[01LUGrad]

According to Thomson Peterson's College Overview (http://www.petersons.com/UGChannel/code ... &sponsor=1)
LU's entrance difficulty is listed as being "minimaly difficult" with 67% of applications being accepted. (Duke, for example, was listed as "most difficult" with 22% of applicants accepted.)

It is no secred that LU isn't all that selective, especially in this time of growth, but to be honest, I didn't think we were turning 33% of aplicants away! Any thoughts?

[El Scorcho]

We certainly are turning quite a few people away these days. Liberty's growth has only been limited by our ability to build, which is to say that we have a lot of people who want to come here that we can't house. That's not to say that we would have accepted all of them anyway. They really are trying to beef up the University all the way around, academics included. Slowly but surely, my friends.

[adam42381]

I was a freshmen back in 1999 and I never heard of anyone being turned away. The only time I heard about rejecting people was a guy with an SAT score of under 700 (old SAT). It's good to see that they actually are turning people away. The joke used to be that you could go to Liberty as long as you had the money.

[A.G.]

I guarantee that if some poor soul decided to apply TODAY, that they would be admitted with as little as a GED, just to meet enrollment projections. It's all in the timing.

[BJWilliams]

I applied right out of military school with an 1160 SAT and a pretty good GPA. I did have some mediocre grades coming out of HS but Im glad that I got the opportunity (it was either LU or ODU)

[SuperJon]

An 1160 SAT will get you into most schools.

[LUconn]

[insert dog getting accepted story here]

[PAmedic]

[insert dog getting accepted story here]

I was just gonna mention that. That was the standard joke back in the 80s as well, and true- I believe

Urban legend would be more appropriate, I suppose

someone look it up on Snopes .com

[El Scorcho]

these days.

That part is important.

[mrmacphisto]

I guarantee that if some poor soul decided to apply TODAY, that they would be admitted with as little as a GED, just to meet enrollment projections. It's all in the timing.

A.G. hit the nail on the head. Housing and food supply haven't been issues in recent years (that is to say they haven't really been considered when recruiting new students), as the number one priority has been recuitment. At one time, despite SACS regulations, they did away with the SAT/ACT requirement. They later had to retract that, and required students who had already matriculated to take the SAT or ACT over the summer.

Numbers is priority one at LU. Doc wants 25,000 on campus before he retires, and his people are going to make that happen any way they can. If that means we have to take out hotel rooms to house our "on-campus" students and run a shuttle, or we face food shortages in the Marriott, or have to set up outdoor circus tents to serve everyone, so be it.

By the way, the dog story is true. A friend's cousin did that, using his friend's dog as the name on the application. Several weeks later he received an acceptance letter.

[PeterParker]

They must balance quantity with quality in order to establish a tradition of excellence. The focus on Large Numbers first and foremost (corporations, organizations, etc.) is outdated and is not synonymous with quality; Quality trumps quantity everytime; take care of the quality issue with your product (in this case education and college experience) and the quantity issue will take care of itself. The demand will build for your product. Find and strike the balance between quality and quantity, adhere to smart growth principles and gradually ratchet up the various quality issues (facilities, academic accomplishments and honors, athletics, college experience/atmosphere et al) and your product will sell itself. When you put the cart before the horse, you run the risk of becoming an entity that has to resort to making grandiose claims that all too often prove to be unsubstantiated.


How many people across the country yearn to be a part of the Notre Dame tradition, but are not affiliated with catholicism; they dream of attending because they want to be a part of the academic and athletic excellence along with the college atmosphere/experience that is Notre Dame. LU should seek to preserve their heritage, but continue working to increase brand equity in the areas of academic reputation and standing among the national/international business and academic communities in addition to the areas of athletic excellence and collegiate experience.

[RubberMallet]

seriously....there were some people that i knew at lu...."are you really sure college is for you?"

i think that the 33% that lu turns away are the ones who can't afford it...

[mrmacphisto]

I could not agree with you more, Peter Parker.

[Libertine]

Quality trumps quantity everytime.

But if you have quantity, you can buy quality.

[A.G.]

Or as the keen observers will note with the freshman class--from quantity comes quality.

[mrmacphisto]

Or as the keen observers will note with the freshman class--from quantity comes quality.

You know, that statement could be taken any number of ways.

[belcherboy]

My buddy (he came from my high school and was my roomate in college) was accepted at Liberty for the Fall '93 semester with a 1.8 high school GPA and having not taken the ACT or the SAT (we take the ACT up in Michigan). When he got to school, they made him take the ACT. That was after they had accepted him and during Freshman orientation.

I knew of no one at the time who was turned away.

by the way, he graduated and did a pretty good job while at Liberty.

[thepostman]

since stories are being told i will tell mine...my GPA graduating high school was 2.1. In Florida you need a 2.0 to graduate I didn't know if I was going to graduate until the night before. I scroed a 21 on the ACT which I don't really remember the scale so somebody else would have to tell me if that is good or bad. I applied to a few schools, the only one that let me in would be Liberty, this was 3 1/2 years ago and i still don't know if i have heard of people being turned away, but then again how would we really know, if they aren't at Liberty they aren't around to tell their story

[LU'sbestmanager]

i have a friend that was on the hall, that got in with a 77 average and a 720 on the SAT. all he had to do was take clst his first year with the rest of his classes.. thats it!

[PeterParker]

These stories don't bode well for the perception of quality for the degree everyone is spending (or for some of us, have spent) four years and countless dollars to get...it's not enough to just have a degree in the business world these days; with all of the career colleges, for profit institutions and the previous flood of diploma mills of the last 90's, the perception of the quality of one's degree is an issue when interviewing with prospective employers. They definitely need to shore up this gaping hole in the admissions policies.

I've heard on record that the powers that be do not want to turn away people who want the LU experience, but in order to facilitate the brand equity of academic quality and excellence, they must ratchet up those baseline requirements. One way to bridge the two ideals, one of accomodating all who want to experience the mountain with increasing the academic reputation of the school would be to create a two year junior college (they've got plenty of room over on the ericson property), where, if your grades aren't good enough to get into LU based on the urgently needed updated requirements, then you can enroll in the, let's call it the Thomas Road Junior College or Candlers Mountain Junior College for two years and then try to work your way into Liberty (to borrow from Hollywood, like Rudy at Notre Dame when he went to the Catholic Juco down the road to try to work his way into ND.) You could use graduate students to teach those classes.

IMO they also need to do away with the rolling admissions deal and go to an early decision model at some point (hopefully soon) and move to a "moderately selective" rating in the near future and then onto a "selective" rating in 10-15 years to make sure they are getting the brightest of the lot who apply.

[Libertine]

I scroed a 21 on the ACT which I don't really remember the scale so somebody else would have to tell me if that is good or bad.

The ACT has a 29 point scale and the average is in the 18-20 range. 21 is a decent score.

[belcherboy]

I scroed a 21 on the ACT which I don't really remember the scale so somebody else would have to tell me if that is good or bad.

The ACT has a 29 point scale and the average is in the 18-20 range. 21 is a decent score.

No it doesn't, I had 3 kids score 30 at my school (I work at a private school). I believe it is a 36 point scale now...When I took it in 1993 it was 32 point I believe. The average score at my school was 24, but that is way above average (we had a VERY bright class this past year...this year we will be lucky to have a few kids break 24). I believe the national average is probably around 20.

All 3 girls who got the 30 received full tuition scholarships to in state universities (U of Michigan, U of Detroit, and I believe Eastern Michigan U was the other) along with a ton of partial scholarships from other schools across the country.

[Libertine]

I scroed a 21 on the ACT which I don't really remember the scale so somebody else would have to tell me if that is good or bad.

The ACT has a 29 point scale and the average is in the 18-20 range. 21 is a decent score.

No it doesn't, I had 3 kids score 30 at my school (I work at a private school). I believe it is a 36 point scale now...When I took it in 1993 it was 32 point I believe. The average score at my school was 24, but that is way above average (we had a VERY bright class this past year...this year we will be lucky to have a few kids break 24). I believe the national average is probably around 20.

All 3 girls who got the 30 received full tuition scholarships to in state universities (U of Michigan, U of Detroit, and I believe Eastern Michigan U was the other) along with a ton of partial scholarships from other schools across the country.

You're right. I've talked to our recruiting coordinator and they have changed the test since I took it in May '93 when it was a 29 point scale. (I remember because I was only two points off the max after wandering around downtown Charleston trying to find Porter-Gaud and I remember thinking that maybe I should have gotten a little more sleep the night before. I did make up for it later taht afternoon by falling asleep while watching Wichita State in the NCAA title baseball game. Which they won. But, I digress big time.) They've also changed how they interpret the scores. The explanation was a little too convoluted to understand on a Sunday morning but now they give you your cumulative score plus about 50 other percentiles garnered from one little test and colleges look at any and all of them.

[Sly Fox]

I believe it was 35-point scale in the Mid '80s when I took the test. I had 3 or 4 friends at school ace the test.

[mrmacphisto]

These stories don't bode well for the perception of quality for the degree everyone is spending (or for some of us, have spent) four years and countless dollars to get...it's not enough to just have a degree in the business world these days; with all of the career colleges, for profit institutions and the previous flood of diploma mills of the last 90's, the perception of the quality of one's degree is an issue when interviewing with prospective employers. They definitely need to shore up this gaping hole in the admissions policies.

I'm glad you made the distinction between the perception of quality and the actual degree of quality. While the quality of education at LU has nothing to do with admissions standards, those standards do affect the perception of quality in regards to that education. I think LU (and most colleges, for that matter) is as good as you the student allows it to be. If you go in wanting to learn and grow as opposed to just getting a degree, you will probably come away with a solid education. It helps if you have a clear plan or direction for where you want to go career-wise. I would even encourage those who still don't know what they want after their first two years to take some time away from school to explore their options and decide, rather than getting a degree in a field just to finish, but I digress.