If you had a wish list for AD JB what would it be?

g0lftime

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To add to my post, my niece is both an in state student, in that Georgia is my sister's state of residence, as well as an out of state student, since she goes to High School in Texas where my sister is currently stationed. My niece did not apply to any schools in Georgia except Tech. So, the idea that she is going to switch schools to come to Tech after a year elsewhere is highly unlikely. Right now, it is between Texas A&M, Baylor, and Clemson depending on what the schools offer her.

I will say this, if my children do well enough to get into Tech and Tech tries this crap with me, I will never send another dollar to Tech.
The break in the legacy chain for qualified students is a really good way to lose future contributions to GT. Kids that go elsewhere their freshman year will tend to stay there. I had both sons apply to Tech from out of state. One got accepted and other was admitted for summer quarter. Neither went to Tech. Both stayed in state which saved me a bunch of money but I would have gladly paid the extra. I support both Roll Call and A-T but that will end at some point. If they had really wanted to go to Tech and got rejected, my contributions would have either stopped or been greatly reduced. The administration is shooting themselves in the foot.
 

yeti92

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I can't speak for the AL schools, but this is a myth for GA state colleges. Based on applicant admission %, Tech is much more selective for out of state. See @ChiTownGT's post above.
I think most public schools are required by their state governments to have a minimum percentage of students from in-state to make sure there is adequate numbers of potential employees for businesses in their state. It does no good to spend a bunch of state taxpayer money on the school if they are training a bunch of people who are not from there and are likely to leave once they are done.

Looking at admissions stats for 2022:

About 50,500 freshmen applicants, only 3,700 enrolled.

Including transfers and freshmen, 42% are Asian, and an additional 15% are Hispanic or Multiracial. So almost 60% of kids who likely did not grow up watching/playing/interested in football, even less likely that their parents did. 25% of freshmen don't speak English as their first language, 43% speak another language at home.

39% of incoming freshmen/transfers are women. Anecdotal, but in my experience women tend not to be die hard fans of their undergrad's teams, unless they marry someone who also went there.

For out of state students, of the top 10 states students are coming from, only Florida (2), North Carolina (8), and Texas(10) are in the South, and Florida is the only one in the top 5. The rest are from California or the northeast. The non-southern students are less likely to have grown up with the rabid football culture common here.

When I look at all of this, and add in that Tech students are mostly nerds and less likely to be athletically inclined anway, it seems to me we are bringing in far too few students that will naturally sustain our fanbase, much less grow it. There would have to be a serious, intentional, and constant effort by the school to turn all these kids into Tech football fans, and I don't see that happening.
 
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jacketup

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It's still about 60/30/10 admissions (Instate/Out-of-State/International). It just seems that once they implemented the "Conditional Transfer Pathway" there was less emphasis on legacies.
This is absolutely true both from personal experience and being told that fact by someone who has been very involved in Tech alumni boards for years. "Less emphasis on legacies" may be understating the attitude towards alums.

My older son used the transfer pathway to get into and graduate from Tech--with Honors in IE. If he could graduate with honors, wasn't he qualified out of HS?

The story of my younger son is worse. He had a 790 math SAT, graduated from the top public HS in the US (according to US News) won a national award for engineering in a robotics competition, etc. He was rejected but given the transfer pathway option. He was admitted to another top 10 CS program, so he went there. Why would he then want to transfer to Tech? Tech's attitude towards legacies cost Tech a good student and made this alum unhappy. My wife and I were going to give Tech a sizeable donation if both boys ended up there. Instead, I cut my Roll Call donation for a few years. The shaft never ends.
 

awbuzz

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There are going to be exceptions like Buford, but I saw much less interest from my son’s generation in attending high school games than we had when I was in high school, and I think that translates to college. There are some high schools where the stands are packed, but there are a lot that aren’t, and I think a generation has learned to spend their weekends doing other things before they even attend college.
True 100%. Especially if they don't have family member or close friend participating.
 

awbuzz

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I live in Northern Virginia and getting kids into UVA or W&M from this area is extremely difficult. Virginia State schools try and take kids from ever region of the State. Kids in NOVA often have far higher test scores, GPAs, AP courses and extra circular actives yet get rejected while kids from other parts of VA get accepted.

Getting in after 1 or 2 successful years at community college is much easier than getting in straight from HS.
True in Georgia too, can have grate scores and good grades, but they will only take so many from a given school or area. Was told by a middle school teacher years ago that is why some parents "move out to the sticks" so their kid can be the big fish in a small pond and get accepted even though they'd be at best a middle of the pack kid with great scores and good grades at a larger more highly rated high school.
 

awbuzz

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The OP’s question was, if you had a wish list for GT Athletic Director J Batt, what would you want him to do.

So … a bunch of us Swarmers want him to fix GT’s admission problems.

Pardon me, but J Batt is the Institute’s athletic director, not its student admissions director.

This means he recruits (and should recruit) athletes. Not students.
... maybe because it is a WISH list... :cool:
 

GTRambler

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... maybe because it is a WISH list... :cool:

Yeah! About 95% of the wish list in this thread is most appropriately and accurately applicable to ask of GT President Angel Cabrera, not AD J Batt.

Just fix the Institute’s football team so that it can start winning about 95% of its football games, and watch the number of enrollment applications skyrocket.
 

WraleighWreck

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North Carolina legislated an 18% cap for out of state students several years ago across all state universities. In state acceptance rates at UNC usually run around 40% while out of state acceptance rate was 8% for 2022. So, keep more of the best nc students home and accept only elite out of state kids. Seems like a pretty good model. Oh yeah, tuition is only $9k instate, so system is obviously not hurting enough to raise tuition.
 

yeti92

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Yeah! About 95% of the wish list in this thread is most appropriately and accurately applicable to ask of GT President Angel Cabrera, not AD J Batt.

Just fix the Institute’s football team so that it can start winning about 95% of its football games, and watch the number of enrollment applications skyrocket.
Enrollment applications is not an issue. As I previously stated, there were 50,500 kids who applied for the freshmen class, but only 3,700 actually ended up at Tech with tons of highly qualified kids getting turned away. The school needs to expand, but our location in Atlanta makes that prohibitively expensive.
 

HurricaneJacket

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Enrollment applications is not an issue. As I previously stated, there were 50,500 kids who applied for the freshmen class, but only 3,700 actually ended up at Tech with tons of highly qualified kids getting turned away. The school needs to expand, but our location in Atlanta makes that prohibitively expensive.
Yeah. The Atlanta boom had made it very hard for us to expand. I wish we had expanded all the way to 14th street and pushed for Marta connections. That said, we have not built the infrastructure to support much more growth, as useful as that would be.
 

MWT89

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The answer is for GT to just get bigger. What's the harm in that? We're rejecting top notch talent, not like we have to bottom feed to grow.
Do we have the resources to get bigger? My son is a junior so I'm getting real time data that suggests we are struggling at the current enrollment. There is more demand for on-campus housing than is available. Lines at the dining halls are long at peak hours. Most importantly, it can be difficult to get a seat in high demand classes especially in computer science - the most popular major.
 

iceeater1969

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I wish we could find a way to fit soccer field ( 120 yds by 75 yds plus edge ) into BDS - 6 football games a year plus mens and womens ncaa soccer help make some fun memories for our new demographic.

Wife wrote copy for a company that designed conducted alumni surveys in advance of writing the - " hey remember us please send money" brochure. The survey tried to identify - by demographic categories- what fun , fond, meaning full experience the alumni remembered. Then a custom letter was designed by categories. Band grad, favorite weather experience, fraterity, labs, etc were identidied and highlighted in letter.

I would think the soceer attendance would pay for the change but it may cost too much for ncaa teams.
How bouts some millionaire "non english spoken at home" parent chip in the anchor donation.
 

Richard7125

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This is absolutely true both from personal experience and being told that fact by someone who has been very involved in Tech alumni boards for years. "Less emphasis on legacies" may be understating the attitude towards alums.

My older son used the transfer pathway to get into and graduate from Tech--with Honors in IE. If he could graduate with honors, wasn't he qualified out of HS?

The story of my younger son is worse. He had a 790 math SAT, graduated from the top public HS in the US (according to US News) won a national award for engineering in a robotics competition, etc. He was rejected but given the transfer pathway option. He was admitted to another top 10 CS program, so he went there. Why would he then want to transfer to Tech? Tech's attitude towards legacies cost Tech a good student and made this alum unhappy. My wife and I were going to give Tech a sizeable donation if both boys ended up there. Instead, I cut my Roll Call donation for a few years. The shaft never ends.
Serious question to the part I bolded in your post, Do you think your second son would have been accepted if he wasn’t a legacy?

As awesome as his credentials were, he didn’t quite stack up against the competition. That is no knock on your son. His creds were great. My question is, how much weight do you give to a legacy when his credentials don’t quite stack up? If you lower the bar to let your son in, there is going to be another legacy with good creds, but not quite as good as your son’s, that doesn’t quite make it. Where do you draw the line? It’s a tough question.
 

tsrich

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Serious question to the part I bolded in your post, Do you think your second son would have been accepted if he wasn’t a legacy?

As awesome as his credentials were, he didn’t quite stack up against the competition. That is no knock on your son. His creds were great. My question is, how much weight do you give to a legacy when his credentials don’t quite stack up? If you lower the bar to let your son in, there is going to be another legacy with good creds, but not quite as good as your son’s, that doesn’t quite make it. Where do you draw the line? It’s a tough question.
I think the issue is that there is essentially 0 benefit for being a legacy now. The transfer benefit is not going to be heavily used by the type of students we're talking about. who have other good options. Tech's applicant pool is so good right now that you could add a 'legacy bump', which would bump a tech legacy with a 35 ACT, straight As, etc over a non-legacy with 35ACT straight As, and one extracurricular admissions liked more, and not affect the quality of the entering class. There will always be students who don't make it, but right now (esp OOS) it feels like a roll of the dice whether you get in beyond a certain point.

Legacies are what build generational donations to a school. It benefits the academic endowment and the athletic donations. Tech is making very little effort to capture this. It's petty of me, but I'm a lot less likely to donate now after seeing my daughter get rejected.

The AD doesn't have control over this, but he certainly has the president's ear.
 

Richard7125

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I think the issue is that there is essentially 0 benefit for being a legacy now. The transfer benefit is not going to be heavily used by the type of students we're talking about. who have other good options. Tech's applicant pool is so good right now that you could add a 'legacy bump', which would bump a tech legacy with a 35 ACT, straight As, etc over a non-legacy with 35ACT straight As, and one extracurricular admissions liked more, and not affect the quality of the entering class. There will always be students who don't make it, but right now (esp OOS) it feels like a roll of the dice whether you get in beyond a certain point.

Legacies are what build generational donations to a school. It benefits the academic endowment and the athletic donations. Tech is making very little effort to capture this. It's petty of me, but I'm a lot less likely to donate now after seeing my daughter get rejected.

The AD doesn't have control over this, but he certainly has the president's ear.
I totally agree. By the way, my daughter had 4.25 GPA (never made a B), 10 APs, 34 ACT, cheerleading 9-12, swam on two state championship teams. Got deferred. She went to UGA on Zell Miller plus they gave her some extra money, graduated in Chemistry and is now making a ton of money.
 

slugboy

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Yeah. The Atlanta boom had made it very hard for us to expand. I wish we had expanded all the way to 14th street and pushed for Marta connections. That said, we have not built the infrastructure to support much more growth, as useful as that would be.
Real estate challenges are easier to overcome. We can set up more dining halls and support services and classrooms and offices. It would take time.
The big limitation is growing the faculty. To grow the enrollment you have to grow the faculty. We’re a research university, so you have to add faculty that can teach and are publishing and pulling in significant research dollars. That’s the cream of the PhD crop.
We can grow, but the rate is limited more by the professors we can add and keep than real estate challenges (but those suck, too)
 

Jim Prather

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I think the issue is that there is essentially 0 benefit for being a legacy now. The transfer benefit is not going to be heavily used by the type of students we're talking about. who have other good options. Tech's applicant pool is so good right now that you could add a 'legacy bump', which would bump a tech legacy with a 35 ACT, straight As, etc over a non-legacy with 35ACT straight As, and one extracurricular admissions liked more, and not affect the quality of the entering class. There will always be students who don't make it, but right now (esp OOS) it feels like a roll of the dice whether you get in beyond a certain point.

Legacies are what build generational donations to a school. It benefits the academic endowment and the athletic donations. Tech is making very little effort to capture this. It's petty of me, but I'm a lot less likely to donate now after seeing my daughter get rejected.

The AD doesn't have control over this, but he certainly has the president's ear.
JBatt may not know this. Does anyone on here have the ability to clearly explain the issue and bring this to his attention?
 

BainbridgeJacket

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I don’t think you can solve the problem of stud legacies being deferred because you have to draw the line somewhere. Even if you give more weight to legacies, that’s just moving the line. At some point someone else will be “just missing out.”
With an average SAT of 1465, legacies getting rejected with 1500+ SAT...something is afoot.
 
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