While some have tried to downplay this every year, this is very huge.
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.
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.