I may be wrong, but I believe we hired an outside firm to help with recruitment a couple of years ago. Even if that is true, it is still impressive. You're correct that other schools have seen applications and student quality go down, even with new advances in techniques. The OHIO brand is strong right now. 

 

I've questioned the contention that the rise in applications is being driven by athletics when there are so many other factors at work such as the baby boom echo, increased recruiting by Ohio outside the state and the trend among high school seniors to apply to many more colleges than they did a generation ago.  I didn't question the fact that Ohio has seen a rise in applications, but so as almost every other Ohio public university in recent years.

And I've been very clear--with statistics from the university's own archives going back to 2006--that the increase in applications is not leading to better freshman classes.  Student quality has essentially been stagnant since 2006.  Yes, we're getting more applications, but it's not translating into getting better students.  



I am curious as to the assertion that quality is rising also.  Is that confirmed quality in this year's freshman class or are we simply seeing more high quality students apply to Ohio as a safety school but end up attending elsewhere?  If it translates into the former, great.  If Ohio can get the top of the applicant pool to actually attend, that would be real substance and not just cheap talk from McDavis, which is all I've seen until now.

 

Which schools?  The only one that I've read about with enrollment/application problems is Akron, and that is hardly who we want to be comparing ourselves to.

I haven't seen anything that OSU or Miami are having problems with applications or that student quality is decreasing there, and UC has just passed Ohio for the quality of its freshman classes--something curiously absent from McDavis' speechifying.  



 

On a serious note, does anyone know which institutions OHIO considers aspirational? I work at Pitt, and we have a short list of schools we consider aspirational and use them for benchmarks and comparisons across all departments.

 

FIFY! 

 

These are the universities which Ohio currently benchmarks itself against.
www.ohio.edu/instres/univ/peerstudy/index.html

Colorado State
WVU
Oklahoma State
Oregon State
Missouri
New Hampshire  
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Utah

If this exercise is done properly, several of them should be considered "aspirational" in the sense that we lag somewhat behind them in the various criteria but closing the gap is a realistic possibility.  So, given Miami's almost comical self-image, I wondered what their "aspirational" peers might be, and I found this list.

community.miamioh.edu/senate/files/senate/1_Senate_Minutes_02_21_2011.pdf

The list I believe is a true peer list based on shared missions. Ohio is taking those factors from that set of schools as a benchmark for performance. Areas they aren't strong in they try to improve in. No one school is aspirational but some have aspirational characteristics.

 

I did some research from an college admissions book from 1994 I have at home and what I found about Ohio and Miami was interesting. Starting with the cost of college. Back in 1994 Miami was 35% more than going to Ohio. Today Miami is about 10% more expensive than Ohio. Then the number of enrolled freshman. Miami in 1994 had 3300 freshman when Ohio had 3200. Today Miami has 3300 freshman while Ohio has 4000. Next the average ACT scores. Miami in 1994 had an average ACT of 26 and Ohio 23. Today Miami averages 26 while Ohio averages 24. From a student profile perspective Ohio has gained ground on Miami while at the same time increasing the freshman class size & a 400% increase in price since 1994. This in a state that was hit hard by NAFTA, 3 dollar a gallon gas and the great recession. All things considered Ohio is doing pretty good and if the freshman class was 3000 it would be harder to get into than Miami. Miami surged forward a little in the early 2000's to an ACT of 27 following the sweet 16 and good football years but since has dropped back.

There is as many out-of-state applicants (7,000) in 2014 as there was in-state applicants in 1994. What is doing it I think is greater visibility. Athletics are up a level and lot has been accomplished on the academic side over the last 20 years. There are so many positives that it drowns out the negatives. Athens has more for a college student to do than almost any city in Ohio. I had a roommate in college comment that the state has good small liberal arts colleges but with nothing going on compared to Athens. Oxford is a super boring town. What makes Athens different is it has unique little neighborhoods. Mill Street has a totally different feel than W.Union St. College Green totally different than the Athletic Mall. Most colleges have an Old Main building and a campus bar in a one stoplight town. 
 

Maintaining the student quality where it is has been a very conscious decision. The university doesn't want to get away from the aspect of its mission that requires it to be accessible to students in Appalachian Ohio so we're never going to have a student profile that has a 30 median ACT. But while student quality and number of students accepted has remained roughly the same, applications have skyrocketed. That means we have a much lower acceptance rate, which is a good thing. The difference is that students who never could get into OSU always applied there anyway because it was the thing to do, now they're applying to (and getting rejected by) OU as well.

 

On the issue of other public universities, Ohio, OSU, Miami, and Cincinnati have seen increases in applications. I don't know about the other schools but I'd venture to guess they have struggle based on my experiences in Pennsylvania. Here, the schools in the state system (i.e. not PSU, Temple, or Pitt) have struggled mightily with decreased interest. West Chester is the only one that has been able to maintain applications and student quality. More people are applying to top public schools and less are interested in the Bloomburgs and California University of PA's of the world. As this trend continues I'd suspect we'll see the top four or five public universities in Ohio continue to pull away from the pack.

 

Sorry the entire post was supposed to be a joke.  I was trying to play off the ongoing Akron bash about how they have malls. 


No offense intended to our resident Athenians. 
 

Well, there was a rumor a year or so ago that Old Navy was one of several stores that were in active negotiations with the mall owners, so you had me fooled.  I thought you had breaking news! 

 

www.ohio.edu/instres/retention/RetenAthens.pdf