Getting To Know: Rowan University (NJ)-Again
I visited Rowan University less than a week after I toured Montclair State. Now celebrating it’s 100th anniversary, Rowan is the third-fastest growing public university in the country, and has serious ambitions to grow further.
This was my third visit to Rowan’s main campus. Rowan has approximately 16,000 undergraduates; unlike Montclair State over half live on or near campus. This school is also flatter and much larger than Montclair State (800 vs. 250 acres). There are a good number of commuters as well as scrambles for parking. But there is definitely less of a commuter vibe than I found at Montclair State. I updated my Pinterest page to show more of the main campus.
Rowan University has the second-largest undergraduate student body in the Philadelphia metro area, after Temple. It has become well positioned as “South Jersey’s Research University” not only because of the academics, but also because it owns and operates a technology park and fossil park nearby. Research in health care has become increasingly important on the main campus as well as a new campus to be completed in nearby Stratford.
Rowan’s growth started with a gift.
In 1992, South Jersey industrialist Henry Rowan bestowed a $100 million gift on the former Glassboro State College. This gift has done much good, attracting other gifts and setting the school on a direction to become a more comprehensive university. Henry Rowan set one condition for his gift: that the beneficiary establish a prominent engineering school. It did, and also expanded business, health care and science programs. Glassboro State had already been well-recognized in business, communications, education, music and theatre before Mr. Rowan’s gift. Today, Rowan also has schools of allopathic and osteopathic medicine. That’s rare for any school of any size. The university will also be opening schools of nursing and veterinary medicine. Other opportunities include online and three-year degrees as well as community college-to-bachelors programs in three New Jersey counties.
Overall, it’s no exceptionally hard to get into Rowan. But there are some really selective programs.
Over 80 percent of all applicants get in. Rowan has majors and minors (five in engineering) that are tough to find at other schools, including Rutgers’ main campus. But there are some admissions hurdles for engineering and the health care programs. Rowan is test-optional for all but the accelerated programs to the DO, MD and soon veterinary medicine. But it really helps to have a Math score of 650 or better to get into engineering as well as excellence in math and science.
Less than a third of the students who entered last fall submitted SAT scores. The middle 50 percent scored between 1100 and 1290. Students in the accelerated paths to health-related degree will typically break 700 on both sections of the SAT or 30 on all sections of the ACT. Rowan allows students to choose a second-choice major, and even offers a transfer path into engineering.
Those get in and deposit are fairly likely to stay. Most recently 86 percent of the freshmen who entered this past year will be returning for their sophomore year. However, the four-year graduation rates are about the same as Montclair State, where just under half of the students finished on time. Only 20 of the over 2,600 undergraduate classes at Rowan during 2021-22 had over 39 students. That surprised me, given the growth of the school and size of the undergraduate student body.
Rowan might be a better buy for non-residents than residents at this time.
The university estimates a cost of attendance with direct charges (tuition and fees, room and board) and incidentals of $39,300 for residents for the upcoming academic year. The estimate for non-residents is $49,800. New Jersey’s college age population is expected to decline between now and 2030, according to state government estimates. So, Rowan is recruiting more aggressively in Pennsylvania and Maryland, offering scholarships of as much as $8,000/year. At present, only five percent of the undergrads come from states other than New Jersey. It’s possible that a Rowan applicant from the Garden State who can also get into Rutgers-New Brunswick can receive a scholarship that would make Rowan a better value for the money, especially if they can get into a program that is too competitive or not offered at Rutgers.
The university has tried to create a more residential college town setting.
This has included new residence halls, especially Holly Pointe, which houses 1,400 students within walking distance of classes and Rowan Boulevard, the main commercial strip. Holly Pointe’s corridors are extraordinarily long for a college residence hall, but they are broken into “pods,” to develop smaller communities. Rowan Boulevard is a mixed-use development with restaurants, shopping and retail, including the second-largest Barnes and Noble store on a New Jersey college campus. The boulevard also has apartment-style options for students though they are privately managed, not run by the university. I dropped some photos below. Holly Pointe and the apartment options are very nice, but there are still halls that date back to the 1960’s, not the high-water mark for architecture on college campuses. But off-campus housing options can be had for less than $700/month.
Freshmen and sophomores who live on campus cannot have cars. But Rowan offers bus trips to New York and Philadelphia as well as the nearby Deptford Shopping Mall. There’s no direct train service from campus to Philadelphia. The nearest station is about 20 minutes from campus by car. Unlike Montclair State, it is not going to be easy to do internships during the school year unless you have access to a car to get to work or the train.
The academic campus is walkable and functional.
Rowan has done a good job at constructing and updating academic buildings. The student center is undergoing a much-needed interior renovation. Bunce Hall, pictured up top, is the oldest building on campus, home to the university administration. President Lyndon B. Johnson and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin met privately at Hollybush, a converted mansion on campus, in 1967. Today, that building hosts fundraising events as well as Hollybash, a campus spring festival.
But unlike Montclair State, the main academic center has no common design theme. It was like “let’s go out and see what a (academic purpose) building looks like, then hire an architect to design it.” I am not a fan of pressed concrete academic campuses . But I understand that classroom and laboratory buildings have functions. So, I will say that the campus is functional.
Rowan University’s ambitions extend to athletics.
Like Montclair State, Rowan University is a large public college still competing in NCAA D-3 (non-scholarship) athletics. This past season, eight of Rowan’s varsity teams won New Jersey Athletic Conference titles. But now, the university has asked developers to submit proposals to construct a 5,000 to 7,000 seat sports arena in order to move the athletic program to D1 (scholarship) sports. That’s the same number of seats that the football stadium has now. Such a venue could also host concerts and speakers. I can understand the interest in such a venue, though only seven of Rowan’s 18 sports are played indoors.
I don’t know of a school that has made a jump from non-scholarship to D-1 scholarship sports without being D-2 first, supporting a smaller number of scholarship athletes. The best comparison that I can make is with Monmouth University, also in New Jersey. Monmouth recently moved into the Colonial Athletic Association where it will play football against Albany, Delaware, Elon University, Hampton University, Maine, New Hampshire, North Carolina A&T, Rhode Island, Richmond, Stony Brook, Towson, Villanova and William & Mary. Monmouth has 800 fewer seats for football than Rowan does now. I would have to believe that Rowan would be a good addition to this conference, if invited, and that more people would turn out for the games. However, if football is a scholarship sport, then the university would be forced to add women’s sports– or drop some men’s sports to keep the number of scholarships in balance.
Conclusions
Rowan University has grown faster in 30 years than Rutgers main campus did in nearly two centuries. But the growth has also created new educational opportunities and jobs, especially for New Jersey residents. Rowan is likely to become a more and more attractive alternative for students who would usually choose the larger flagship state schools, presuming it can offer more scholarship dollars to get them.
Report Card: Rowan University
- Four-Year/Six-Year Graduation Rates: C/B
- Freshman Retention: B+
- Costs: B (NJ residents)/ A (out of state)
- Curriculum: A
- Community: B+
- Comforts: B+
- Connections: A (Philadelphia metro area)/C (elsewhere
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