Tech, UF and FSU are all fine choices and nothing to sneer at.
Exactly. My oldest was thrilled to go to Rutgers over UCLA and over our encouragement to go to UCLA. Of course we were thrilled when Rutgers was the choice, particularly from a cost vs quality perspective. And three years done, we are more thrilled with the choice.
Our younger kid chose Quinnipiac over a bunch of others, including RU Honors College. The choice came down to a specific program (direct entry PA degree) not offered by RU, program size and quality, and size of the school. We are equally thrilled with the choice here. Each kid is different and the large State U is not for everyone.
See above. SATs don't mean a lot IMO, unless we are talking about maybe a 200 point or more difference. UCal Berkeley and UCLA are in a league of their own. Public Ivies.
Both of my kids went to Monmouth County Vocational Technical Schools, and both schools sent a lot of kids to RU Honors College. A big reason the incoming SAT scores are so high is the tremendous value provided by the Honors College, especially with generous scholarships.
With the pandemic, and now inflation and stock market being what it is, staying in state may continue to be a popular or even a more popular choice. Many kids were paying ridiculous tuitions north of $50 or $60K per year for 2 or 3 semesters to take remote classes. RU Honors College has cost us about $6K per year, and our oldest should graduate with job paying well into 6 figures with great future earning potential, and as a STEM major, an opportunity to go to any graduate school including Ivies or MIT for free. RU HC is a tremendous deal.
The schools you name may happen to be in the same conference but academically I would not compare UNC or GT to the others. Would be the only ones worth going to over RU.
Going to college based on the weather is pretty juvenile unless there is a real health reason for it. Pool parties are not a health reason. Though with some NJ parents I guess paying 100k or more for lesser education would fly.
Many kids who head to other parts of the country are looking for a lot of things other than weather. More and more parents are encouraging their kids to get out of the Northeast permanently. As soon as they retire, they are gone. Some already have land or homes purchased. Sometimes the kids go to the specific state, sometimes the region in general. I don’t know what the statistics are for kids who go to college in other regions that come back to New Jersey/The Northeast and how many stay in the state/region they attended college. If I had to guess, I would say at least 50 percent are gone forever. In my own family, one sister and I went to college in NJ and stayed. My brother went to college in North Carolina and has stayed in the South forever. One sister went to Florida State and came back North right after college. One of my nephews best friends went to University of Wyoming and absolutely loves it out West. No way on Earth will he leave there. Parents already bought land out there. I have seen some families force their kids into a certain major or school. I am not a parent, but I just don’t think telling young Johnny or Betsy you have to be this and you to go to xyz university is the way to go. Just my two cents.
NIRH, the University of Florida is a very good school. We are ranked number 57 in the world, UF is number 84. Not saying the hot weather, great looking girls, and dorms with outdoor pools wasn’t something that appealed to my nephew (lol), but lots of schools in the South have that and my nephew could have gone to one of those, picked up so much academic money, he would have been going to school for less than Rutgers. UF is very generous with academic aid so excluding plane fair, he goes for just slightly above Rutgers. With three nephews who play sports, I can’t tell you how many parents I run into who say the same thing about lack of aid from Rutgers. Their kids may not be West Point/Princeton level students, but they are good enough to go to Rutgers, but end up elsewhere because other states give out tons of aid. Even in our own state, Monmouth is off the charts in academic aid. One of the boys considered it for a while. Monmouth was giving so much academic aid, tuition would have been only $7,000 ! I have no idea how other states have so much money to give out. And before anyone brings up any political sewage, New Jersey has been terrible in support of public colleges for decades, regardless of the Governor and Legislature being controlled by Republican, Democrat, or Birthday parties.
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Outside of a handful of schools and majors the whole “better education” stuff is way overblown.
They aren’t.
And that’s the jist of it.
Are some and will some pay full freight to go to some of schools mentioned in the thread? Sure.
But are we really concerned with that type of student. Normally they aren’t like the ones we’re talking about here. Meaning probably not a Rutgers guy or gal to begin with. Maybe get in, but possibly not make it thru.
The ones in both of my sons classes who did this were:
1) smart enough to get into the Honors College, SOE and Business
2) and as @HeavenUniv. touched on..because of that they ended up paying the same or in many cases a LOT less than Rutgers
I'm forgetting the source but a few years ago I read an article where an academic had done research showing that income level of grandparents was a more statistically valid predictor of college success than SAT score.
For what that's worth.
NC State is a solid school, maybe not of the same caliber as GTech, but I'm not keen on UNC which seems to live more off reputation than merit. IMO, UF is not far behind UNC. USC and Georgia are solid state schools. We agree on G Tech though.
Some don't like winter weather and some don't like hot weather, and some want to experience a different part of the country, and I will not fault someone for their choice. For the lower "ranked" southern schools, many will offer enough aid to make it comparable to in state tuition. Va Tech is a good example, and another solid tech school.
And some of us were willing to pay more than Rutgers either because the school was smaller, a better fit or offered something Rutgers did not.
Right but it our case, we weren’t paying sticker, amirite? 😉
And we can thank NJ’s emphasis on the K-12 system for that. Those other schools love our kids. We make them better (and check a few boxes too) on a few levels.
Yes, but knowing younger one had the same scholly as his older sibling, it is quite a bit more. If we were paying sticker price, it would be the same or less (I think). I don't touch the money. I just plow the fields and pick the crops on the family farm. Sometimes I get to eat. 😁
Sure is; the problem for a school like Rutgers is that through some lenses it has been viewed on the wrong end of the "better" spectrum for multiple generations when in some respects it has probably been the equal (or better) the entire time.
I think more than a few have picked up a better vision plan as that perception is starting to change.
Despite getting screwed by the pols in Trenton, paying sticker for Rutgers is still a pretty good deal and always has been. Sure if you can get a similar priced deal somewhere else at an OOS public flagship, it may be well worth considering. Then it's up to preferences and some things on the margin as to what will tip the scales.
I think people who went to Rutgers, especially certain posters here, over value it while people who didn’t tend to undervalue it.
I don't feel the need to look down on schools in other regions of the country. Outside of UCLA, Berkeley, Wisconsin, Michigan and maybe a few others, the majority of state schools are fungible. There are a lot of fine private non-Ivy schools that are appealing to a lot of kids and families for reasons such as location, class size, programs offered or being affiliated with a church (such as the Catholic universities). With that said, unless there is some compelling program, connection or need to go out of State, I agree with NIRH that paying a lot more to go to PSU, Maryland, UConn or UMass over Rutgers makes little sense in many cases.
Me too.
I told my boys the same thing…wasn’t going to pay for a non NJ state school unless there was something extra.
I don't necessarily disagree with that. But on balance I'd lean toward it being generally undervalued moreso than overvalued, and some of that is due to Rutgers' own doing. Its problems have plagued its perception, yet some of that perception is reality.
Very true.
Many on this site have offered their services to Rutgers (and not just in Athletics) in the past only to rebuffed with, “thanks, but we know what we’re doing.”
It's a fine school....it's just not worth spending money on over RU if you live in NJ. And Monmouth has always done that, they sent me letters to the same effect, lol.
Like I have said before...they are not coming here and not sure we want them and their parents anyway, it's just a funny NJ phenomenon.
Certainly I'd much rather the striver anyway...and that is who we get.
Not that they are bad. They are fine, if you live there. Or if your kid doesn't get into RU...considering our numbers, that's quite possible.
At 17/18 you barely know anything about yourself, never mind where you want to spend the rest of your life. I know many people from RU who if I told them they'd be living in some NJ suburb in their 30s they'd be devastated...and vice versa with the ones I know unmarried finding themselves abroad in their 30s.
The "hot" schools in NJ, maybe the Cult or UDel in my day or JMU and Clemson today, are just OOS public schools that are perceived to maybe have more partying (in my experience, incorrect) or to be more, let's say, demographically aligned, with a certain set of NJ parents (correct). That is what it boils down to. Then you have the popularity of certain Catholic schools (but definitely not all- I mean how many NJ residents only realized SPU exists in March) but I would say that phenomenon is pretty prevalent in other Northeastern states.
It is constantly changing and has changed very much over the years. For parents who put value on getting the best education for the least money...RU is always going to come out ahead. For parents who like to be flashy, not so much. I mean, I'd definitely be impressed by NJ kids getting into UNC or Berkeley or something on that level, but that is absolutely not the prevalent phenomenon.
You keep in ignoring the fact that the smart kids are going to these schools for the same or less than Rutgers. So it’s not the best education for the least amount of money. Except for PSU which gives no money and you need to be insane to pay 60k a year for that school.
I know 4 kids going there. All parents do well but aren’t rich. Teachers, Cops etc. nobody got aid. On top of that, two of them have to do the summer session first.
There are some things that Rutgers or any public university can never offer, like kids that want a religious college or a very small college. My brother and his son both wanted no part of big schools. My brother went to a college with 1,200 kids and his son went to one with about 3,000. To each his own.
Friends have two daughters going. They don’t need it but assumed they got something. Although they do fly home private so there’s that. LOL
Another family has one there, also assume they are okay in that dept (more inline with who you’re talking about) but will still be surprised if there was nothing.
I do recall Lafayette and BC both saying this is the price, if you can’t afford it maybe we aren’t for you. Luckily the older one said, “yeah not for me, Dad.”
They're all doing that for all students?
And then it's still not worth it...it's like SHU matching RU tuition lol. Hasn't done boo for them.
That's why we have TCNJ. Not to say everyone has to go to RU. And if the "religious" school is ND or GTown or BYU or something, that's one thing...but often times it's a school no one has heard of.
Certainly people have to make their own choices. It's just that I know these people making it now...and I knew the people who made them when I was in HS...and it's just...not surprising in an incredibly humorous way.
If it’s a religious school that no one heard of - chances are the student is probably part of a strict evangelical church or very much in line with those beliefs.
In which case it’s for the best they went to those schools, and not Rutgers. They would have had a miserable time here.
In which case it’s for the best they went to those schools, and not Rutgers. They would have had a miserable time here.
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