Accepted Student Day
- Thread starter jerseyshorejohnny
- Start date
beast of the east
Active member
JSJ,
Thanks for sharing. For older alumni, accepted students day is a pretty new event on college campuses. Some do it better than others. It's an opportunity for schools to try to seal the deal on students who have applied and have been offered admission, but who have not yet made a decision. (April 1st is about the time admission letters go out).
I've been to a couple, and won't mention the name of the school since I am always singing their praises. At that school, on the morning of accepted students day as students and their parents drive on the main road leading to the parking lot, several hundred active students line the avenue and cheer loudly each time a car with a prospective student and their parent(s) approaches. Then another large group of students lines the walkway to their gymnasium where the day's festivities begin. For every single prospective student that enters the gym with their parents, the mob of active students cheer and high five the kid as if the kid had just made the shot that won the NCAA championship. It's an awesome welcome, even if the kid decides to go elsewhere. There are bands playing on campus, a capella groups singing, free food and beverage, tours of the various college and major programs, a speech by the president, and more. One particularly hokey but cool thing is that they set up a microphone with the university backdrop behind it for prospective students to come up and proclaim on the spot that they've decided to come to the school (It mimics a recruit announcing what school he is attending at a press conference) For each kid that comes up there is wild cheering by active students.
I'm not sure which of these things SJU does, and I'm sure they do a fine job, but all of these things would be cool to implement.
We already got one prized "recruit" - Jack Williams.
redstorm89
Active member
now if st. john's can improve its retention rate and 4 year graduation rate, our ratings would improve.
jerseyshorejohnny
Well-known member
In large part that will depend upon providing undergrads with more grant in aid.
Many of our students come from financially challenged households (Family AGI below $50K) that require them to work and take longer to graduate (may have to drop out for a semester or two) or in some cases, unfortunately, drop out for good.
As a generalization, the parents of a good chunk of our students are not as financially comfortable (at the very least) as are the parents of Villanova undergrads.
If they were our 6 yr grad rate and retention rate, would arguably be a lot higher.
That is why it's so important to one of SJU's scholarship funds.
If anyone is so inclined and would like to help out, consider signing up for The Fr. Dorr Golf Outing the day after Father's Day.
Proceeds go to fund student scholarships.
I just checked and the cost of attending St Johns is very high, $45,500.00 if you live off campus and $58,500.00 if you live on campus. How people can afford this, I don't know. If a family is making $250,000.00, they are above the limit for Grants. However, spending over 20% of household income on education is a big burden. Additionally, the banks have a high interest rate on student loans so many graduate with heavy debt.
The greed of the banking industry is going to be the death of this country. There is no end in sight. Goldman Sachs recently paid a $5 billion dollar fine for their role in the mortgage collapse, however, no one knows how much they made and no individual was penalized, so where is the deterrent.
I heard someone say that the only reason Madoff is in jail is because he stole from the 1% and seeing what is going on in this country, I am inclined to agree
The greed of the banking industry is going to be the death of this country. There is no end in sight. Goldman Sachs recently paid a $5 billion dollar fine for their role in the mortgage collapse, however, no one knows how much they made and no individual was penalized, so where is the deterrent.
I heard someone say that the only reason Madoff is in jail is because he stole from the 1% and seeing what is going on in this country, I am inclined to agree
jerseyshorejohnny
Well-known member
The discount rate at SJU for undergrads is at least 50%.
No one is paying full freight.
No one is paying full freight.
Sticker price
beast of the east
Active member
JSJ,
Do you have any statistics or surveys to back up the postulation that students who work PT jobs are graduating at a much lower rate, or that they are even helping their families by income produced in those jobs? A generation ago, just about every St. John's student I knew had a PT job ranging between 25-40 hours per week in semester. On M-W-F, campus was a ghost town after 2:20 pm, when the last class let out, with many students heading to work. Still, almost everyone graduated on time. Our GPA's may have taken a hit because of it, but I didn't know a lot of kids who took 6 years to graduate. I would also guess that comparatively at better schools, kids from families that are economically challenged also have PT jobs, but again, graduate at much higer 4 year rates than SJU.
I'm not saying that what you assert isn't an issue, but I feel it's more of a distraction from the real issue, which is under qualified students being admitted in large numbers at St. John's.
beast of the east
Active member
You can make that distinction if it makes you comfortable, but SJU admits too many students that aren't qualified to do college level work. If the reason is that they are under-educated colleges generally do not make a distinction. You have to be qualified to do college level work. Many of our students are not.
For the record, there are several schools on the most diverse list that also have 4 year graduation rates of around 90%. To that point, underqualified does not necessarily have to mean diverse.
beast of the east
Active member
I'm curious how Dr. Gempeshaw referred to SJU as the second most diverse college campus in the US.
US World News and Report lists SJU as 29th most diverse campus by the following criteria:
Our list was based on the following criteria:
No race can have more than 45% representation
At least three races are represented by over 12%
Percentage of total minorities graduated 2012-13
Scholarships, clubs, organizations, and associations available for ethnic groups.
Perhaps the graduation rate caused SJU to slip in the ranking.
http://www.bestcollegereviews.org/features/top-ethnically-diverse-colleges/
US World News and Report lists SJU as 29th most diverse campus by the following criteria:
Our list was based on the following criteria:
No race can have more than 45% representation
At least three races are represented by over 12%
Percentage of total minorities graduated 2012-13
Scholarships, clubs, organizations, and associations available for ethnic groups.
Perhaps the graduation rate caused SJU to slip in the ranking.
http://www.bestcollegereviews.org/features/top-ethnically-diverse-colleges/
jerseyshorejohnny
Well-known member
FWIW ..............
Discounting Grows Again
The rate at which private colleges discounted their tuition crept ever closer to 50 percent in 2014, drawing warnings about unsustainability.
August 25, 2015
Kellie Woodhouse
Private colleges and universities continue to raise their tuition discount rates, even as many institutions struggle with decreasing enrollment and declining revenue despite the practice.
A report from the National Association of College and University Business Officers released today reveals that tuition discount rates are at an all-time high and many institutions are using the strategy to a point that, according a top analyst at NACUBO, is "not sustainable."
Private institutions commonly discount their tuition -- using institutional aid (often derived from tuition revenue) to offer students a discount from the sticker price -- in an effort to entice students to enroll.
On average, private colleges’ discount rate -- institutional grant dollars as a percentage of gross tuition and fee revenue -- reached 48 percent for freshmen in 2014, up from 46.4 percent the year before, according to the 2014 Tuition Discounting Study, which surveyed 411 private colleges and universities (public institutions were not included in the survey because their funding formulas and pricing structure are different than those at private institutions).
Put another way, institutions awarded about 48 cents in institutional grants to freshmen for every dollar collected for first-year tuition and fees.
The average freshman in 2014 received an institutional grant that covered 54.3 percent of his or her college’s sticker price, up from 53.1 percent last year.
Much of the aid is going to needy students. NACUBO found that in 2013, about three-fourths of institutional aid was awarded to students with financial need.
Colleges feel pressure to increase the tuition discount in part because student demands are changing. Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, students have a heightened awareness of the price of college and are looking for as much aid as they can get.
“While the economy has improved, many families are still struggling. In a lot of communities you’re still seeing, if not job losses, jobs that don’t pay nearly as much as they did,” said Ken Redd, director of research and policy analysis at NACUBO. “There’s an increased inability [for needy students to go to college] and an unwillingness to pay even if you did have the money.”
He continued: “The level of price sensitivity … is very real.”
And colleges are trying to figure out how best to respond to that sensitivity, along with other challenges like demographic shifts in many U.S. regions that will negatively affect enrollment.
Yet increasing one’s tuition discount rate year after year isn’t necessarily the answer, Redd said.
Eighty-nine percent of first-time, full-time freshmen received some level of tuition discount, up from 88 percent the year before. That rate drops to 77 percent when all undergraduates are considered.
Undergraduates as a whole received grants that cover, on average, 48.9 percent of tuition and fees.
Despite the prevalence and growing size of tuition discounts, nearly half of the institutions surveyed by NACUBO reported declining enrollment from 2013 and 2014. Sixty-three percent of business officers at institutions experiencing enrollment struggles cite price sensitivity as a contributor.
And the steep discounts are cutting into revenue: gross tuition price increases largely have been offset by increased grant aid to students. The majority of grant aid is funded from tuition and fee revenue. NACUBO found that, on average, 10.8 percent of institutional grants were funded by endowments.
Net revenue of surveyed institutions is expected to grow just 0.4 percent per student next year, the report states. This is not a new trend. After adjusting for inflation, tuition revenue has been flat for the last 13 years.
“The real decline in net tuition revenue suggests to us that tuition discounting, at the levels they are currently at, is just not sustainable,” Redd said.
Redd added that some colleges -- realizing that overdiscounting tuition may fail to improve, or even hurt, their financial health -- are trying to leverage other strategies to recruit students, like freezing tuition, expanding marketing efforts or increasing selectivity. Many are looking for recurring savings to try to make up for slowing revenue gains.
Yet Redd says change takes time, especially given existing market challenges. Tuition discounting levels will likely continue to grow in the near future.
“The financial need is still going to be very high, and the competition among schools for students is still going to be very high, so it wouldn’t surprise me, at least for the next couple of years, if we would see this trend continue,” he said.
Though the majority of institutions raised their discount rate, some held the line: 31 percent reduced or maintained their tuition discount rate from 2013 to 2014. Yet that number is lower than the previous year, when 34.6 percent lowered or held steady their discount rates.
Also FYI...... Take a look at the following link for net cost stats for SJU according to family income:
http://www.collegecalc.org/colleges/new-york/st-johns-university-new-york/
Utica College has attempted to avoid the discounting game by announcing that beginning in 2016-2017 it would slash it's tuition from $34,466 a year to $19,996.
http://www.syracuse.com/opinion/ind...hing_tuition_is_gutsy_move_david_m_rubin.html
http://www.syracuse.com/opinion/ind...hing_tuition_is_gutsy_move_david_m_rubin.html