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re: Thanks to SEC and Heisman - A&M receives record 37,000 applications
Posted on 1/30/13 at 5:04 pm to tmc94
Posted on 1/30/13 at 5:04 pm to tmc94
The SEC schools are definitely benefiting. Texas has a ton of bright young HS grads out of those top HS's as noted only 16k or so can go to A&M or Texas and realistically it is fewer than that because of OOS and International admissions. For perspective, Texas public HS's graduated over 297k students in 2011, and that doesn't count the private schools where some of the best students go. The volume is just huge and growing at a rate of about 2% per year. Even the Top 10% is almost 30k kids.
In the past they looked a lot more inwardly at Texas schools or maybe to Oklahoma schools but the SEC exposure is opening some eyes of Texas kids. For instance, when I was in school a lot of those kids just went to Texas Tech, North Texas, or Texas State but the idea of going to a Flagship school in the SEC has a lot more appeal. The previous barrier was the OOS tuition and expense but a lot of SEC schools are providing scholarships and other incentives to get those kids. I'm talking about Top 50-25% kids from top high schools that have strong SAT scores, come from households with 2 parents that are college grads, and have been on a strong college prep curriculum. The lack of solid Tier II schools is a real problem, you basically drop down to Tier IV (Tech and UH are maybe Tier III).
I know I would much rather have gone to an SEC school over another Texas school not named A&M. Tech is out in BFE and the rest of them feel like commuter schools for the most part. The only other option is to go private but Baylor, SMU, and TCU are really expensive, fairly small, and just not that great of an education for the money at all at the undergrad level.
In the past they looked a lot more inwardly at Texas schools or maybe to Oklahoma schools but the SEC exposure is opening some eyes of Texas kids. For instance, when I was in school a lot of those kids just went to Texas Tech, North Texas, or Texas State but the idea of going to a Flagship school in the SEC has a lot more appeal. The previous barrier was the OOS tuition and expense but a lot of SEC schools are providing scholarships and other incentives to get those kids. I'm talking about Top 50-25% kids from top high schools that have strong SAT scores, come from households with 2 parents that are college grads, and have been on a strong college prep curriculum. The lack of solid Tier II schools is a real problem, you basically drop down to Tier IV (Tech and UH are maybe Tier III).
I know I would much rather have gone to an SEC school over another Texas school not named A&M. Tech is out in BFE and the rest of them feel like commuter schools for the most part. The only other option is to go private but Baylor, SMU, and TCU are really expensive, fairly small, and just not that great of an education for the money at all at the undergrad level.
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Posted on 1/30/13 at 5:41 pm to tmc94
quote:
He told me that 3 universities have significantly increased among his students this fall - LSU, Bama, and Auburn.
Everybody warned us that if A&M went to the SEC, we'd open up the state of Texas to be recruited by other SEC schools.
(Then again I think they were talking about football players)
Posted on 1/30/13 at 5:53 pm to John Maplethorpe
quote:
There are 6x more Universities to choose from in TX though.
Nice try, but no.
Posted on 1/30/13 at 6:01 pm to Roger Klarvin
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No, its fricking stupid under any circumstance.
Says the white boy farmer.
Posted on 1/30/13 at 6:10 pm to nofear67
Woe is me.
frick you.
frick you.
Posted on 1/30/13 at 6:19 pm to aggressor
quote:
I know I would much rather have gone to an SEC school over another Texas school not named A&M. Tech is out in BFE and the rest of them feel like commuter schools for the most part. The only other option is to go private but Baylor, SMU, and TCU are really expensive, fairly small, and just not that great of an education for the money at all at the undergrad level.
So biased. You might as well just say nothing at all and we would have assumed this. Posted on 1/30/13 at 7:10 pm to aggressor
quote:
The only other option is to go private but Baylor, SMU, and TCU are really expensive, fairly small, and just not that great of an education for the money at all at the undergrad level.
Baylor and TCU I can agree with.
SMU is on A&M's level and is a pretty good school.
As far as the guy that scoffed at the notion that Texas has 6x the number of available universities that are in Louisiana...let's look at the facts:
The A&M system alone has 11 Universities including the main campus in College Station.
The Texas system alone has 10 Universities including the main campus in Austin (this includes UTEP)
Then you have the following:
Rice
SMU
Houston
North Texas
Baylor
Texas Tech
TCU
That's 28 UNIVERSITIES that offer undergraduate programs alone in the State. It may not be 6x the amount of universities that are available in Louisiana, but it's at least 3.
Posted on 1/30/13 at 7:45 pm to CGSC Lobotomy
Question for you, sir.
Do you think it's wise to substantially increase enrollment during a period of austerity for Texas state universities that could stretch on for years, if not decades?
The funding per student would necessarily decrease even with flat funding, and would plummet with substantial cuts.
I realize that state funding makes up a small part of the A&M and Texas budget (UT gets about 15 percent of its funding from the state, if I recall correctly), but there is only so much money from the private sector and federal government to make up for what has already been cut to the bone.
This graphic comparing systems from your own student newspaper shows that last funding cycle, there were zero state dollars given to A&M for enrollment growth.
So another question is, is this planned enrollment surge more of a "cut your nose off to spite your face" so aggies can strut around and brag about their size in relation to "tu"?
The University of Florida presumably has no problem with the University of Central Florida having around 10,000 more students.
The University of Michigan is fine with Michigan State having several thousand more students.
The University of North Carolina is fine with North Carolina State having a larger enrollment.
Berkeley made a conscious decision to keep enrollment at about 35,000 many years ago.
Do you think it's wise to substantially increase enrollment during a period of austerity for Texas state universities that could stretch on for years, if not decades?
The funding per student would necessarily decrease even with flat funding, and would plummet with substantial cuts.
I realize that state funding makes up a small part of the A&M and Texas budget (UT gets about 15 percent of its funding from the state, if I recall correctly), but there is only so much money from the private sector and federal government to make up for what has already been cut to the bone.
This graphic comparing systems from your own student newspaper shows that last funding cycle, there were zero state dollars given to A&M for enrollment growth.
So another question is, is this planned enrollment surge more of a "cut your nose off to spite your face" so aggies can strut around and brag about their size in relation to "tu"?
The University of Florida presumably has no problem with the University of Central Florida having around 10,000 more students.
The University of Michigan is fine with Michigan State having several thousand more students.
The University of North Carolina is fine with North Carolina State having a larger enrollment.
Berkeley made a conscious decision to keep enrollment at about 35,000 many years ago.
Posted on 1/30/13 at 7:59 pm to texashorn
quote:
So another question is, is this planned enrollment surge more of a "cut your nose off to spite your face" so aggies can strut around and brag about their size in relation to "tu"?
No. The state is growing and there are more kids to educate. Enrollment is growing but admissions standards aren't going down, they're going up.
UT would probably be growing too if they could, but they're landlocked.
Posted on 1/30/13 at 8:11 pm to John Maplethorpe
quote:
The state is growing and there are more kids to educate.
That's why there's Sam Houston St., the University of North Texas, and Texas A&M - Kingsville.
The mission of The University of Texas and Texas A&M as state universities no longer should be to educate every state student who wants to attend, it should be to provide a first-class education to the state's best and brightest by becoming more selective (as you say, standards are going up).
Cal-Berkeley went through this several years ago and decided to abandon its mission as a state university, per se, and focus more on providing a quality, top-notch education.
While the main campus in Austin is constrained from growing too much more without eminent domain, there are two sizeable tracts of land owned by UT in Austin that could allow for more growth -- one is the Brackenridge tract, which is almost all of the land on Lake Austin Blvd. west of Mopac, and the Pickle Research Center tract at Burnet and 183, which stretches across Mopac north of the Arboretum.
Those properties' acreage could probably double the main campus size.
But UT officials don't seem to be interested in growing, they seem to be taking the Berkeley tact in keeping enrollment down and quality up (at least that's my understanding).
Posted on 1/30/13 at 8:28 pm to aggressor
quote:
The SEC schools are definitely benefiting. Texas has a ton of bright young HS grads out of those top HS's as noted only 16k or so can go to A&M or Texas and realistically it is fewer than that because of OOS and International admissions. For perspective, Texas public HS's graduated over 297k students in 2011, and that doesn't count the private schools where some of the best students go. The volume is just huge and growing at a rate of about 2% per year. Even the Top 10% is almost 30k kids.
LSU has been expanding into Texas before A&M joined the SEC. However, I believe the other SEC schools will start to benefit. In 2003, approximately 90 students from Dallas accepted scholarships from LSU including my son and a few of his classmates. At that time, it was twice as many as the previous year and has been increasing every year since. Houston has always been sending kids to LSU. Part of the reason of the increase is that very talented students are being denied entrance into A&M and UT. And if they get accepted, they rarely get a scholarship. LSU is offering them a full scholarship just on test scores and GPA. At that time, in order to qualify for an LSU scholarship you needed at least a 3.0 GPA and 1250 SAT. The kids I was familiar with all had 1400’s on their SATs. My son had a 1460, with an 800 in math and 640 verbal. Yet he was not accepted at UT because he was only in the top 20% at his HS. LSU engineering school came a calling with a full academic scholarship + the engineering school chipped in a couple of thousand a year also. Too good to pass up. Texas is losing some very bright kids because of the 10% rule and other schools like LSU are benefitting by offering these kids scholarships. Also, in Louisiana the smart kids are given TAPPs (?)scholarships by the state and that leaves more scholarship money for recruiting out of state kids.
Posted on 1/30/13 at 8:51 pm to texashorn
quote:
The mission of The University of Texas and Texas A&M as state universities no longer should be to educate every state student who wants to attend, it should be to provide a first-class education to the state's best and brightest by becoming more selective (as you say, standards are going up).
Posted on 1/30/13 at 9:13 pm to texashorn
quote:
Do you think it's wise to substantially increase enrollment during a period of austerity for Texas state universities that could stretch on for years, if not decades?
Yes.
As long as it doesn't hurt the academic reputation of the university than growth is the most sustainable option.
Posted on 1/30/13 at 10:27 pm to texashorn
It's so much more complicated than that. The schools you mentioned are miles behind Texas and A&M. The closest school is Tech which is maybe a Tier 3 school bordering on Tier 4 and it is geographically isolated in Lubbock away from the main population centers. Most of the other schools that are strongest also aren't part of the A&M or Texas systems and they thus don't have access to the PUF money. The Tier 1 Bill for Tech and UH was a joke because there is no real money behind it, the PUF is the elephant in the room.
On paper it's easy to solve. For instance Texas could just go from 2/3rds to 1/3rd of the PUF like A&M has and then give the other 1/3rd to be shared amongst the other systems. That would pull them up quickly. Or you could just convince Tech, UH, North Texas, Texas State, etc. just to join the A&M or Texas Systems. Politically any of that is impossible.
UC set up its system long ago to remedy that. They have 2 Tiers, UC and State. UC has an endowment about the size of A&M with Berkeley as the Flagship, UCLA close behind, but 8 other schools that are either Tier 1 or very close to it (several of which are in the AAU). They have 238k students in those 10 schools.
So in theory Texas and A&M can stay the same and just look after their own interests while acting as though becoming ever more selective schools is in the interests of the State. The reality is though that will turn the brain drain into a river out of Texas because the smart kids don't want to go to Tech or Texas State as they currently are.
The real solution is to build up those schools while continuing to expand A&M and Texas. Between the 2 schools we have $24 Billion in endowments and growing at over 20% per year. Texas is already almost twice the size of the next largest public school, A&M is in 4th place and will soon only trail Texas nationally. In 5 years Texas could have the largest endowment in the country, bigger than Harvard while A&M is pushing the Top 5 overall. The thing is though that money doesn't belong to A&M and Texas, it belongs to the people of Texas. I mean does it make sense to have $50 Billion or so in endowments tied up in 2 schools that stay fixed at 50k students each while the other public schools in Texas likely have a combined endowment of a couple of Billion?
On paper it's easy to solve. For instance Texas could just go from 2/3rds to 1/3rd of the PUF like A&M has and then give the other 1/3rd to be shared amongst the other systems. That would pull them up quickly. Or you could just convince Tech, UH, North Texas, Texas State, etc. just to join the A&M or Texas Systems. Politically any of that is impossible.
UC set up its system long ago to remedy that. They have 2 Tiers, UC and State. UC has an endowment about the size of A&M with Berkeley as the Flagship, UCLA close behind, but 8 other schools that are either Tier 1 or very close to it (several of which are in the AAU). They have 238k students in those 10 schools.
So in theory Texas and A&M can stay the same and just look after their own interests while acting as though becoming ever more selective schools is in the interests of the State. The reality is though that will turn the brain drain into a river out of Texas because the smart kids don't want to go to Tech or Texas State as they currently are.
The real solution is to build up those schools while continuing to expand A&M and Texas. Between the 2 schools we have $24 Billion in endowments and growing at over 20% per year. Texas is already almost twice the size of the next largest public school, A&M is in 4th place and will soon only trail Texas nationally. In 5 years Texas could have the largest endowment in the country, bigger than Harvard while A&M is pushing the Top 5 overall. The thing is though that money doesn't belong to A&M and Texas, it belongs to the people of Texas. I mean does it make sense to have $50 Billion or so in endowments tied up in 2 schools that stay fixed at 50k students each while the other public schools in Texas likely have a combined endowment of a couple of Billion?
Posted on 1/31/13 at 8:18 am to Latarian
quote:
doesn't Texas have a lot of people that live there?
Posted on 1/31/13 at 8:37 am to Golfer
quote:
LSU had 16,000 applications in a state that is 1/6th the size.
And you accept almost all of them...
Congrats.
Posted on 1/31/13 at 9:06 am to texashorn
I actually agree with the Horn here. Not saying TAMU should not grow, but having a "goal" to educate 25k engineers every year by 2025 is a dumb goal for a university to have.
I'd rather we try to have a goal to be, say, the top engineering school in the nation or something akin to that.
I'd prefer to keep TAMU around the size it now is and instead of increasing student size simply allowing the selectivity of the university to improve by allowing more applications to flow in, yet accepting the same number.
I'd rather we try to have a goal to be, say, the top engineering school in the nation or something akin to that.
I'd prefer to keep TAMU around the size it now is and instead of increasing student size simply allowing the selectivity of the university to improve by allowing more applications to flow in, yet accepting the same number.
Posted on 1/31/13 at 9:37 am to BigD Ag
That's all well and good so long as A&M and Texas want to share the PUF money. The State is growing like mad and the Leg is tight as a drum on spending yet the PUF is a giant pot of cash that is specifically designed for building and infrastructure to accommodate growth and improve quality of education. Letting it just continue to grow into oblivion but not using it to provide a quality education to more Texans is irresponsible and shouldn't be tolerated by the People of Texas.
It's a foolish waste of resources to take A&M and Texas from Top 20 to Top 10 or Top 5 Public schools while having the next best public schools be on the edge of the Top 100 and below. Sure it is great for bragging rights and the value of our degrees but it is bad policy, esp when it drives many bright young Texans out of the State. The mission of Texas and A&M is to the People of Texas first, not to the interests of ourselves.
The 25k engineer goal is a perfect example. Texas as a State is growing and needs highly trained engineers for our future and A&M is one of the best engineering schools in the country. Since we have the resources to grow and maintain the quality of education we should do so to match the demand. Maintaining our current size so we can impress some folks at USNews and maybe move up a couple of spots in their subjective rankings is foolish when it comes at the cost of producing the volume of engineers Texas needs to continue to grow.
It's a foolish waste of resources to take A&M and Texas from Top 20 to Top 10 or Top 5 Public schools while having the next best public schools be on the edge of the Top 100 and below. Sure it is great for bragging rights and the value of our degrees but it is bad policy, esp when it drives many bright young Texans out of the State. The mission of Texas and A&M is to the People of Texas first, not to the interests of ourselves.
The 25k engineer goal is a perfect example. Texas as a State is growing and needs highly trained engineers for our future and A&M is one of the best engineering schools in the country. Since we have the resources to grow and maintain the quality of education we should do so to match the demand. Maintaining our current size so we can impress some folks at USNews and maybe move up a couple of spots in their subjective rankings is foolish when it comes at the cost of producing the volume of engineers Texas needs to continue to grow.
Posted on 1/31/13 at 9:41 am to John Maplethorpe
Posted on 1/31/13 at 10:03 am to aggressor
When I went to LSU in the early 70's (I know I'm and old fart, spare the jokes), they had the Huey Long rule in place which stated "any state tax paying individual with kids has the right to send them to any Louisiana school of their choice". As a result, your freshmen classes at LSU were in big auditoriums with 250 kids. You were competing against your peers for a limited number of slots and you had 1 semester to prove yourself. I liked that rule because of keeping the legacy tradition alive especially if you have kids that are college material but are not in the top 10% at their HS. I feel for those parents that both went to either A&M and/or UT and their kids go to a gifted and talented school, score 1300-1400 on SATs, and fall outside the top 10% and cannot get into those schools.
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