University of the Incarnate Word

Date: Oct 23 2012
Major: Philosophy (This Major's Salary over time)
As a graduate/alumnus of Incarnate Word, I can't recommend this school to anyone. To do so would be lying.

In a quest to become the largest private school in Texas, Agnese seems content with imitating the University of Phoenix, in the process driving admissions standards so low that what existing credibility the University has is destroyed by its student body. Worse still, many of its graduates and top students realize this and regret attending. The admissions standards have been declining rapidly since the early 2000s, and at the moment are so low that the average entering SAT score is not just average, but significantly below average; according to the data at collegeboard.com, 47% of the school has a critical reading SAT within the 400-499 range. This range is the plurality of the school s SAT scores.

Such a situation is abominable. UIW admits 95% of students. UTSA admits 79%. And of those 95% admitted, many will not graduate. The collegeboard shows that only 43% of admitted students graduate within 6 years. In other words, an enormous percentage of that 95% drops out. By comparison, 80% of those who attend Trinity University graduate within 6 years. Whether UIW s graduation rate is due to motivation or because the school is comfortable failing a lot of its students, one must wonder; still, it would be interesting to see data on those who have graduated.

As an alumni, I seriously regret attending UIW for as long as I did. No matter my income level, I don't think I would ever be comfortable donating to UIW as an alumni. Which is just as well; UIW does not, and by the looks of its current student body, *will not* ever grow by donations. It is explicitly tuition-driven. This means that the school is comfortable accepting 95% of students who apply, even if less than half of those graduate and an even smaller percent of those should even be attending college.

UIW does have merits: bright professors, good facilities, and a lot of student-teacher opportunity. But the student body itself is irredeemable, so much so that I can't justify anything higher than a single star.

Hopefully, once UIW has a Division 1 football team, Agnese will be comfortable raising the admissions standards to something more selective than accepting 90% who apply. Then again, with the track record of Agnese and the Board of Trustees in the past 25 years, this may be hoping for too much.