U of Maine billboard on NJ Turnpike
- Thread starter JMORC2003
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I taught at the Univ of Florida until I retired. I dont see a lot of comparisons between Rutgers and UF. UF is ranked significantly higher than Rutgers in the US News poll. The academic programs in Gainesville are first rate & its NOT an easy school to get into, especially out of state. The weather is incredible and the quality of life in Florida is great as the state is growing by leaps and bounds. As far as sports go you only need to go to a football game at the swamp to understand the difference between sports at Rutgers and UF. Football is a way of life at UF. One year when I taught there UF had 7 sports that were ranked nationally...from football to swimming to womens soccer.
This shows how far UF has come since I was a high school senior in Orlando 51 years ago (As part of our move there from NYC, my father promised my sister and me that we would have full choice of where to go for college.) . And the progress is no surprise considering the growth of the state. I was determined to get out of the South then, but I can well understand the attraction of it now both to Floridians and non-Floridians. BTW, I hated Orlando weather, and hope I would like it better now.
Sure! But I think for a decent chunk of where RU would like to be targeting, mom and dad are paying so you would think they would have some say.
Absolutely- I'm not just talking USNWR though, it's not really extremely useful for undergrad rankings. Nor am I trying to pick on the school- I know people that went there and that are doing well. Everything is what you make of it. Ultimately if it's the same price, the student should choose. Obviously I have a bias in favor of RU. I would never say otherwise.
Isn't that irrelevant in a situation like this in which the OOS school is willing to make up the difference in tuition?
May I ask what high school in Orlando did you attend? I grew up in upstate NY & I dreamed of getting OUT of the winter snow when I left Cornell..and then Rutgers. I do NOT adore summers, hence I am a snowbird now that I am retired. When I got to Florida in 1982 , Rutgers was head and shoulders above UF academically But slowly Florida grew, bringing a LOT of northerners to it to a point where UF is 50th as of the last US News & report. Frankly, UF did all the right things IMO...imcluding hiring me ! LOL
I graduated from William R. Boone High School in 1968. At that time, it was a "regular" high school with the normal courses. I understand it has since become a largely vocational school. I am also told that it has been completely rebuilt and expanded since I attended. In 1967,my first year there, the school received its first black students; before then, black students were barred from almost all of Orlando's high schools.
What subject did you teach at UF?
I'm think they still try to steer. RU and TCNJ were within a few dollars difference for me, and my parents offered to pay up to a certain limit which both fell within. My mom really wanted me to go to TCNJ and made that clear. Obviously I choose differently, but for someone else it might not be the same.
1968 was a long time ago LOL. (same year as me in Rochester NY). From what I hear BOONE has a decent reputation.,,,compared to alot of the other schools. Evans might be the worst.
I taught econ...mostly health care economics. I spent a good number of years at the London UK campus. I loved to travel.
Evans did not have a good academic reputation way back when. You'll recall that Darryl Dawkins came from that high school. The high school is named for Maynard Evans, who was one of the founders of Orlando Junior College, a private institution that would not admit blacks. Finally Florida established Valencia Junior College in the same area and it, being a pubic school, was able to eat Orlando Junior College's lunch on getting students. OJC closed just a few years later.
When I got to Orl in 1983...UCF was in a storefront downtown. And look at UCF now. I am proud of my adopted home. Lotsa growth.
I remember when UCF opened as "Florida Technological University" in the Fall of 1968. A friend of my father's would refer to it as "Flat U." I have at least one high school classmate who went there, and, I am told, found many opportunities for sex.
BTW, when I was in high school, it was a total shock to me when a cheerleader became pregnant. But apparently there was a lot going on that I didn't know about. The cheerleader, btw, had the child, married the father, and turned out fine.
I think you overestimate how much consideration hiring managers put into differences between individual schools, versus looking at individual candidates.
I would certainly consider an achieving student from So Carolina over a student that coasted through Rutgers.
Of course that is just for the first job out of school. For the second job, your previous experience and performance outweigh where you went to college.
But wouldn't you agree that, all other things being equal, you'd be more likely to take the Rutgers candidate over the South Carolina one? (Or is the identity of the undergrad institution largely irrelevant even at the initial hiring stage?)
Not completely irrelevant. I might be more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to a B student from Princeton than a B student from Rutgers, and more likely to give the Rutgers student the benefit of the doubt over a B student from William Paterson. There may be a presumption that it is harder to skate through Princeton, and harder to find rigorous courses at William Paterson.
But I don't think that I would parse the difference between Rutgers and South Carolina, or North Carolina, Penn State, Maryland, or Michigan. They're all large state research universities where the choice of a student attending may be a function of geography. And to say a 3.4 average at one school is worth more than a 3.4 average at a different school would require comparing individual courses at each school and understanding which courses are tougher or easier. And as a hiring manager, I'm not doing that.
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All very sensible. But keep in mind that Ivy League schools tend to grade more leniently than state universities; I'd lean toward the B from Rutgers. Of course, the Princeton kid may have leadership skills you'd like; the Ivies think they are training future leaders, not just smart students.
It seems to me that a Rutgers kid will be at an advantage in the northeast only because many more northeastern firms interview here than at South Carolina; but of course it's the other way around for the kid seeking a job in the southeast. Students considering college out-of-state should think as much as they can about whether they'd want to live there after school. But such things are chancy. I went to Cal in large part because I thought I wanted to be a Californian. But as it happened, I was very eager to leave the state after eight years there. Things did work out for me, though, and so maybe where one wants to live permanently is not such a big thing.
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Obviously it's the first job and I'm talking all other things being equal (same GPA, volunteerism, major, attitude, whatever else).
In terms of the second, as a general rule you are correct but alumni connections do matter. My first job out of law school was alum of the school and second was an RU alum that hired me. Current job I'm the only one from either school. Of course more goes into it, but the connection was mentioned in the interview.
I get that a B at Rutgers could be worth more than a B at Princeton. There is a saying that the hardest part of Princeton is getting in. But the reasons a Princeton grad may get a small benefit of the doubt is the assumption that they must be smart if they got into Princeton, and it they graduated they must have had to take rigorous classes where they were forced to think critically. The Rutgers grad may have had an equal or tougher education, or may have taken mostly courses where they were spoon fed by the faculty and didn't have to think for themselves. And the William Paterson grad would have had a hard time finding those rigorous, critical-thinking courses.
As far as going to a northeastern school being a benefit in recruiting, there is some of that. More NJ companies will do on-campus recruiting at Rutgers than at So Car, if for no other reason than it is cheaper to send recruiters to local schools. But on-campus recruiting is only one way companies hire recent college grads.
Evans was a disaster when I was a HS student in the early 90s (graduated from Winter Park). Still is from what I hear. Dr. Phillips is hit or miss. Boone is still solid, along with Timber Creek and Oviedo.
My wife had a teaching position at Princeton in the late 90s - early aughts. It was damn near impossible to fail as a student. Because of their selectivity, their average student starts out with a leg up, but as we've seen in our FB program, predicting potential for success in 16-17 year olds is often a crapshoot. I think you're absolutely right about everything you wrote, but that's not to say Princeton doesn't have its share of students who can't walk and chew gum at the same time.
When my nephew got to the University of Florida, I was surprised when he told me how many out of staters there were. He kept running into kids from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, Michigan,etc. His roommate was from a large high school in the Tampa area that had a total of seven students at UF. There were three students at UF from my nephews New Jersey high school. Don’t know if kids at Florida high schools can’t meet the admissions standards or it is a way for UF to get more money or a combination. Can’t imagine Florida high schools are as bad as the ones in South Carolina. When I lived there they were near dead last in the country . Some of the high schools and grounds were beautiful, though.
Winter Park was a good school in my day. Dr. Phillipsi s after my time. Is Boone still a comprehensive high school? I had the impression it had become largely a vocational high school. My understanding is that it is close to the fringe of downtown Orlando, which it sure wasn't when I was a student.
It's still comprehensive as far as I know. I had a distant cousin who went there not too long ago. Pretty strong college prep as a matter of fact. It is remarkable how much Orlando has grown (and continues to). Not always a great thing as the growth is completely unchecked and there seems to be no urban planning. Boone isn't necessarily in what I would call smack dab middle-of-downtown, but it's very close. If anything, it's probably the encroachment of downtown and the gentrification of that area that might've spurred it to retain its comprehensive HS mission.
When I read the accounts of the shootings at the club a few years ago, I saw it was located at Kaley and Orange, and was described as being downtown. Boone (unless it's moved significantly) is at Kaley and Mills, about a mile away if that, so that gave me the impression that downtown had reached Boone. The area between Kaley and say, South Street was suburban/small towny when I lived in Orlando. I had a number of Boone classmates who lived there, and I remember biking through the area. There were actually streets that were sand rather than asphalt. How times change.
Not unexpected as anecdotal evidence sometimes belies the facts. For overall enrollment, UF is 21% out of state (including international/foreign). For comparison, Rutgers-NB is 18%, so not very different. Both numbers include undergrad & grad students.
UF freshmen enrollment from Florida is still 90%+ with apparently a more recent push within the past decade or less to increase OOS of undergrads from 3.5% up to 8-9%. The state system of universities in Florida apparently have to observe a 10% OOS cap on an aggregate basis. Maybe the folks in Gainesville will decide to push beyond that in coming years knowing that overall their counterparts will help maintain the numbers within the limit.
Rutgers has made similar strides to increase OOS enrollment and reap the additional tuition revenue, especially after the tuition penalty from the state of NJ for greater than 10% OOS was eliminated.
I imagine your nephew (and other HS students from NJ & other states) will enjoy the UF experience alongside a majority of Floridians. Meanwhile, a good many number of FL, CA, MD, PA, NY, CT etc. high school students are at Rutgers and will share their college experience with a majority of New Jerseyans. The former group will get the benefit of rooting for a top college football team, the latter group not so much. LOL
The difference between the proportion of undergrads from out of state (excluding international student) is within a percentage point between Rutgers NB and UF.
If Heaven's nephew is seeing a huge number of OOS students at Florida, it may be because he is looking for them, or because they stand out. If you have a vat filled with 10000 white ping pong balls and 500 green ping pong balls, you're going to notice how many green ones there are.
I was at Berkeley as an OOS student and met a number of other OOS students. But I had enough sense to know that we were vastly out-numbered by Californians. Perhaps the OOS students at UF feel themselves to be culturally very different than the home-grown students, and so they notice each other. Moreover, OOS students have met higher academic standards, and are likely to pal around with similar students -- who are disproportionately OOS. I have too much modesty to claim that was true of me at Berkeley!
If anything I would think that NY/NJ kids would blend in with SE FL kids at UF. I would imagine there's a lot of them based on state population.
In my slender experience, Miami kids (for instance) are not the same at all as NYC kids -- at least they weren't when I went to school. I would agree, though, that Miami kids were different from most other Florida kids. Miami kids don't have that special intensity that NY/NJ kids have.
One thing to remember when comparing Florida to Rutgers. They have similar undergrad numbers (31,000 vs 33,000) but Florida is 2.5X the population of New Jersey. This is the equivalent of Rutgers reducing its Freshman class from 6000 to 4500. There's no NJ State, UCJ, or USJ to take the kids who "only" score 1200 like there is FSU, UCF, USF.
Yes, Florida cared about keeping its young people at home and attracting some kids from elsewhere. NJ, by contrast, gives pennies to its state university and never developed enough "grade B" institutions. That's one reason NJ kids flee elsewhere. Another reason, of course, is that there are many more good private colleges in our area than in Florida,so it is easier for the state public schools to attract excellent applicants.
I just want to say if that RU is rejecting kids scoring in the 1200s we are truly coming a long way and we should credit Barchi.
When I started at RC in 03 I think the average SAT in my class was something like 1230-1250. I think I read the new average is over 1300.
One interesting thing is I wonder if they're keeping them after. I met a lot of UF alums in NY/NJ and find most of them are from FL originally. Outside of the B1G states I find Floridians to be the biggest group of people in my age range moving to the area.
75% of admitted students to SAS had an SAT over 1280, and business and engineering are considerably higher.
https://admissions.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/media/Documents/2019_AdmissionsProfile.pdf
For comparison, Maryland says 1330-1470 for their middle 50%, Delaware says 1190-1350 & Maine says 1050-1250.
Now I personally know a lot of people who spend a year at Kean or Willie Pat and backdoor transfer in, but I’d be more concerned my kid gets comfortable at Kean and decides to stay than whether he’s employable with a degree from Maine or Delaware.
These are great numbers, thanks. I know people who did those transfers as well but they did need a good GPA to do it.
Now imagine if we could move that OOS number from 10% to even 15%.
Rather than total population a more apt comparison would probably be based on college aged (or college entry-age (17-19) population when speaking of freshmen enrollments) especially with numbers skewing toward FL for all of the retirees who live in that state. Of course, the crux of the argument may still hold even if it's 1.5X or 2X but it brings the magnitude of the spread in the comparative Rutgers freshmen enrollment down somewhat.
Don't necessarily agree that there's no alternative. What about the two other campuses of Rutgers that are available for candidates who are arguably not quite up to the mark of the NB flagship. It's not like those seats are going unoccupied. While there's no comparably "large" alternative institution, there are still seats in NJ between those two campuses well as the other 4-year public schools (incl. NJIT, Rowan, CNJ, Montclair, etc etc). Is it that really that much different than in FL?
If NJ needs to expand any or all of these schools to keep more NJ students home for college then they need to increase the higher education budget to support that growth. NJ has demonstrated the opposite. It's also a tough sell to taxpayers being as heavily taxed as Jerseyans are already. Corruption in NJ government doesn't help.
