GriznMN
Well-known member
Which is why Minnesota, Utah, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois are great states for Montana to recruit. A lot of similarities and the students pay the non WUE rate. Need to use analytics to target families/kids.
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Student recruiting at MSU - not all roses
- Thread starter GriznMN
- Start date
Up until the last couple of years MSU didn’t even have a pre-med advisor and relied on the UM pre-med program director to help out.They are both quite remarkable. Found these links concerning acceptance rates from each school. Not sure how current or true they are.
MSU
UM
‘Great Year for GrizMed’: UM Sees 74% Medical School Acceptance Rate
The Association of American Medical Colleges reports about a 40% average medical school acceptance rate. But if you’re a University of Montana student, the chances of getting accepted to medical school climb 20% to 30% higher than the national average.www.umt.edu
Based on the information you linked, the biggest difference between the two Montana schools is in acceptances. I see MSU listing med school acceptances at a couple of T20 schools, UW and Mayo. The top non T20’s on the MSU list are Case Western, Colorado, Dartmouth, OHSU and Utah (all of which are good schools).
In 2022 alone, UM had pre-med students and MDPhD candidates accepted at Stanford, UW, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Yale, Vanderbilt and Mayo. 2022 non T20 acceptances included Colorado, Dartmouth, Baylor, OHSU, Emory, and Case Western. In 2024, pre-med students were accepted at T20 Duke, Cornell and UW. UM pre-med students also score very high on the MCAT, you need a 518 to even get an interview at many T20’s.
MissoulaMarinerFan
Well-known member
I can confirm the shift to using analytics over the last few years (can’t speak for before that) for this very thing and spending less time/resources in/to…larger areas that always had “interested” students, but never came despite resources thrown their way.
FWIW, about 7 years ago, I attended a seminar which stated that college enrollment nationally was expected to start declining due to a declining number of high school graduates. The seminar indicated that some non-flagship universities would likely close as a result. Also, since that seminar, I think there has been a decline in foreign student enrollment, which has further increased the national decline in college enrollment. In our region, I've been told (I haven't verified) that enrollment is down over the past 5 years at Washington State, Idaho, and North Dakota State.
I recently heard that the University of Providence in Great Falls has been experiencing financial difficulties. I suspect that is at least in part due to enrollment issues.
I recently heard that the University of Providence in Great Falls has been experiencing financial difficulties. I suspect that is at least in part due to enrollment issues.
5280Griz
Well-known member
University of Idaho has been gaining enrollment. WSU and NDSU have been losing enrollment. There is a lot of feeling around WSU that their recruiting is poor. I am not sure about NDSU. They were recruiting and getting a lot of students from the twin cities 2018-2020. I am not sure why their numbers have been continually declining last 10 years. Academically I think UND has a better reputation than NDSU in most fields outside of ag.
MissoulaMarinerFan
Well-known member
Enrollment cliff is firmly one of the challenges and it is really many factors, including but not limited to: less “traditional high school seniors” due to folks having less kids and having them later if at all, folks looking more at 2 year degrees to bump income slightly before finishing a 4 year degree later. More doing the apprenticeship route (get paid for training, earn a decent amount) - plumbers, electricians, welders because you can earn good money sooner than you would slogging through a 4 year degree.
Hence the balancing act of focusing on retention as well. It does you no good to get a student for one semester and they bounce - 2 semesters and bouncing isn’t good either.
While some retention may be a better indicator than other (ie, spring 24 student returning for fall 25 - since the student is still paying their bill after a summer break), students still need to pay their bill via scholarships/fafsa acceptance and choose classes each semester - the longer you have them, the more money you make.
I doubt any public funded institutions will shut down due to the enrollment cliff, but more the small niche high price private institutions (more prevalent on the east coast) are feeling the pinch and have shut down in recent years.
Kodiak
Well-known member
This. When I was at UM in the late 90's and the Griz were dominating on the field and recruiting students there were many of my peers from the Seattle, Portland, Eugene, Southern Californina, SLC, and other western cities/suburbs. Those connections seem to be much less now unfortunately. I currently teach at a high school in Bellingham, WA and the rough number of our graduates that attend MSU vs UM is in the high 20's for MSU to about 4-5 for UM right now. Not where we need to be. Part of this can be attributed to the big STEM push and options at MSU but as others have detailed, UM has great hard sciences and math as well. It is mostly a marketing and messaging issue where the flagship university needs to step it up!
I appreciate your insight here mariner. Its something we all hope gets rectified very soon. This years numbers were alarming
GriznMN
Well-known member
Update: this is not to pour salt into our wounds but to open our eyes to the bigger picture.
MSU sent an acceptance package to my daughter sometime last week. She told me about it yesterday. They had a good marketing package, not great but good, with what I thought was a good award package.
Nothing from Montana...yet.
FWIW, the University of St. Thomas's acceptance package has blown everyone else out the door. Watch out for the Tommies, they are coming after the top dogs in the FCS. I think that might be one of the reasons NDSU is considering moving up to FBS. NDSU knows they can't compete against the University of St. Thomas in terms of location, education, connections for jobs after college (alumni network), and money. The University of St. Thomas has deep pockets, similar to JMU.
I will keep everyone updated.
MSU sent an acceptance package to my daughter sometime last week. She told me about it yesterday. They had a good marketing package, not great but good, with what I thought was a good award package.
Nothing from Montana...yet.
FWIW, the University of St. Thomas's acceptance package has blown everyone else out the door. Watch out for the Tommies, they are coming after the top dogs in the FCS. I think that might be one of the reasons NDSU is considering moving up to FBS. NDSU knows they can't compete against the University of St. Thomas in terms of location, education, connections for jobs after college (alumni network), and money. The University of St. Thomas has deep pockets, similar to JMU.
I will keep everyone updated.
5280Griz
Well-known member
Doesn’t St. Thomas not offer any scholarships for football which would put them at an inherent disadvantage against NDSU?
FWIW, 25 years ago, when my daughter, a track athlete and near 4.00 student, was looking at schools, the very best presentations came from several Div. 2 schools, which recruited the heck out of her. One even paid for a flight and welcome to our school weekend. She chose a different school, for a variety of reasons. Good luck to your daughter, and may her college experience be as good as our daughter’s was.
Wait a minute. I read in the other thread that you're nothing but an excuse maker. Sugar coater. Here you are criticizing um....what gives? This doesn't track with what others are saying. Lol
I'm as real as it gets in this board, and willing to address issues as i see them !
catgrizfan
Well-known member
Serious question - aren't UM and MSU supposed to be complimentary institutions whose collective mission, in conjunction with satellite campuses, is to serve the needs of Montana? If that is the case, what kind of substantive change can UM make to its degree offerings? It seems like MSU and Tech have the market cornered on the "hot" undergraduate degrees (UM's grad school degrees are kick ass as we all know). Perhaps UM invests heavily into AI-related degrees?
AI degrees, I hear there are definitely legs to a medical school, and we absolutely have to lean into the degrees we already excel at. My career that was launched directly from an education at UM has been tremendously rewarding beyond anything could'veimagined, and ive been able to do it right here in missoula taking care of the people in the community I love. To me, it doesn't get better than that.
To this end, I keep hearing the same excuse for recruitment efforts: we don't have the same funds that msu does for recruiting efforts. To me, this is the worst and most troubling possible excuse. If thats the case, it will never get better. Figure out the money, and get precise in the efforts and make it happen. Because there is a lot to love in missoula for college kids, and there's no excuse to be lagging so heavily in student recruitment.
One would think so, but recently that no longer appears to be the case. Not sure which podcast I was listening to but @Colter_Nuanez56 mentioned that the BOR allowing msu to expand their business school caused irreparable harm to UM. It’s my understanding that the BOR basically washed their hands of it stating the funding Crudzado procured (apparently one of the largest private donations in school history) for the expansion was raised privately and they had no say in preventing her from moving forward with the Jake Jabs School of Business (FYI: CEO of American Furniture Warehouse, in case you’re petty like me and want to know where not to shop for furniture.
I wonder given the current make up of the BOR, if they would provide greater pushback if UM were to propose starting The Washington School of Engineering with privately raised funds
wbtfg
Well-known member
MSU's College of Business has been around for quite a long time. The Jabs donation paid for a brand new building and I'm sure expanded offerings, but it's not like they didn't have a COB before the donation.
Exactly! Every college in America has a Business program of some sorts. Find me one that doesn't.
Please show me where I implied they didn’t have an existing business program.
