Bobcat Attack - Ohio Football - Ohio applications continue to rise

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OUPride

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Posted: 4/21/2014 1:38 PM

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The Situation wrote:expand_more

DelBobcat wrote:expand_more

Shocked and disheartened at the difference in student quality there. 38% got 30+ on ACT at OSU? That is incredible. Wish we had data on graduating classes. I believe greater than 50% of graduates at OSU transferred in from a branch campus. Quality of graduates at OSU has to be much lower than the quality of their freshmen class.

Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just biased and sour.

Ohio State makes a well intended misrepresentation of their freshman class every year. With what certainty can we say a student selected at random during OSU's graduation ceremony has those freshman class qualifications? My hypothesis is an Ohio State grad is the least likely to have to the advertised freshman class qualifications of any school in Ohio that competes at the FBS level.

OUPride,

I would say it's merely speculation that people transferring into Ohio State represent the top quartile or even 50% of incoming freshman at OHIO. Speculation is fair play, but it doesn't hold the same weight as some of the other statistics you've posted.

Also, why is it important OHIO's freshman class stats compete with those of others in the state? I would argue that the metric is too watered down to have any value as an indicator for the non-elite universities (Ivy League et al).

How would you like the graduating Ohio University student to be quantified? Average income after 5 years, 10 years? Some objective attempt at measuring happiness? Willing to come back for Homecoming? Employment in the field they studied at OU twenty years later?

By what evidence do you say that OSU's common data set is any less accurate than that of Ohio or the other schools I've mentioned? Should they get caught, there's just too much for OSU to lose by falsifying that data. Also, I believe that common data sets fall under the rubric of the Dept. of Education and such falsification would carry a heavy price. Sorry, but that's just a cop-out to ignore some unsettling information....a bury the head in the stand rather than confront our current situation head on and with open eyes. Is it really so hard to believe that the Big Ten school with the three billion dollar endowment would be able to attract high quality students?

I will grant you that my supposition about the quality of Ohio State's transfers is speculation, but I feel it is logical and well grounded. They reject a third of their transfer applicants, and those that do end up at OSU are graduating at a high rate. If those transfer applicants were 21 or 22 ACT types, I highly doubt they would be able to compete when dropped down next to a kid who came out of high school with a 28 or 30 or 31 and has been at the main campus their whole time. It would show in their graduation rates, yet they're higher than Miami's with all the advantages that Miami has in a self-selecting student body that is overwhelmingly upper middle class and comes from college graduate parents. Unless you insist on maintaining that OSU's federally reported graduation rates are fraudulent also.

As for comparing with other Ohio universities, it is important. Ohio is neither a private university nor a pubic university with a national reputation and reach. Student recruitment is still based to an overwhelming extent on Ohio, and how well Ohio moves forward from a qualitative perspective is still linked by-and-large to how well we attract high quality students from within the state's borders, how well we compete against in-state schools for those students and our reputation and perception with them.

As someone above mentioned, it's disheartening and shocking. If, however, Ohio is going to truly move forward, it needs to look at things as they are rather than as some need/want/hope to believe they are something different. As I've pointed out, while McDavis gives hollow feel good speeches about competing with Ohio State, Cincinnati has overtaken us. There's no justification for a commuter school in the middle of a ghetto to pass by the state's oldest university.

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Posted: 4/21/2014 1:39 PM

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OUPride wrote:expand_more

And here is the key finding in that article.

Quote:expand_more

Students with lower-than-average SAT scores tended to have a stronger preference for schools known for athletic success, while students with higher SAT scores preferred institutions with greater academic quality. Also, students with lower academic prowess valued the success of intercollegiate athletics for longer periods of time than the high SAT achievers.

It's all well and good to cite that, but it paints a misleading picture if you don't include this quote as well:

Quote:expand_more

Even students with high SAT scores are significantly affected by athletic success—one of the biggest surprises from the research, Chung says.

From the other article, you find a similar quote:

espn wrote:expand_more

For example, one of the questions they asked was whether sports success tends to be more influential among high-achieving or low-achieving students. They found that about two-thirds of this pool of students score below the average SAT score, but even some of the top-performing students were attracted by winning teams.

Note that the data from Ohio certainly seems in line with this. From above:
Applicants +56.7% (13251 to 20765)
Accepted +32.7% (11415 to 15149)
Rejections +205.9% (1836 to 5616)
Enrolled +9.7% (3862 to 4235)
Accepted, went elsewhere +44.5% (7553 to 10914)

Note that rejections were up over 200%. Certainly a lot of non-qualified students were attracted by something, and sports seems to be a plausible explanation, though the party school reputation could also explain it. Even after excluding the non-qualified students, it does appear that more qualified students were attracted as well, and that's clearly a good thing. Now the key is finding a way to benefit from attracting more applications from qualified students.

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Posted: 4/21/2014 1:46 PM

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OhioCatFan wrote:expand_more

It's complex, but i believe that the Ohio Revised Code section pasted in below still in effect mandates that any high school graduate of an accredited Ohio high school who has taken and passed the request classes can gain admission into any Ohio state college or university. The catch is that their admission may be delayed until the second semester or to summer school, but they cannot, technically, be denied admission. If my interpretation is correct here, Ohio's state universities have been playing fast and loose with this state law in terms of what they say about their admissions' policies.

3345.06 Entrance requirements of high school graduates - core curriculum.

I believe that the branch campuses are the loopholes. Clearly, applicants to Ohio and every other major in-state public university are being outright denied admission. I think the state views letting them attend a branch campus as covering acceptance to the overall university.

The great irony in all of this is that the branch campuses were driven to a very large degree by Vern Alden. Ohio State didn't want them and fought for years to have everybody's folded into the community college system. Without the branch campus outlets, it is conceivable that OSU wouldn't be allowed to be as selective as they've become. Then again, they probably would have just had the legislature formally change the law.

The underlying question really is whether Ohio should have a highly selective public university and which campus it should be. There are clearly benefits in terms of keeping top students from leaving the state, attracting such students nationally and attracting high end faculty and research dollars and so on.

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Posted: 4/21/2014 2:09 PM

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OUPride wrote:expand_more

I did not question the accuracy of their data or anyone else's incoming freshman data.. I stated that Ohio State is making a well intended misrepresentation. The misrepresentation is that their freshman class is as uniform their senior class. They do not quantify what percentage of their graduates were actually card carrying members of that advertised incoming freshman class.

The senior class, for all intents and purposes, is the class of significance. They're the ones getting hired after all. The freshman class is largely irrelevant (for anything but speculative purposes).

My hypothesis remains as stated in my previous post. Ohio State is not producing the product they are advertising. If Ohio State has 7,000 students walk on the Columbus campus as incoming freshman, but 10,000-11,000 walk at graduation, where are these other kids coming from? And how do they shift the metric that you value?

P.S.

What percentage of the 2014 graduating class at Harvard entered as a true freshman on the main campus (for undergrad)? How does that compare to the state school in Columbus? I suspect you'll see where I'm going with this and can imagine why one would think an exploitation of the freshman class is misleading.

Last Edited: 4/21/2014 2:16:40 PM by The Situation

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Posted: 4/21/2014 2:24 PM

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OUPride wrote:expand_more

[

You may be right that the branch campuses are used as the loophole. I'm not sure that's exactly what the legislature had in mind, though.

OUPride wrote:expand_more

[ The great irony in all of this is that the branch campuses were driven to a very large degree by Vern Alden. Ohio State didn't want them and fought for years to have everybody's folded into the community college system. Without the branch campus outlets, it is conceivable that OSU wouldn't be allowed to be as selective as they've become.

Good overall point, but OHIO had a well-developed branch campus system well before Alden, but Vern did greatly enhance them and changed the nomenclature to "regional campuses." OSU disdain for branches probably stems directly from the fact that OHIO had more and better ones than they had. It's their MO.

OUPride wrote:expand_more

[
Then again, they probably would have just had the legislature formally change the law

.

Probably not. They've actually tired this several times in the past and have always been rebuffed by the General Assembly. Whenever they try it all the other state assisted universities gang up on them and the bill gets stuck in committee and never reaches the floor. My sister used to work for the Legislative Service Commission in C-town and she saw first-hand many of the higher education political battles.

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Posted: 4/21/2014 2:35 PM

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The Situation wrote:expand_more

OUPride wrote:expand_more

OK, sorry for my misinterpretation.

To your point, how many of that 10K are graduate students?

As I've pointed out they're bringing in around 9500 (7K fresman/2500 transfers) new undergraduates/year onto campus. They're current undergrad enrollment is 44K, which would coincide pretty well with an average of five years to graduate and an 83% six year rate. As for the 17% casualty rate, you can always take individual cases/outliers, but on a macro level, I think it's safe to assume that the kid in the top quartile is going to graduate at a higher rate than the kid in the bottom quartile. That's a safe for assumption for OSU or Ohio or anywhere else, so extrapolating the quality of their graduates from the quality of their freshman classes is not the leap you make it out to be. Regarding the transfers, it's an assumption I admit, but a logical one, that those transfer students have to at least be reasonably intelligent and disciplined to be dropped into a classroom full of high quality students who've been there since their freshman year in order to have any hope of competing and making it to graduation.

Comparing OSU (or even a Michigan or Virginia) to Harvard makes no sense. It's completely invalid. I think looking at OSU in that regard vs. whomever they benchmark themselves against is a much more apt comparison.

And actually, I think pouring over the tea leaves of OSU's admissions and graduation stats isn't the most interesting conversation in this regard. What I really find intriguing (and disturbing) is UC's rise to parity if not actually passing Ohio. That is something that really bears examination.

Last Edited: 4/21/2014 2:46:59 PM by OUPride

OUPride

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Posted: 4/21/2014 2:43 PM

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OhioCatFan wrote:expand_more

OUPride wrote:expand_more

[

You may be right that the branch campuses are used as the loophole. I'm not sure that's exactly what the legislature had in mind, though.

OUPride wrote:expand_more

[
Then again, they probably would have just had the legislature formally change the law

Thanks, great info. Another interesting point relating to the information you've brought is that it totally lays bear the lie that Fiami has always told that they were somehow granted the right to be the "honors campus" of the university system. No legislation or executive order was ever created so much as even implying that. It's pure and simple myth created in Oxford and propagandized by by the legion of popped collar clones that they churn out. They became selective in the late 60s and 70s because they consciously chose not to build enough dorm space for the burgeoning baby boom enrollment, and the state board of regents (which coincidentally was run by their former President) never forced them to do so.

I'm not so sure, though, that OSU doesn't currently have the political power. It seems like the last three Governors (even the one from SE Ohio that Ohio put such faith in) have let them do whatever they've wanted. Their political influence seems stronger than it's ever been. My guess it that they view it as a battle that they've already won on the ground and don't see the need to unnecessarily pick a political fight just to formalize it into law. And I do believe that they got their long sought after official "flagship" designation codified into the system under Strickland.

Last Edited: 4/21/2014 3:21:12 PM by OUPride

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Posted: 4/21/2014 3:22 PM

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The Situation wrote:expand_more

OUPride wrote:expand_more

I tend to agree with The Situation here. I would think that the senior class at OU has much higher percentage of students that started in Athens than the senior class at OSU has that started in Cbus.

Universities do game these numbers all the time. One local university here (I won't name names) has a program where they offer admission to students that weren't originally accepted after completing a summer course that is designed to help them succeed in college. That way, those students aren't reported in their freshmen class numbers.

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Posted: 4/21/2014 3:26 PM

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OUPride wrote:expand_more

OK, sorry for my misinterpretation.

To your point, how many of that 10K are graduate students?

We'll based on these two links I'd say that 10,000 was the size of the 2013 undergraduate class at Ohio State. Graduate students added in excess to that number.

www.osu.edu/features/2013/spring-commencement-2013.html

www.dispatch.com//content/stories/local/2013/02/20/Obama-to-give-Ohio-State-commencement-speech.html

The reported incoming freshman class at Ohio State was 6,607 in 2009 (6,041 in 2008).

Using ball park numbers, at least 30% of graduates from Ohio State this year did not enroll as freshman at Ohio State. Sure a few may have been accepted originally and transferred in later; some may very well have similar qualifications as the freshman stats they're touting. But I believe you are being disingenuous if you believe the transfers do not negatively, and significantly, affect the freshman metric you've been describing.

Is the dilution of the incoming freshman class to this extreme comparable to any other universities in the state?

OUPride wrote:expand_more

Comparing OSU (or even a Michigan or Virginia) to Harvard makes no sense. It's completely invalid. I think looking at OSU in that regard vs. whomever they benchmark themselves against is a much more apt comparison.

The advertisement OSU and Harvard are using for leverage is the same. When Harvard says, "Look at my Freshman class as an indication of the academic strength of our student body", their statement holds weight because their student body is uniform (the Harvard alums you run into on the street in the working world are the alumns who came as freshman to the main campus with a significantly high degree of certainty). Admittedly I don't know what the difference is between Harvard and OSU relative to Freshman through Senior year continuity, but that is my hypothesis.

When Ohio State tries to make the claim, "Look at my Freshman class as an indication of the academic strength of our student body", their statement is invalid in my eyes, because 30% of their product is diluted with an unknown population. Until they release the high school qualifications of these transfers and adjust the incoming freshman class accordingly, Ohio State is being duplicitous.

Are other universities misleading the public with freshman class stats? Sure. But there may not be a bigger offender on the market than Ohio State.

Also, you're fixation on Cincinnati is strange to me. Why do we have a birth right to a more competitive freshman class metric? (Which again, my personal opinion is this metric is not worth fighting for at the non-elite level. We have other talents such as interpersonal skills to highlight).

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Posted: 4/21/2014 3:40 PM

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If anything the rising standards at UC would serve to prove the point that athletic success can improve academics. My personal belief is that the better the conference, the more impact that athletics can have on academics because a better conference means more advertising impressions. I think that the Big East/AAC is still a significant step above the MAC in that regard.

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Posted: 4/21/2014 4:02 PM

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UC has for years played fast and loose with their enrollment figures. They have a lot of part-time students and one has to really dig to figure out when they are reporting head count and when they are reporting FTE. Now, I'm not disputing that their freshman academic profile may be going up, but I wouldn't trust data from them without on-the-spot verification. Trust . . . but verify!

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Posted: 4/21/2014 5:19 PM

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DelBobcat wrote:expand_more

Shocked and disheartened at the difference in student quality there. 38% got 30+ on ACT at OSU? That is incredible. Wish we had data on graduating classes.

If we make the assumption that none of the 3,000 documented students that transfer to Ohio State got a 30 or higher on their ACT, OSU's very impressive 38% with 30+ ACT scores drops to 25%. They go from blowing Miami out of the water academically to actually aligning themselves as a peer to Miami.

I would assume Miami experiences some class inflation, but no where near the extreme dilution Ohio State's freshman class experiences.

How much of an advantage does this manipulation give Ohio State (publications, funding, etc)?

Business as usual, when it comes to Ohio State, there's more than meets the eye. If I had access to the data on the graduating classes of the schools in Ohio I would love to normalize freshman metrics for the state. (There's your story for the Post)

The reason I sit next to peers at work with degrees from OSU, Purdue, Penn State, and Cinci is because the disparity in intelligence is not what the person with casual interest thinks.

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Posted: 4/22/2014 12:02 PM

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So let me get this straight, on this topic every school is fudging data and manipulating said data with the exception of OHIO?

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Posted: 4/22/2014 1:06 PM

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Are the mods paying Wayne Ho. . . er, BillytheCat, to play the devil's advocate and/or slam our university at every possible opportunity?

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Posted: 4/22/2014 1:34 PM

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Billy the Cat is not playing devil's advocate on nothing, just look above, there are claims that Miami's data is flawed, that OSU is cheating, that UC's is not represenitive of the real numbers, yet the numbers OHIO puts out is real. Just curious as to how we are the only righteous school in Ohio? And not sure where the slam is? if it's anywhere is on those who consistently slam other schools and ignore we do not live in a glass house at OHIO.

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Posted: 4/22/2014 1:35 PM

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BillyTheCat wrote:expand_more

So let me get this straight, on this topic every school is fudging data and manipulating said data with the exception of OHIO?

Well you don't have "this" straight. I'm not questioning the accuracy of Ohio State's data, or any other school's data for that matter. There is no a standard method for reporting incoming freshman metrics. I'm fairly certain, relative to each school's own subjective criteria for incoming freshman, the data is quite accurate in almost all cases.

My issue here is the substantial gain in notoriety Ohio State achieves by strategically withholding information. I don't have the data, but the implications are quite clear, if you fail to report 30% of your (very likely) least qualified graduates, you're misleading the market about your actual value. If Ohio State was a publicly traded company, they'd be the Enron of freshman metrics. Ohio University would probably be in the agriculture sector and the scale of their crime is similar to failing to report a couple tons of corn seed to save a little on their taxes this year.

If 30% of Ohio University (Athens campus) graduates joined after freshman year, the freshman metric for 30+ ACT scores would jump from 8% to 11%. By Ohio State withholding information on their transfers, that 30+ ACT score stat jumps from somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% to 38%.

Billy I'm sure you've used a similar "everybody withholds information" line to defend Bernie Madoff. <sarcasm>

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Posted: 4/22/2014 1:41 PM

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OhioCatFan wrote:expand_more

this is an example I am speaking of.

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Posted: 4/22/2014 1:43 PM

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The Situation wrote:expand_more

DelBobcat wrote:expand_more

Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just biased and sour.

Ohio State makes a well intended misrepresentation of their freshman class every year. With what certainty can we say a student selected at random during OSU's graduation ceremony has those freshman class qualifications? My hypothesis is an Ohio State grad is the least likely to have to the advertised freshman class qualifications of any school in Ohio that competes at the FBS level.

OUPride,

Another example

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Posted: 4/22/2014 2:24 PM

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BillyTheCat wrote:expand_more

Another example

Are you going to address my rebuttal? Because your examples don't impress me.

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Posted: 4/22/2014 5:42 PM

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I am not here to impress you.

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Posted: 4/22/2014 6:20 PM

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BillyTheCat wrote:expand_more

I am not here to impress you.

The only reason I said "me" is because I don't speak for anyone here but myself.

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Posted: 4/22/2014 6:42 PM

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Definitely appreciate how the regional campuses have kinda made a wall of resistance from other university's expansion into SE Ohio. In addition, we now have campuses in Pickerington and Proctorville (across the river from Marshall) and Med Schools in Columbus and Cleveland...

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Posted: 4/22/2014 10:15 PM

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I would say of all of the kids at my high school that went to OSU maybe a little more than half got onto the main campus. I don't think OSU is trying to do this to boost numbers I just think they don't have nearly as much housing on campus as they'd like. If you walk around in Columbus construction on resident halls is going on everywhere.

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Posted: 4/22/2014 10:15 PM

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I'd like to think that I contributed to the raise in ACT average as I'm currently a sophomore who came in with a 29 on the ACT in 2012

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Posted: 4/23/2014 11:33 AM

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You keep playing fast and loose with numbers the way that you accuse Ohio State of doing. It's not 3,000 transfers; it's 2500. And the percentage is not 30%. Last year, they had 2500 transfers and 7000 freshman. That's 2500 out of 9500, or 26%. If you assume an average 5 years to graduation, that means that around 35,000 students out of 44,000 came in as freshman, or 20% transfers. The actual number is probably somewhere between the two.

In any event, this started out as a discussion of how to increase the quality of OHIO's freshman class, and I pointed out that there is a huge pool of 24-27 ACT type students for Ohio to go after, and we need to do a better job of it. That pool is those students who are being rejected by OSU and sent to a branch campus to later become those transfer students. They may be OSU's rejects, but they would be in the top half or top quartile of our freshman class. and we have a lot more to offer them than sitting in Newark or LIma in the hopes that maybe they'll get accepted to Columbus down the road.

McDavis loves to talk about competing with Ohio State, but the truth is--other than at the narrow margins--we're not. We're competing with OSU's branch campuses on a much larger level, and we should be doing it better. Just 500 of those 24+ students a year would significantly move our freshman class profile forward, and then down the road as the gap narrows, we can really begin to compete with them on a larger level.