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Chasing the Cats
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athletics to promote and improve the university. “Being good is no longer
the same thing as it was last year,” Bodensteiner says. “Students are choosing schools on Instagram. Part of being good now is continuing to evolve.”
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would like to congratulate all our 2019 TOPs Winners!
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hen Michael Gaynor began working for Villanova’s office of undergraduate admissions
Reinvention can bring excitement, but it can also create confusion. And, these days, if you stay too grounded in traditional messaging, you risk irrelevance.
from larger school like UCLA, which reportedly promised to double his
salary? The hoops program could lose
its elite status. And there’s no guarantee Villanova will retain its top spot in the Bloomberg rankings. “We’re all concerned about growing too fast, but that doesn’t dominate our thinking,” say Villanova athletic director Mark Jackson. “Our president understands our culture and understands the balance of growth and being responsible.”
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receiving fewer than 30,000 applications for its freshman class. Now, it’s nearing 40,000. At a time when parents are steering away from steeper private school tuitions, state institutions are gaining favor. The University of Pittsburgh received a record number of applications for the 2019-20 school year—31,198
for a class of 4,205—and though Penn State’s application total dropped slightly, it still hovers around 100,000.
Though the discount rate at Saint Joe’s is about the national average, according to Reed, private colleges aren’t for everybody. “I always tell students, ‘There’s a lot of noise out there in this process, whether
it’s guidance counselors, teachers, others,’” he says. “This is an important decision you’re going to make. It may or may not be the most important decision of your life. You’ve got to block out the noise. What do you feel the right fit is? Where do you think you can be successful?
We’re fortunate at Saint Joe’s, with our retention numbers, continued on page 94
back in 1982, he was three years removed from his graduation from Saint Joe’s. That year, a modest 6,914 students applied for 1,657 spots at Nova. Thirty-seven years later, 22,881 applications flooded his office, and the number of openings has increased by just 18. “Comparison is the thief of joy,” Gaynor says.
Nonetheless, the school has experienced some amazing growth. “It’s not lost on
us how extremely fortunate we are,” says Gaynor. “I subscribe to the adage that there are two types of people: Those who are humble and those who are about to be.”
Villanova’s growth has been a result of many things—not just basketball success, says Gaynor. Still, there’s no denying its impact. In 2016, Bloomberg Businessweek named Villanova’s undergraduate business school number one in the country, and the school is now a national player in the U.S. News and World Report rankings. The campus has new dorms, an arts center and more, and $62 million went to upgrading the basketball arena.
Last year, 57,500 visitors came to the Villanova campus. Among the students who do get in and decide to matriculate, 96 percent of them stick around. But Gaynor maintains that some things haven’t changed. “We still have that small-college hustle,” Gaynor says. “We don’t take anything for granted. We’re still relationship building for the long haul.”
For the 2019-20 school year, Villanova received applications from all 50 states
and Puerto Rico, plus 112 countries. Tuition was $54,550, and unlike many schools, Nova doesn’t discount much (although it does attempt to meet students’ demonstrated financial needs). Men’s basketball coach Jay Wright has said that his program strives to reflect the school’s personality and ideals. Because of that, he and his staff eliminate about half of the top recruits in the nation every year because they don’t fit the university’s mission.
But what happens if Wright accepts one of the many offers he’s received
here’s another Big 5 growth story happening in our region. In the early part of this decade, Temple University was
TOPDOCTOR 2019
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December 2019 | www.mainlinetoday.com