Looking at the Loyolas

I'm sure that many of you have run into the same conversation that I have when I tell a person that I go to Loyola University. Their first instinct is "Oh Loyola Chicago?" or "Oh Loyola Marymount?" or "Oh Loyola Maryland?" and I sigh and tell them "No, New Orleans". I've been through this exact interaction about 81384684 times and started to wonder what all the hype was about these other Universities. I know that Loyola University is the best Loyola, but this is for mostly non-academic reasons, so I went onto www.collegeboard.com and compared Loyola Marymount, Loyola Chicago, and Loyola New Orleans to see some statistics and be better educated on the topic.

Collegeboard.com let me compare Chicago, Marymount, and New Orleans on many different aspects such as location, type, campus life, admission, and cost & financial aid. The first two categories are pretty obvious: Chicago is located in the Midwest, Marymount is located in California in the West, and New Orleans is in the South. And as for type, all three are private, Roman Catholic Universities. So far all three sounded pretty much the same, because no matter where you are going to Loyola, you are still running into the Jesuit education.

In comparing campus life that Marymount is a suburban school with 5,699 undergrad students. Both Chicago and New Orleans were described as urban campuses but New Orleans has 3,688 undergraduate students and Chicago has 7,916. This means that Marymount has 1.54 as many students as New Orleans, Chicago has 2.14 as many students as Loyola, and lastly Chicago has 1.388 as many students as Marymount. One might assume that the more people a university has, the easier it is to be accepted. However, I looked at the percentage of students accepted to see if the hypothesis if correct about the more students, the more accepted. Marymount accepts 59% of all applicants, Chicago accepts 82%, and New Orleans accepts 68%. So, it is not necessarily true because Marymount has more students than Loyola, but accepts less. As for Chicago, the relationship is true because they have the most student out of the three universities and the highest acceptance rate. (This made me think I should have applied to Loyola Chicago and received a better scholarship...)

An interesting aspect of this comparison to me was observing the SAT and ACT scores accepted in relation to the acceptance rate. Loyola Marymount's average SAT is verbal: 520-620, math: 540-630 with ACT of 23-27, Chicago's average SAT was verbal: 540-640 and math: 510-630 with ACT of 24-29, and New Orleans average was verbal: 570-680 and math: 510-630 with ACT of 22-27. I found this curious because one would like it would be more difficult to get into Marymount because they only accept 59% of all applicants whereas New Orleans accepts 68% but New Orleans has a higher SAT and ACT score.

I suppose this has to do with all other sorts of factors that go into accepting someone into a University, such as an interview, letters of recommendation, and a personal essay. All I know is I would much rather be in New Orleans wearing t-shirts and flip flops and not Chicago where it is FREEZING and cannot even go outside.