University Athletic Association

[wally_wabash]

CA has 220 student enrolled at CWRU. Since the population of FL is half the population of CA you would expect to see around 110 students from FL if the school were equally well known.  However, there are only 80 from FL which is over 25% lower than expected.  Texas has a population 34% larger than FL's yet has 41% more students at CWRU.

I'm not sure it works it that way.  So many variables...what kinds of activities is CWRU engaged in on the west coast?  How much emphasis is there in the admissions/recruiting departments to spread the word out in California as opposed to Florida?  What are the populations of active alumni in those two states?  I mean, ceteris parabis, we could say that we would expect ratios of CWRU students from Florida and California to be similar to that of the states' populations, but the ceteri are certainly not parabi in this case.  The difference is compounded even more by the even more targeted activity of athletics recruiting where things like where and to whom your coaches have connections and pipelines further skew the geography of the incoming class. 

[Gregory Sager]

With three teams in the Elite Eight, and four in the Sweet Sixteen, is there any doubt that the UAA is a Division III tennis "super" conference?

I would say yes, but it occurs to me that I don't know how many D3 tennis teams there are...if there are more than 100, then I would say yes, absolutely, four of the top 16 and three of the top 8 qualifies the UAA for superconference status.  If there are only 50 or 60 tennis teams, still impressive, but maybe not as much.

There were 44 teams in the tournament, if the usual 6.5 access applies, then about 286.

This webpage claims that there are 325 D3 men's tennis programs and 371 D3 women's tennis programs. I have no idea how reliable it is. I'm just passing along the link.

I have no doubt you are correct about lack of knowledge of UAA football, but the post we have been responding to did not limit the commentary to football, even stating "even among honor students you'll get mostly blank stares."

Which I still stand by! I'll go so far as to say when I was in h.s. I knew nothing of CWRU or Wash U and little about U of Chicago. I did know CMU since my sister went there and Emory since I was accepted. But despite being national research universities they are largely regional schools in who knows about them.

Again, I disagree -- at least with respect to Chicago. While it may be true that the Maroons are something of an unknown commodity in terms of football, it's a nationally-recognized university of which every high-school guidance counselor in the country who is worth his or her paycheck is aware. The entire country is well-represented within the student body (remember the movie When Harry Met Sally with Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, which begins with their graduation from the U of C and their ride-share back to New York City?); those 30,000 kids that are applying to the U of C every year are not all from the midwest, by any means.

Look at the Maroons rosters for the Big Three sports. The baseball team has representatives from 14 different states. The men's basketball team has representatives from nine different states. And the football team has a veritable Rand-McNally roster, with 18 different states represented. And they're not just token representations, either; nine Maroons gridders are from Texas, seven are from Florida, five are from California, eight are from New Jersey, etc.

In terms of public awareness it's a national school, not a regional school.

[ADL70]

I have no doubt you are correct about lack of knowledge of UAA football, but the post we have been responding to did not limit the commentary to football, even stating "even among honor students you'll get mostly blank stares."

Which I still stand by! I'll go so far as to say when I was in h.s. I knew nothing of CWRU or Wash U and little about U of Chicago. I did know CMU since my sister went there and Emory since I was accepted. But despite being national research universities they are largely regional schools in who knows about them. And yes, I know admissions show people from everywhere but W&L gets a kid a year or so from Alaska, it doesn't mean Alaskans know much about Washington and Lee.

Just as fun trivia, anyone else know why it's called Case Western Reserve? It's a great story...

Ancient history, but when I enrolled at Western Reserve (tease to your trivia), there were lots of students from NJ (which is where I believe you said you were from) and NY (especially Long Island).  Students of the caliber of UAA schools will learn about them, even if they aren't known before beginning a college sea

[SpartanMom_2016]

CA has 220 student enrolled at CWRU. Since the population of FL is half the population of CA you would expect to see around 110 students from FL if the school were equally well known.  However, there are only 80 from FL which is over 25% lower than expected.  Texas has a population 34% larger than FL's yet has 41% more students at CWRU.

I'm not sure it works it that way.  So many variables...what kinds of activities is CWRU engaged in on the west coast?  How much emphasis is there in the admissions/recruiting departments to spread the word out in California as opposed to Florida?  What are the populations of active alumni in those two states?  I mean, ceteris parabis, we could say that we would expect ratios of CWRU students from Florida and California to be similar to that of the states' populations, but the ceteri are certainly not parabi in this case.  The difference is compounded even more by the even more targeted activity of athletics recruiting where things like where and to whom your coaches have connections and pipelines further skew the geography of the incoming class.

I have no idea what ceteris parabis or parabi mean.  I must be really stupid but I just don't understand those words.

I do realize that there are many many moving parts that determine why people from one region go to school in another region. 

[ExTartanPlayer]

Which I still stand by! I'll go so far as to say when I was in h.s. I knew nothing of CWRU or Wash U and little about U of Chicago. I did know CMU since my sister went there and Emory since I was accepted. But despite being national research universities they are largely regional schools in who knows about them.

Again, I disagree -- at least with respect to Chicago. While it may be true that the Maroons are something of an unknown commodity in terms of football, it's a nationally-recognized university of which every high-school guidance counselor in the country who is worth his or her paycheck is aware. The entire country is well-represented within the student body (remember the movie When Harry Met Sally with Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, which begins with their graduation from the U of C and their ride-share back to New York City?); those 30,000 kids that are applying to the U of C every year are not all from the midwest, by any means.

Look at the Maroons rosters for the Big Three sports. The baseball team has representatives from 14 different states. The men's basketball team has representatives from nine different states. And the football team has a veritable Rand-McNally roster, with 18 different states represented. And they're not just token representations, either; nine Maroons gridders are from Texas, seven are from Florida, five are from California, eight are from New Jersey, etc.

In terms of public awareness it's a national school, not a regional school.

I addressed this on my post on the previous page (which you already agreed with, so I know you've read it).  This is more a squabble about what it means to be "nationally known" than it is a question of whether the UAA schools (and other similar compatriots) are actually drawing students from all over the nation.

We've established that the UAA schools are drawing from all over the nation.  CMU brought in football recruits from 21 different states.  CWRU brought in recruits from something like 14 different states.  As you've just pointed out, Chicago has football players from 18 different states.  While SpartanMom believes that the UAA schools need to recruit Florida, Texas, and California harder, many of us have pointed out the incredible national representation on UAA football rosters...so I think we're all in agreement that the UAA schools bring in students from all over the nation (and internationally).

With that said: as I alluded on the previous page, the UAA schools are "nationally known" in academic circles, absolutely.  But to the average Jimmy or Joey in a small town in Texas or Florida, no, they aren't, and that's what I think jknezek and SpartanMom are alluding to; it is possible that the typical "above average high school student" in Florida is not aware of Carnegie Mellon University.  I don't find this too surprising, since I've occasionally encountered people from my hometown that don't know where Carnegie Mellon is - and I'm from Pennsylvania!  A good friend of mine in Pittsburgh is a CWRU soccer alum, and I've heard people (in Pittsburgh) have to ask him where Case Western is when they first meet him.

I would still argue that yes, CMU and its UAA brethren are "nationally known" schools, but I can at least see the jknezek/SpartanMom argument; I just think they're defining "nationally known" with a very stringent definition that no school without a Division I football program could possibly meet

[jknezek]

I'm not sure you are on to anything with those team numbers. W&L's baseball team has 14 states represented, basketball has 11 states, and football has over 20. W&L is not a national university, so that diversity is not proof of anything. Annecdotally interesting, but not proof. 30K applicants doesn't mean anything either. Lots of schools get 30K applicants. You'd have to show significant application rate from states not in the immediate area. In other words, if over half of those applicants come from states touching Illinois that would prove my point, not yours. Same with acceptance. If most of the student body comes from neighboring states, it's a mostly regional school. I don't know U of Chicago's acceptance rates so I absolutely could be wrong, but the info you are putting out doesn't prove me wrong. And yes, I made up the 50%. Other people could have other measures.

Not that I go by U.S. News, but they do classify University of Chicago as a national university, so that certainly helps your cause.

[ADL70]

No need to drag out another equine carcass.

[jknezek]

CA has 220 student enrolled at CWRU. Since the population of FL is half the population of CA you would expect to see around 110 students from FL if the school were equally well known.  However, there are only 80 from FL which is over 25% lower than expected.  Texas has a population 34% larger than FL's yet has 41% more students at CWRU.

I'm not sure it works it that way.  So many variables...what kinds of activities is CWRU engaged in on the west coast?  How much emphasis is there in the admissions/recruiting departments to spread the word out in California as opposed to Florida?  What are the populations of active alumni in those two states?  I mean, ceteris parabis, we could say that we would expect ratios of CWRU students from Florida and California to be similar to that of the states' populations, but the ceteri are certainly not parabi in this case.  The difference is compounded even more by the even more targeted activity of athletics recruiting where things like where and to whom your coaches have connections and pipelines further skew the geography of the incoming class.

I have no idea what ceteris parabis or parabi mean.  I must be really stupid but I just don't understand those words.

I do realize that there are many many moving parts that determine why people from one region go to school in another region.

ceteris paribus means "all other things held equal." It's a term used in economics a lot to isolate a variable that can't be isolated except in your mind.

And yes, my definition of national is probably different from others. But if I stepped into an honors class in a random California town and asked who has heard of CWRU, if no one raises their hands, that's an indicator that it is not national known. If I repeat this process for say 50 honors classes in each of the 50 states and get mostly negative indicators outside of states in the midwest region, then I would say it indicates CWRU is not nationally known among honors students. Someone else's definition will vary.

As for my trivia question, the area where CWRU is located used to be the "Western Reserve" of the state of Connecticut. Until after the American Revolution, Connecticut, and several other colonies, maintained that their colonial charters preserved all the land between their Eastern borders to the unknown western stopping point of the Pacific Ocean. While CT lost part of that argument first to NY and then to PA, the area of northern Ohio and west to the Pacific was still claimed as the Western Reserve, even as it was essentially ungoverned and not contiguous, until the state conceded all rights to the territories in exchange for the Federal Government assuming their state debts. This was done for several states, forming what at the time was known as the NW Territory and eventually became OH and other states. But Connecticut's Western Reserve lives on in several institutional names. For a brief period of time, that territory almost became named New Connecticut, after CT tried to sell it to a developer rather than give it to the Federal Government, so count your blessings "Western Reserve" stuck instead...

[Gregory Sager]

I'm not sure you are on to anything with those team numbers. W&L's baseball team has 14 states represented, basketball has 11 states, and football has over 20. W&L is not a national university, so that diversity is not proof of anything. Annecdotally interesting, but not proof. 30K applicants doesn't mean anything either. Lots of schools get 30K applicants. You'd have to show significant application rate from states not in the immediate area. In other words, if over half of those applicants come from states touching Illinois that would prove my point, not yours. Same with acceptance. If most of the student body comes from neighboring states, it's a mostly regional school. I don't know U of Chicago's acceptance rates so I absolutely could be wrong, but the info you are putting out doesn't prove me wrong. And yes, I made up the 50%. Other people could have other measures.

Not that I go by U.S. News, but they do classify University of Chicago as a national university, so that certainly helps your cause.

... and, unfortunately, I can't find state-by-state data for U of C undergraduate enrollment anywhere online. All I have is anecdotal data from the U of C people I know -- including the men's basketball head coach -- that theirs is a nationally-based student body (plus a late-'80s romantic comedy that establishes it as well ).

Maybe this will help: It's the contact list for the U of C admissions department, indicating the geographical assignments of the school's various undergraduate admissions officers. The list covers all fifty states, and the large number of admissions officers and the reasonably limited geographical area that each covers indicates that they're dealing with substantial numbers of applicants from each of those admissions territories. California alone has four different U of C admissions officers assigned to cover that state. Texas has three.

Aside from that, I just don't know what else to tell you. The University of Chicago is one of the most respected universities in the entire world, and it enjoys a high name-recognition factor that is reflected in the national demographic of its' undergraduate student body. It's frustrating that I can't find a way to definitively prove that on the Internet, but it's nevertheless true.

[badgerwarhawk]

I believe you Greg   

[Gregory Sager]

Thanks, BW.

[ExTartanPlayer]

And yes, my definition of national is probably different from others. But if I stepped into an honors class in a random California town and asked who has heard of CWRU, if no one raises their hands, that's an indicator that it is not national known. If I repeat this process for say 50 honors classes in each of the 50 states and get mostly negative indicators outside of states in the midwest region, then I would say it indicates CWRU is not nationally known among honors students. Someone else's definition will vary.

I'm curious: how many institutions do you think would actually meet this criteria for "nationally known" schools?  I'd surmise that is only extremely large state institutions, or schools that have achieved fame through something like Division I football or basketball championships, and perhaps the Ivy League schools (and maybe not even all of them - do you think that the majority of students in random honors classes in California, Oregon, and Washington would be able to name all of the Ivy League schools?  I'd expect that they could all name Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, but what about Brown and Dartmouth?  Columbia?).  Would more than maybe 50 schools actually meet your definition?

Taking that a step further: I'd suppose that a larger percentage of randomly selected high school students and parents in Pennsylvania have heard of the University of Texas than CMU, again because Texas is a large state institution with a famous football and basketball team.  I have my doubts that it means they're more likely to actually apply to the University of Texas than they are to apply to CMU, though, so from an "applied" standpoint does it really matter whether more students from other parts of the country have heard of UT than CMU?

Re: guidance counselors, I just think this varies a lot from school to school.  Some family friends of my parents had a daughter my age, who was ranked 7th in a class of about 300 students with some very good standardized test scores (similar qualifications to what I had as I approached HS graduation), and her guidance counselors were encouraging her to apply to PSAC schools like Slippery Rock, Kutztown, and East Stroudsburg, while mine were recommending schools like CMU, Johns Hopkins, and the Ivy League. 

[ADL70]

Washington and Lee University's ranking in the 2014 edition of Best Colleges is National Liberal Arts Colleges, 14.

[jknezek]

The only thing I can say ExTP is that "nationally known" means you have to be nationally known. The way to be nationally known is for people across the nation to know who you are. What other definition is there? So if only 50 or 100 schools fit that definition it doesn't mean we need to broaden what "nationally known" means to include fewer people. It simply means that few schools are actually "nationally known". And that's kind of my point. The UAA audience is clearly honors kids. These are some of the finest schools in the country. So to be nationally known, they need to be known to honors students across the nation in at least some fashion. If they aren't, then they aren't a nationally known university. And by my mind, I don't really think the UAA schools are as nationally known as the other people on this board. Since we don't even agree on the definition of nationally known, there is simply no way to come to a conclusion.

I'm not sure how your argument that kids in states far from the universities don't have to know about them for them to qualify as "nationally known" makes the slightest bit of sense. I'm not even saying EVERYONE has to know about them, just some percentage of their target audience, but it does have to be nationally. To me that makes perfect sense, but again, it is clearly a subjective definition.

As for who I think qualifies I do think a lot of the D1 football world qualifies. There are 125 or so schools that play at that level, I'd say 60-70 or so are nationally known. The Ivies, by and large, are nationally known. Certainly Princeton, Yale, and Harvard and I bet that honors students nationwide would know Brown, Darthmouth, UPenn and Columbia. MIT is nationally known. I'd say Cal Poly is nationally known. Probably 10 or so D1 basketball schools that don't have football programs like Georgetown. So 100 or more schools are nationally known by my reasoning. Isn't that enough?

I've always said I think the UAA schools are some of the most well known of the D3 schools. I just don't think they are as nationally known as others seem to believe.

[jknezek]

Washington and Lee University's ranking in the 2014 edition of Best Colleges is National Liberal Arts Colleges, 14.

I know. But I'm a W&L grad. Sure they got  kids from 30+ states, but most of those states had fewer than 10 kids and many had less than 3. The bulk of kids at W&L come from less than 10 states, primarily bordering or one state over from Virginia. It's a definition of national that I just don't buy. No one in my h.s. knew about W&L, counting the guidance department, when I went there and the school carried about the same rating. I was constantly asked why I was going to William and Mary, or Washington U or, the real kicker, why with my grades I wasn't going to a better school. W&L was my reach! Does W&L get kids from across the nation? Sure. Is it nationally known? Not by the number of employers in the Northeast who looked at my resume and had no idea how good a school I went to. Down here in the South I get ton of credit. In the Northeast I got a blank stare. That to me is a very good indication of regional regardless of U.S. News...