Byu Admissions

[juliann]

I will pick up my son on the 5th and he will start on the 7th. So I will be down to Provo in a week. I cant wait to see the ol place again.

Congratulations! I can't begin to express my gratitude to BYU for what it is providing my daughter. It was not my first pick for her and I am so grateful that she decided it was BYU or bust. She began acquiring what she thought would be necessary for admission in jr. high school. She is getting a tremendous education, training in languages that I didn't even know was possible...and her politics are becoming increasingly liberal (perhaps the biggest surprise).

I really recommend the foreign language housing.

[The_Monk]

I really recommend the foreign language housing.

I'm glad she's deriving maximum benefit AND enjoying it, since I think I was one who pushed her in the direction of the FLSR during a random FAIR conference conversation.

[juliann]

I'm glad she's deriving maximum benefit AND enjoying it, since I think I was one who pushed her in the direction of the FLSR during a random FAIR conference conversation.

A memorable conversation. And one of the reasons you thought the FLSR a good situation is becoming apparent if you get my drift and I better shut up.

[kamenraider]

Many LDS would imagine you are 'Dead Wrong!'

It would be most helpful, though, if someone could show him how he's "Dead Wrong" rather than just imagining that he is.

[juliann]

It would be most helpful, though, if someone could show him how he's "Dead Wrong" rather than just imagining that he is.

It is not our problem to produce complaining believers when there are none here. That is the burden of anyone who thinks a lot of LDS are bothered.

[kamenraider]

No need to produce complaining believers. Just produce evidence that the statement of Ted Lyon that Baurak Ale quoted is wrong.

[juliann]

Produce someone who cares about proving Dr. Lion wrong. Meanwhile, it is still "dead wrong" to claim that lots of LDS would consider giving GAs children free education to be wrong.

From what I have seen, a good percentage of students are getting some form of scholarship there anyway. I know one who didn't even apply and got notified of free tuition in the mail.

[kamenraider]

Sorry juliann, what I thought Baurak Ale was calling "Dead Wrong" was paulhadik's point that "showing thanks is different than shady favoritism". Maybe I misunderstood -- his meaning wasn't too clear. Lyon's statement that "You don't have to even do well in High School and you can get into BYU if you are the child of a General Authority" sounded disapproving to me.

It's kind of funny to me how you say that LDS members (presumably including yourself) don't care about the subject of this thread, and yet you still choose to post in it, instead of letting the subject (and the thread) drop.

[juliann]

Bashing BYU is a recurring topic, Kamen. And just because I'm not interested in proving a statement from a podcast wrong doesn't mean I'm not interested in the topic. The mistake is the beginning assumption that there must be something wrong with giving GAs some benefits. They certainly aren't getting much of a salary.

[kamenraider]

Well there's certainly nothing wrong with giving GA's some benefits, however it doesn't seem right that academically deserving people such as Nehor were not admitted to BYU, when less deserving people such as his friend were admitted, presumably (in the absence of any other apparent reason) because of having a GA dad.

[Baurak Ale]

edited

[spinner]

From what I have seen, a good percentage of students are getting some form of scholarship there anyway.

Juliann,

Just one minor quibble with this statement. You are correct that a very large percentage of incoming BYU students do receive some sort of scholarship. I was a beneficiary of the school's and its benefactors' generosity, for which I am grateful. However, all but an extremely limited number of academic scholarships must be renewed annually. For such scholarships to be successfully renewed, the recipient must maintain a minimum GPA. In my day (98-01), for a full tuition academic scholarship, the renewal threshold was 3.88, which basically means that a student needs to get two As for every A minus they receive. Needless to say, many students' academic scholarships lasted only two semesters.

In conversations with friends at other schools, I never heard anybody relate a similarly stringent standard for the renewal of scholarships.

[Daniel Peterson]

Well there's certainly nothing wrong with giving GA's some benefits, however it doesn't seem right that academically deserving people such as Nehor were not admitted to BYU, when less deserving people such as his friend were admitted, presumably (in the absence of any other apparent reason) because of having a GA dad.

With all due respect, we don't know whether Nehor was academically deserving (apparently, the admissions committee decided he was not), we don't know that his friend was less deserving, we don't know that his friend was admitted because of having a General Authority father, and we cannot generalize from a single imperfectly understood case.

On another topic: All students at BYU are being subsidized by the Church. All of them.

[urroner]

On another topic: All students at BYU are being subsidized by the Church. All of them.

Wait, the more important question, when I was a custodian at the Y, was I being subsidized by the Church t clean up the messes left by the students and the faculty? If so, bless them all. Through hard work, I learnt that the way to make a million dollars at the Y is to work a million hours.

[SolarPowered]

hrough hard work, I learnt that the way to make a million dollars at the Y is to work a million hours.

Hmmm... $1 an hour. Not bad for a student job.

[Stargazer]

Well, I'll be blunt and honest: I don't want non-Mormons or ex-Mormons at BYU. Why? Because I am discriminatory, selfish, and plain unfair. When I applied to BYU, I was turned down because of my grades which were very very very close to getting in.

Back in 1974 I applied to BYU while on my mission and I got accepted. My grades were not the reason -- generally speaking I was average, on average. I suspect the only reason I was accepted was because I was a serving missionary. Because I had a very international education (high school in California, Canada, and England), I took the GED test pre-mission in order to be able to claim a high school equivalency, and my score was in the upper five percent, so maybe that helped, too. And then I wasted the opportunity to go to the Y, ran out of money in the first semester, and joined the Army! I got a different kind of education there.

But I liked BYU while I was there.

[juliann]

Who knows Julian you could have a point, I admitt I do not know or understand the will and mind of the lds people as well as I would like perhaps they are fine with the rank and file members paying for their own educations by the sweat of their brows, flipping burgars for years while the children of G.A.'s hmm. . . dunno how else to put it 'get a free ride'. You are dead right I imagine many lds would be perfectly fine with this arrangement, hey after all there doesn't seem to be too many complaints on this board, that must count for something, I guess. Free tuition in the mail? I am very curious about the details of how your friend got that sounds like he won a raffel or something, I didn't know they had that sort of thing, if they do at all.

It was my daughter. Putting aside your sarcasm..and I don't understand your almost continual hostility....the tuition is so dang cheap it isn't even much of a perq. The place is obviously heavily subsidized. So if anyone is deeply offended that GAs who sacrifice their careers might benefit from a few thousand bucks worth of tuition, well...it has an unpleasantly obsessive sound.

[Daniel Peterson]

I admitt I do not know or understand the will and mind of the lds people as well as I would like perhaps they are fine with the rank and file members paying for their own educations by the sweat of their brows, flipping burgars for years while the children of G.A.'s hmm. . . dunno how else to put it 'get a free ride'.

No student at BYU, whether the recipient of a scholarship or not, is paying even 50% of the cost of his or her education.

All are subsidized.

All.

And substantially so.

[RedSox]

Just for the record, anyone turned down a BYU should put forth a second-effort....anyone. I know of many a qualified applicant who was turned down, and many an unqualified applicant who was accepted. Of those who were unqualified, a tearful plea from a disappointed parent, or an inquiry into just how the student was deficient will sometimes lead to admission (in my limited experience).

[SolarPowered]

Just for the record, anyone turned down a BYU should put forth a second-effort....anyone. I know of many a qualified applicant who was turned down, and many an unqualified applicant who was accepted. Of those who were unqualified, a tearful plea from a disappointed parent, or an inquiry into just how the student was deficient will sometimes lead to admission (in my limited experience).

I am also aware of such situations. It appears that being highly motivated to attend BYU carries a good deal of weight.

[rick7475]

Well, I don't know if the rumor about GA discounts at BYU is true. I probably jumped on the bandwagon on this one and over reacted. I recall a rumor that on my mission that ZL's and AP's got discounts or grants or whatever, but my AP and ZL companions at the 'Y' dispelled that one pretty quickly, so I wouldn't be surprised if the GA discount was a bust as well. I still don't like that idea of anyone getting a break on tuition because of parental lineage if it is true, but that does not make me anti-BYU, in fact my wife and I went to non-church schools and survived to become professionals, and we would love to have our kids go to the 'Y', but Utah State or U of Alberta is just as good. And DCP is right, Mormon students are heavily subsidized making the school affordable despite its high profile and reputation. Canadian universities are also quite heavily subsidized so that the average Canadian family can afford to send all their kids to university, which now has produced a glut of university grads in Canada.

The ever expanding LDS population means it is harder to get into church run schools, which means many LDS university students do not get the experience of attending an LDS school (although, there are huge LDS populations at many other schools, especially in Utah, UCLA, Berkley, Washington State, the University of Alberta ... ).

What would be nice, for tuition as well as the experience, is expanding BYU so that the ratio of growing membership is the same with the university availability. We could have BYU-California, BYU-Alberta, BYU-Washington. Just an idea.

[RedSox]

I doubt there are GA discounts, but it certainly doesn't hurt your chances of getting in. I transferred to BYU and had a class with a young man my first semester. He said he had applied and been rejected three times prior to being accepted. When I transferred a 3.7 GPA was sort of the cutoff to where you could feel fairly assured that you could transfer in. He told me his GPA was just over 3.0. I was a little taken back and asked him how he got in on the fourth attempt. His reply:

"I think it was because my dad was called as a mission president." It's not always what you know buy who you know, even at BYU.

[Stargazer]

It was my daughter. Putting aside your sarcasm..and I don't understand your almost continual hostility....the tuition is so dang cheap it isn't even much of a perq. The place is obviously heavily subsidized. So if anyone is deeply offended that GAs who sacrifice their careers might benefit from a few thousand bucks worth of tuition, well...it has an unpleasantly obsessive sound.

I might bring up an old missionary companion of mine, Elder Bruce Porter. He had a David O. McKay scholarship to BYU (meaning he had a very high GPA in High School), served his mission, then returned to complete his degree, which was in Russian Affairs. Please examine the bio of Bruce Porter in Wikipedia (full disclosure here: I wrote it), and note that his "civilian" career before being called as a GA was not long enough, nor of the sort that he could become independently wealthy thereby. His temporal career effectively ended at age 43, well before he could have gotten into his most highly earning years. So, if his children get a "free ride" at BYU because he gave up the most productive years of his working life to serve the Lord full time, then I say Amen to it.

BTW, Elder Porter has spoken a few times in General Conference, but with that you don't really see the caliber of man that he is. He is definitely tiptop in the intelligence department, and smart as a whip (even as a missionary elder he was so smart it was scary). His missionary service was exemplary, and I cannot say enough good about him. Years later, it happened that he served as the Munich Servicemen's Branch President in Germany when I was in the Army and the President of the Ulm Servicemen's Branch, and I could observe that he had grown immeasurably in knowledge and in spirit. If that is the caliber and quality of man that the Lord calls as his General Authorities, we are well and truly blessed.

[RedSox]

If you compare BYU tuition with other private universities, it appears that BYU's tuition is subsidized to the tune of 90% (unless the school is crazy efficient). We BYU grads owe a great debt to those who financed our tuition, no doubt.

[Daniel Peterson]

I recall a rumor that on my mission that ZL's and AP's got discounts or grants or whatever . . .

Wow. I wonder if I can still go back and get a refund. In the Switzerland Z