University of Missouri Eyes Chicago-Area Students

By Soyoung Kwak in Miscellaneous on Nov 28, 2010 5:00PM

Choosing the right college is an important yet difficult task, and it appears that some colleges are trying to make that decision somewhat easier: the University of Missouri has been courting students in and around the Chicago area at an alarming rate, and students are responding positively to Mizzou's active recruitment. Accordingly, Chicago is one of the largest "feeder cities" that has students attending the University of Missouri. For instance, applications to Mizzou from the Chicago area reached to about 3,000 applications last year and is pretty close to matching the number of applications the St. Louis area generated last year, which was around 4,700.

So, why are students drawn to Mizzou? What could attending college in Missouri offer that Illinois couldn't, or doesn't, offer? The Columbia Tribune indicates that it's not that difficult to understand why Illinois students are making the decision to apply to Mizzou:

For Chicagoland teens, a school like Missouri makes sense on several levels. It's close enough to reach in a few hours by car. The school has a strong reputation. And it offers out-of-state tuition rates that are comparable to the in-state rates charged by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

When push comes to shove, if out-of-state schools are toughening their recruitment strategies and competing with in-state schools primarily by offering comparable or better scholarship opportunities for students, there is bound to be some drama in the academic boxing ring. For schools like Illinois State University, where 97 percent of its students are from Illinois, Mizzou's handle on the Chicago-area student market is a real threat that calls for some sort of solution. "As each year goes by, we look at the possibility of whether we might have to go to other states to be competitive," said Nate Barger, an Illinois State recruiter.

Although we hope Chicago-area students aren't losing interest in staying in Illinois for college, we certainly like that our students are getting a lot of love from schools in and out of this state.