Best colleges

[The Sicatoka]

The only strong trend in the stats is in final two categories. In both cases NDSU has stayed very constant, but fewer North Dakota students list UND as a choice(first or otherwise) each year. UND has lost 4.0% in first-choice selection and 7.3% in any-choice over the last four years.

And to point on those, during that four-year window UND made a very public effort to get the word out it was raising its admissions standards.

What was the impact on "first choice" of that?

Did some students, without looking at actual numbers, just hearing "tougher standards", and worried about rejection and not getting into their first choice, change their first choice to a school with 85% acceptance?

Again, ...

Without detailed information about the applicant and accepted groups, no conclusions can be reached in those areas.

[Hammersmith]

And to point on those, during that four-year window UND made a very public effort to get the word out it was raising its admissions standards.

What was the impact on "first choice" of that?

Did some students, without looking at actual numbers, just hearing "tougher standards", and worried about rejection and not getting into their first choice, change their first choice to a school with 85% acceptance?

Again, ...

If that's one of the major factors(and I don't think it is), then it's something that would have to be added to the list of classic Kupchela blunders, since all it produced was a minor spike in GPA for a single year and a very slight reduction in the number of enrolled students scoring 12-17 on the ACT. And even that last trend has reversed itself and risen slightly. For UND's sake, I sure hope Kelley is less spin and more substance than his predecessor.

[GeauxSioux]

Since I live in the South I thought it would be fun to look at the data near where I live.

When I go to Florida's data I see that while U of Florida is the first choice it, is third in line for overall choice behind Central Florida and Florida State.

Alabama's data shows U of Alabama to be total choice, but Auburn as the #1 choice.

Prestigious Ole Miss comes in third in both first choice and total choice in Mississippi behind Miss State and USM.

Going back to the north, North Dakota's neighbor, Montana has Montana State #1 in both first choice and overall choice.

California has some really interesting data. Cal Poly is #9 in total choice, but #3 as the first choice.

UND's Aerospace School is one thing that cannot be pigeonholed in this data. The school gets students from all over the country and world for that matter.

What does any of this mean? Probably nothing, since the student is going to go to the school that offers the courses and degrees that they desire.

Edit: Oops, forgot about Michigan. U of Mich is number three overall behind Mich. State and Central Michigan and second in the "first choice" category.

[GeauxSioux]

More ND SAT takers prefer UND.

College Bound Seniors 2008

UND 74

NDSU 73

[The Sicatoka]

More ND SAT takers prefer UND.

It's an interesting data point as the SAT is what you take if you are looking more nationally for schools. The ACT is normally perceived (rightly or wrongly) as a midwestern test. Heck, some eastern schools won't look at ACT but just SAT.

[NDSUguy]

I'd like to meet you face to face to see what a really stupid person looks like! Nice spin. No, what this probably says is that NDSU, based on the numbers, takes a lower quality of student to reach it's enrollment goals. If UND and NDSU have roughly the same number of incoming students, which I thinks is safe to say, and NDSU accepts 15% more applicants this statistically makes your reasoning invalid. You are a piece of work, Dano! And if you want me to draw you a picture, a simple bell curve statistics graph would be easy for you to understand.

I love how Oxbow won't let real math get in the way of slamming someone. Use of words like "probably" don't really make an arguement. Also, Oxbow doesn't really understand the concept of a bell curve......I"m glad that someone on this board will use real numbers and analysis to make a point.

Any appologies Oxbow?

*did oxbow go to UND??? If he did, i wonder if he was on the low end of his "bell curve"

[Oxbow6]

I love how Oxbow won't let real math get in the way of slamming someone. Use of words like "probably" don't really make an arguement. Also, Oxbow doesn't really understand the concept of a bell curve......I"m glad that someone on this board will use real numbers and analysis to make a point.

Any appologies Oxbow?

*did oxbow go to UND??? If he did, i wonder if he was on the low end of his "bell curve"

I did go to UND. Wound up being a doctor. Not the best student in the world, but I could have received an Ag degree from NDSU in my sleep as many of my HS buddies did just that.

So let's look at the numbers in this thread and I'm not arguing any of them. Entering students at both UND and NDSU are statistically similar academic-wise and the application pool size are statistically similar as well. So if you have roughly the same number of first year kids applying to both schools with on average the same academic standing, and if you admit 85% vs 70% of applicants, you are taking some less qualified student as you are admitting more. Simple math because each school is going to admit as many of top qualified students as they can. Do you see how the bell curve works here, Einstein? If both schools take the best possible applicants they can, but NDSU admits 15% more applicants than that 15% is going to be less qualified. And this is why NDSU is at about 13, 000 student according to today's Fargo Forum.

And Ivy league schools admit in general around 10-15% of first year applicants. So you and other SU "intellects" would theorize that because these schools admit a small % of applicants, they get inferior students that apply to begin with? Because what I'm hearing from the NDSU people is that the higher the admission % correlates to a higher quality academic applicant pool. So which way is it?

And from another post of mine in another thread, "Come mow my grass!"

[SiouxMD]

The numbers are in for UND and NDSU.

BELLARING COW ALERT in 5...4...3...2...

[GeauxSioux]

It's nice to see the enrollment on the rise and some nice growth in graduate students.

Spokesman Peter Johnson said graduate student enrollment had significant growth. UND has 1,939 graduate students, compared to 1,695 last year at this time.

[Bison Dan]

I did go to UND. Wound up being a doctor. Not the best student in the world, but I could have received an Ag degree from NDSU in my sleep as many of my HS buddies did just that.

So let's look at the numbers in this thread and I'm not arguing any of them. Entering students at both UND and NDSU are statistically similar academic-wise and the application pool size are statistically similar as well. So if you have roughly the same number of first year kids applying to both schools with on average the same academic standing, and if you admit 85% vs 70% of applicants, you are taking some less qualified student as you are admitting more. Simple math because each school is going to admit as many of top qualified students as they can. Do you see how the bell curve works here, Einstein? If both schools take the best possible applicants they can, but NDSU admits 15% more applicants than that 15% is going to be less qualified. And this is why NDSU is at about 13, 000 student according to today's Fargo Forum.

And Ivy league schools admit in general around 10-15% of first year applicants. So you and other SU "intellects" would theorize that because these schools admit a small % of applicants, they get inferior students that apply to begin with? Because what I'm hearing from the NDSU people is that the higher the admission % correlates to a higher quality academic applicant pool. So which way is it?

And from another post of mine in another thread, "Come mow my grass!"

Don't let facts get in your way Oxbow - You can play with the numbers all you want - it's still apples and oranges - Oh by the way that mower - I'd take his balance sheet over yours any day.

[Oxbow6]

Don't let facts get in your way Oxbow - You can play with the numbers all you want - it's still apples and oranges - Oh by the way that mower - I'd take his balance sheet over yours any day.

As I stated I'm not arguing with the "numbers" or "facts" in this thread. It is apples and oranges to you because again you are too ignorant to see that statistically the numbers are what they are. And speaking of numbers, my balance sheet is in the black with lots of zeros after the numbers. But I do appreciate your concern for my financial well being. Now you and NDSUguy can go do flash cards together: 2 + 2 = 4...until you two figure it out.

You never did answer though my question from my previous post: "Which way is it?" Because statistically it has to be one way or the other.

[NDSUguy]

As I stated I'm not arguing with the "numbers" or "facts" in this thread. It is apples and oranges to you because again you are too ignorant to see that statistically the numbers are what they are. And speaking of numbers, my balance sheet is in the black with lots of zeros after the numbers. But I do appreciate your concern for my financial well being. Now you and NDSUguy can go do flash cards together: 2 + 2 = 4...until you two figure it out.

You never did answer though my question from my previous post: "Which way is it?" Because statistically it has to be one way or the other.

I have the same basic problems with all of your posts. You don't let numbers and statistics stand in the way of you assuming things that are not true. Your assumptions are based largely on the fact that you believe that the ACT scores are equally dispersed, which by definition is a bell curve. Based upon your logic, if the average ACT score is 23 as Hammersmith proved, then that means that largest number of students must have a 23. The problem is however that there are minimum requirements for entrance into the university. Based upon what Hammersmith posted, it appears that the lowest ACT score admitted is a 12 (at both UND and NDSU...which seems unbelievable to me but I digress). So if the distribution was normal or "bell shaped" the following would be true:

23 would be the max

22=24

21=25

20=26... and so forth.

Based upon the information that Hammersmith provided it appears that the distribution is NOT bell shaped.

NDSU

30-36 6.60%

24-29 37.90%

18-23 50.30%

12-17 5.20%

6-11 0.00%

If we were to go through the exercise of plotting out all of the ACT points on a graph we could see that the distribution is not a "bell curve". If it was bell shaped the same number of students would have a 6-11 as a 30-36 and since they are not the same.....the scores are not equally dispersed. From the data that we are presented with, it is impossible to tell which incoming class is statistically better... All we have to go on is the average. Since it appears that the distribution of students is not bell shaped, it would be statistically ignorant to boldly state that NDSU admitted subpart students to UND.

In conclusion, it just goes to show that being a MD doesn't make you smart. I went to NDSU and graduated with a CS degree. While I can't tell you how to treat a cold, I can tell you how a "bell curve" works.

[Oxbow6]

I have the same basic problems with all of your posts. You don't let numbers and statistics stand in the way of you assuming things that are not true. Your assumptions are based largely on the fact that you believe that the ACT scores are equally dispersed, which by definition is a bell curve. Based upon your logic, if the average ACT score is 23 as Hammersmith proved, then that means that largest number of students must have a 23. The problem is however that there are minimum requirements for entrance into the university. Based upon what Hammersmith posted, it appears that the lowest ACT score admitted is a 12 (at both UND and NDSU...which seems unbelievable to me but I digress). So if the distribution was normal or "bell shaped" the following would be true:

23 would be the max

22=24

21=25

20=26... and so forth.

Based upon the information that Hammersmith provided it appears that the distribution is NOT bell shaped.

NDSU

30-36 6.60%

24-29 37.90%

18-23 50.30%

12-17 5.20%

6-11 0.00%

If we were to go through the exercise of plotting out all of the ACT points on a graph we could see that the distribution is not a "bell curve". If it was bell shaped the same number of students would have a 6-11 as a 30-36 and since they are not the same.....the scores are not equally dispersed. From the data that we are presented with, it is impossible to tell which incoming class is statistically better... All we have to go on is the average. Since it appears that the distribution of students is not bell shaped, it would be statistically ignorant to boldly state that NDSU admitted subpart students to UND.

In conclusion, it just goes to show that being a MD doesn't make you smart. I went to NDSU and graduated with a CS degree. While I can't tell you how to treat a cold, I can tell you how a "bell curve" works.

Thanks for you insight on the fact that I may not be smart, but in this case I'm right. You can spin this however you want. In this thread and in US News and World Report and anywhere else you want to look, the "academic" average, ACT and HS GPA being that general critera, is statistically even between the 2 schools for incoming freshmen. So again a bell curve is used for the sake of "averages". Not just plotting one factor: ACT scores. So if you are going with the "average" info provided, you have a bell curve for UND and one for NDSU. Under that curve represents the incoming freshman applicants, which is statistically even too. In the center of the bell curve, on it's highest point, is the "academic" average of those incomg freshman, which is again the same for each school. So right now you have 2 bell curves that look exactly the same, one for each school. If UND accepts the top 70% of it's applicants and NDSU it's top 85% or similarly close to that in each case, the bell curve shows that the 15% more accepted by NDSU falls below anyone UND accepts based on "averages". This is not even arguable based on the scenerio of average academic quality and a same sized application/admission pool. Under this scenerio: 1) NDSU accepts more student: 85% to 70% of applicants 2) because of that NDSU accepts some lower academic quality students, again based on the average, that UND doesn't. So I will boldly state that because of the bigger admission total to become the biggest university in this state, NDSU does accept some, obviously not all, lower academic students than UND, based on the average info given. I'm not going to argue about plots of ACT scores, but again make a case for my initial assumption to start this thread. I know I'm not smart, but under this scenerio, I'm right! We can agree to disagree if you wish though.

[Hammersmith]

Oxbow6, your argument is based on an assumption that is not supported by facts. That assumption is that the quality of the applicant pools are the same. We don't know that. There is also another factor that you are not considering. There are a significant number of students that are accepted to both universities that choose not to attend. That's another group that we know nothing about except their size. On average, 29% of students that are admitted to UND choose to go elsewhere(or don't go to college). What if that's the top 29%? It probably isn't, but it could be. The same thing can be said about NDSU(except it would be 40% in that case). There are just too many variables and not enough information to come to the conclusions you have.

Again, your argument is only valid if you can show the quality, not the size, of the applicant pools are equal. To my knowledge, neither university releases that information. Therefore, unless you plan break into the registrar's offices at both campuses, we can never prove nor disprove your statements.

[Hammersmith]

Based upon what Hammersmith posted, it appears that the lowest ACT score admitted is a 12 (at both UND and NDSU...which seems unbelievable to me but I digress).

Not necessarily. Since that category is 12-17 and has such a low percentage, it's likely that almost all those students have 17s and maybe a few 16s. UND's sliding scale for automatic admission goes down to an ACT score of 18 with a high school GPA of 3.5, so it's possible that a small number of applicants with an ACT score lower than 18 are accepted by the applications committee if they feel the student will succeed(high GPA, extracurriculars, letters of reference, etc.). It's doubtful that either school accepts anything lower than 16, even with the other factors.

[bincitysioux]

I really don't give a crap about which school is bigger, but it is this a correct assumption: NDSU accepts a higher percentage of applicants than does UND?

I'm asking you Hammersmith.

[redwing77]

If I may play the stereotype card, how much ya wanna bet the 12-17s belong to students in a certain commonly shared part of the athletic department? You know...shoulder pads...helmets... lots of blows to the head....

[Hammersmith]

I really don't give a crap about which school is bigger, but it is this a correct assumption: NDSU accepts a higher percentage of applicants than does UND?

I'm asking you Hammersmith.

That's not an assumption, that's a fact. The five-year average is 90% to 72%. The problem comes from using that fact alone to compare institutions. Unless you can show that the lower acceptance rate creates a higher-quality student body, or that the original pool of applicants is almost identical, then that fact alone is fairly meaningless. The added variable of students who are admitted but don't attend throws another huge variable into the mix.

[bincitysioux]

That's not an assumption, that's a fact. The five-year average is 90% to 72%. The problem comes from using that fact alone to compare institutions. Unless you can show that the lower acceptance rate creates a higher-quality student body, or that the original pool of applicants is almost identical, then that fact alone is fairly meaningless. The added variable of students who are admitted but don't attend throws another huge variable into the mix.

Thanks Hammer.....

I'm not trying to compare the institutions, because in my mind there is no comparison. Just confirming that I was inerpretting the numbers correctly.......

[Oxbow6]

Oxbow6, your argument is based on an assumption that is not supported by facts. That assumption is that the quality of the applicant pools are the same. We don't know that. There is also another factor that you are not considering. There are a significant number of students that are accepted to both universities that choose not to attend. That's another group that we know nothing about except their size. On average, 29% of students that are admitted to UND choose to go elsewhere(or don't go to college). What if that's the top 29%? It probably isn't, but it could be. The same thing can be said about NDSU(except it would be 40% in that case). There are just too many variables and not enough information to come to the conclusions you have.

Again, your argument is only valid if you can show the quality, not the size, of the applicant pools are equal. To my knowledge, neither university releases that information. Therefore, unless you plan break into the registrar's offices at both campuses, we can never prove nor disprove your statements.

I understand your points above, but the quality, from an academic perspective is the same for each school from the info I have read/seen. The entering HS GPA and ACT averages are statistically even for the average student applying at both schools. So I'm not based on assumptions. I will grant you some variables, but all things considered I would venture to say that those variables are close to be statistically even as well. Again my point is not that NDSU admits "dumb" kids. But if you are admitting a higher percentage of a like quality student based on academic findings, which was established to be on average equal, from a like size application pool, you are accepting a few more kids from a lower average academic standpoint. Not going to break into any registar's office so I agree you can't prove your point or mine. But I still feel that based on the info there is some validity to why I started this thread. So with that, I'll be done here. Let the shots be fired. If there are those who think I'm way off here, I will respect that. If there are those who think I'm not smart, my wife already has had that one covered years ago.

[GeauxSioux]

There is a lot of good news in the enrollment figures for 2008.

One of the big growth areas is in nursing, Johnson said: up 13.6 percent from a year ago, to 826 students.

[dlsiouxfan]

If I may play the stereotype card, how much ya wanna bet the 12-17s belong to students in a certain commonly shared part of the athletic department? You know...shoulder pads...helmets... lots of blows to the head....

Actually I'd be willing to wager quite a bit of money that the academic achievements of our football players far outshine those of some of other members of our athletic department (cough.. cough.. hockey).

[petey23]

Actually I'd be willing to wager quite a bit of money that the academic achievements of our football players far outshine those of some of other members of our athletic department (cough.. cough.. hockey).

I've got a little money to gamble with. How much is quite a bit of money? Just in case I am interested in taking you up on this?

[GeauxSioux]

UND fall enrollment shows 189-student increase

The University of North Dakota reached 12,748 in its final fourth-week enrollment tally, UND Registrar Dr. Suzanne Anderson announced today.

That's an increase of 189 students from four weeks ago. This fall, universities and colleges within the North Dakota University System are taking the final enrollment snapshot in the fourth week instead of the third.

The news release said UND saw growth in its graduate school, with 2,135 students (an increase of 8 percent from last year) compared with 1,985 in 2007 and 1,978 in 2006.

UND says growth is taking place particularly in the College of Nursing, School of Engineering and Mines, College of Business and Public Administration, College of Education and Human Development, and the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences.

Robert Boyd, UND vice president for student and outreach services, said in a statement that the school is please with the freshmen class, and he is happy that UND is seeing better retention from the freshman to the sophomore year. That, he said, is a predicted outcome of UND raising its admissions standards for students who entered in 2005.

Transfer students are up 13%. Freshman enrollment is up 5%. 8% growth in graduate students. It appears that UND has some nice growth in a variety of sectors.