Getting To Know: Loyola Marymount University (CA)
I attended a counselor’s briefing for Loyola Marymount University (LMU) that led me to take a longer virtual look at the school. LMU has become increasingly in the hearts and minds of Californians, especially as UCLA and USC have become incredibly selective. I have also gathered some photos of the LMU campus and community for a Pinterest page. I also need to thank my friend and colleague, Linda Jang, for the photos that appear in this story.
LMU is one of 27 Jesuit universities in the US.
The undergraduate enrollment of 7,100 students is the seventh largest among these schools. Loyola-Chicago, which I visited last fall, has the largest number of undergrads. Georgetown, the oldest and most selective, has the largest number of undergraduate, graduate and professional students. All of the larger Jesuit schools, and some of the smaller ones, are within or close to major cities. Like other Jesuit schools, LMU has core requirements in religion and philosophy. The 13-course core represents just under a quarter of the classes required for an LMU degree. Also like other Jesuit schools, approximately half of the students are Catholic. However, based on my experiences from visiting Jesuit schools, their students are “as religious as they want to be.” But these schools, Loyola Marymount included, place a high level of importance on community service. Ethics and service are also themes of supplemental admissions essays.
With the possible exceptions of Boston College and Georgetown, Jesuit schools tend to be regional in terms of their student bodies and academic programs.
About two-thirds of the student body comes from California. I can understand why. The University of California campuses-especially UCLA and UC-Irvine in Southern California-are quite selective for many majors, especially Film at UCLA and Business at UC-Irvine. USC is quite selective at everything, despite being in a rougher neighborhood than you will see at LMU. It was easy for me to see LMU as an attractive alternative to UCLA and USC, much like a New Yorker considers Fordham versus Baruch (if they want a business degree), NYU and Columbia. LMU’s alumni community in the area Los Angeles is huge, with over 36,000 registered in LinkedIn.com alone.
LMU is in a nice location within Los Angeles, halfway between the Pacific Ocean and Los Angeles International Airport, aka LAX.
The campus is on a bluff overlooking the city, the Silicon Beach business and technology center, and the ocean. You can get a nice ocean view and breezes out your dorm or apartment window if you’re lucky. It’s a much nicer environment than you will find around USC and less congested than UCLA. However, while the Sacred Heart Chapel is the main signature building, the campus is not as dominated by religious symbology as other Jesuit schools that I have visited. The beauty of this campus is due to location. It was not so much the architecture as it was the sunshine, the expansive Sunken Gardens green space and the palm trees that make this place visually attractive to prospective students.. It really helps to have access to a car, or a friend who has one, unless you want to ride Uber and Lyft to take advantage of the city. This is not a school where you can walk into a college town or an interesting neighborhood. At Fordham you walk onto Arthur Avenue, the Little Italy of the Bronx. I dropped a few photos of the campus below.
Loyola Marymount can house only half of its student body.
However, there are some nice living options on campus, especially for freshmen. Greek life is fairly popular for a Jesuit school, attracting 15 percent of the men and a quarter of the women. However, these organizations do not have their own houses. Given LMUS’s location, it’s also easy to believe that rents near campus will be quite high
Loyola Marymount is strong is business and film, appropriate given the location.
The undergraduate business program is ranked 39th by Poets & Quants, ahead of larger schools such as the University of South Carolina, Michigan State and the University of Georgia. This is only the first year that LMU participated in their rankings. I have not seen as much depth and options in a Marketing major as I saw with Loyola Marymount. Entrepreneurship is also popular. The film programs are exceptionally selective; about ten percent of all applicants get in. Interesting to me: students can apply to a second-choice major within Film and Television. The film program ranked eighth in Hollywood Reporter’s annual rankings, though it was not the highest ranked program in Southern California. It came in behind USC (#2), Chapman (#4) and Cal Arts (#5). However, LMU students and alumni can “take pride” that their Lions finished ahead of UCLA (#10).
LMU’s academic mix is more similar to Chapman and USC than other Jesuit schools.
Chapman and LMU are both strong in business, communications and film. But both schools are fairly new to engineering versus Jesuit schools such as Loyola-Chicago, Marquette and Saint Louis University. LMU offers only four undergraduate engineering programs: Civil, Computer, Electrical and Mechanical. More interesting to me: certificate options for students who already have a bachelor’s degree and want to tackle interesting topics related to business and the environment in Southern California. LMU is also very well connected in the regional healthcare community and offers a Post-Bac Pre-Med program for graduates.
Loyola Marymount is a great example of the “trickle down” theory of selective admissions.
Most recently, only 40 percent of the who applied got in. LMU uses Early Action and Early Decision. Sixty-two percent of Early Decision applicants were accepted as were 52 percent of those who applied Early Action. Early Decision applicants made up just over a fifth of the Class of 2027. However, Early Action applicants made of 44 percent of the class. If you’re in love with this school, apply early, especially if you want to try for a larger scholarship. LMU has been test optional for a while. For those who submit SAT scores, the middle 50 percent scored between 1280 and 1430. The ACT range was between 29 and 33. For those who are from New Jersey, this is about the same range for students who come to Rutgers or The College of New Jersey. For Californians who know this school better, it’s below the range for USC, but similar to Chapman University.
Those who choose Loyola Marymount tend to stay.
Within the exception of the pandemic year (2019-20) freshmen retention has been between 87 and 90 percent. However, the graduation rates have declined. The Class of 2016 graduated 76 percent of their freshmen on time. For the Class of 2023 this dropped to 66 percent. The four-year graduation rate in the School of Communications and Fine Arts dropped from 83 percent for the Class of 2019 to 64 percent for the Class of 2023. The business school’s four-year graduation rate dropped from 78 to 67 percent. I know no reason that these rates dropped as they did. It’s possible that some wanted to try for admission to USC, though it’s difficult to transfer into most of the University of California or Cal State campuses from anywhere other than a California community college.
The costs have to work out.
LMU’s estimated cost of attendance for 2024-25 is close to $90,000. Merit aid gets far down into a freshman class; over half receive a scholarship. However, the average freshman award was just over $12,000 in 2022-23 and the school, on average, met 73 percent of need, a significant gap for a fairly expensive university. The average student loan debt exceeded $34,000 for the Class of 2023 although only 40 percent of the class had any debt at all. These numbers tell me that Loyola Marymount attracts students whose families can pay as well as families who will reach to cover costs.
Loyola Marymount is not really a sports-oriented school like USC or Boston College.
In fact,. the university made a decision to drop six sports in January, 2024. The university fields competitive varsity programs in water polo and beach volleyball. The men’s basketball program was a dominant power in the West Coast Conference in the late 1980’s through 1990 under former Bulls and Lakers coach Paul Westhead. However, they have had far less success after Westhead left to return to the NBA to coach the Denver Nuggets The Lions compete in a conference that has been dominated by Gonzaga in recent years, though St. Mary’s (CA) has also had competitive teams. Also notable, baseball alumnus Billy Bean, who later became Major League Baseball’s first Ambassador for Inclusion. He has since been promoted to Senior Vice President and Special Advisor to the Commissioner.
Conclusions
The best reasons to go to Loyola Marymount are the location and an academic fit as long as the costs will work out.
Report Card: Loyola Marymount University
- Four-Year/Six-Year Graduation Rates: B+/B+
- Freshman Retention: B+
- Curriculum: A
- Costs: C
- Comforts: B
- Community: A
- Connections: A (Los Angeles/Sounthern California/San Francisco)/C (elsewhere)
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Report Card: Loyola Marymount University
Want to know more about me?
Buy my book, The Good College!
Listen to my latest interview on ‘Tests and the Rest’ with Amy Seeley and Mike Bergin!
Hear my talk, What Exactly Is a Good College? hosted by test-prep experts Amy Seeley and Mike Bergin on Tests And The Rest!
Check out my talk, College Is A Learning AND Living Community hosted by Dr. Cynthia Colon from Destination YOUniversity on Voice of America Radio!
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