This discussion is turning into a pointless and irrelevant debate for this particular board. I’m surprised @skieurope hasn’t shut it down.
Boarding School Review provides helpful information regarding financial aid.
Although there are several variables (cost of attendance & percentage of day students are two such variables), the most generous schools were two 100% boarding schools–St. Andrew’s School & St. Paul’s School, followed by Exeter & Andover).
BSR lists the average financial aid grant was $24,500 & on average 37% of students at boarding schools received grant aid.
St. Andrew’s School awarded grant aid to 50% of its students averaging $44,965.
St. Paul’s School awarded grant aid to 40% averaging $56,550.
Andover was at 47% and $40,800 (but Andover’s total cost of attendance is lower than SPS).
Exeter was at 47% and $45,000.
Deerfield Academy reported 35% and 447,080.
Groton was at 44% and $46,105.
Lawrenceville was at 31% and $52,030.
Taft was 35% and $43,500.
Culver Academies reported 49% and $29,415.
Thacher was at 29% and $44,620.
Cate School reported 28% and $52,644.
Northfield Mount Herman was 30% and $55,797.
Kent School reported 45% and $37,500.
Mercersburg Academy was 49% and $33,000.
Choate Rosemary Hall reported 33% and $46,105.
Asheville School was 25% and $31,000.
Tabor Academy was 36% and did not report the amount of grant aid.
Middlesex was 35% and $47,230.
Peddie was 40% and $40,063.
Millbrook was 30% and $38,200.
Hill School reported 40% and $34,500.
St. George’s was 30% and $39,850.
Hotchkiss reported 32% and $48,215.
Baylor was 31% and $30,000.
Loomis Chaffee was 33% and $42,361.
These figures, presumably, are from the same year for each school. The most recent figures may be a bit different.
As for overall financial aid budget, St. Paul’s School awarded almost $12 million dollars in grant aid = 211 students times $56,550. SPS had about 530 students of which 211, or 40%, received grant aid averaging $56,550 per student.
Exeter’s financial aid grants almost doubled SPS’, but Exeter has more than two times the number of students than SPS.
St. Andrew’s School in Delaware & Andover deserve praise for their generosity.
Nevertheless, as noted by another poster, an applicant may receive their most generous financial aid offer from a boarding school with a smaller financial aid budget & a smaller endowment. On average, however, the schools with the largest endowments are the most generous in awarding financial aid grants.
P.S. I am aware of many boarding school applicants who were accepted but placed on a financial aid waiting list. Some families have been contacted and told that their student would be offered admission if the request for financial aid was withdrawn. That is why a large financial aid budget is important–so that the best qualified applicants may be admitted & attend.
Just pointing out that our personal experience was that we got more FA from schools with smaller endowments, smaller FA budgets, and smaller FA average award amounts.
Your assumptions make sense. There is a logic to them. But in our case they would have been WRONG.
I don’t want people to be discouraged from applying to less wealthy schools because of your posts.
@Calimex: No need to be impolite. I am just providing information. I understand and appreciate that your experience was different, that is why I am using averages as does Boarding School Review.
For example, just because student A was admitted to School X with identical scores & GPA as student B, does not mean that student B will also be admitted to School X. Again, better to use averages than anecdotes.
Also, healthy endowments offer much more than just financial aid grants.
There is a typo in my post #21 above regarding Deerfield Academy. It should be 35% and $47,080 (not 447,080).
At the college level, big endowments also can be used to support marketing budgets and consultants to help game rankings.
You seem to have missed the financial powerhouse Grinnell in your LAC list.
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/college-rankings/details/EndowmentPerStudent
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@merc81: Thank you. I did in fact forget to list Grinnell College of Iowa in the LAC listing. Grinnell College is very generous in awarding financial aid grants to both US & to international applicants. It should have appeared after Wellesley College (the super elite, famous all women’s LAC which facilitates social ties with MIT and, if I recall correctly, Harvard College).
Grinnell College is ranked at #11 by US News for LACs in a tie with Haverford College, Vassar College, Smith College and Wash & Lee College.
Gotta be honest - I see no significant correlation between the presented data (total endowment, percent on FA, avg FA, or a function of the latter two). Plus, important data is missing and not obtainable, which includes:
(1) the actual cost of attendance per student - what it costs the school per student is substantially more than the cost of attendance passed on to the parents. I’ve been told that tuition only covers about 50% of the cost. The balance is covered by the endowment.
(2) $$ sitting in each subcategory of the endowment - many donors designate contributions for specific uses, and I assume that is particularly so for large contributions. These include professorships, buildings, teacher pay, FA, and other subcategories. The outside observer looking at the total has NO idea of the size of each bucket in the endowment and therefore has no idea what the endowment means for the school…or how to apply that toward their own decision making about schools to apply to.
In summary, if correlation is not causation, than lack of correlation is most definitely not causation. :-B
“Tuition” at some boarding schools actually includes tuition, fees, room & board. It is a comprehensive fee.
I agree that the actual cost per student, and subsequent discounting by grants, would make for a more simplified & easily readable comparison.
As for restrictions on some specific funds within an endowment, examining a school’s financial aid budget alleviates that concern. But, yes, some endowment funds are specifically restricted to such things as supplementing professor’s salaries or for specific development of buildings, facilities & resources. I think that we can agree that these are all good things for both students & the school.
While a healthy endowment fund is the best way to ensure the financial stability of an educational institution, it should not be the deciding factor as to where one applies or attends school.
Clearly, schools such as Tabor Academy, Cate, Thacher, and many others (Blair Academy, Wyoming Seminary & Culver Academies, for example) offer outstanding lifelong benefits to their students & may well be a better fit for a particular student than Andover, Exeter, St. Paul’s, Deerfield, Groton, Choate, Hotchkiss, Lawrenceville, Mercersburg, St. Andrews School and the other super wealthy boarding schools. Even Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Williams, Amherst, Wellesley, Swarthmore and the other world renowned colleges & universities do not have 100% yields.
But to disparage an educational institution for having & maintaining a large, healthy endowment is silly at best.
These are high schools with healthy endowments in the millions. They are all doing just fine, and every single one is able to provide outstanding facilities, teaching, opportunities, and financial aid to the students they want, let’s not split hairs. Still trying to find the point of this thread.
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Probably the simplest way to explain the importance of a school’s endowment is to understand that the smaller a school’s endowment, the more dependent it is upon tuition revenues.
The thread on Hampshire College and its financial difficulties offers more detailed insight into the necessity of having & maintaining a healthy endowment.
www.kent-school.edu/support/endowment offers a quick, brief overview
Again, what is your point? Are you saying that some of the boarding schools are facing financial difficulties? That might be useful information to share as that would have an effect on a school’s long term viability. Are you aware of any boarding schools under that stress?
A school with a smaller endowment that is well-managed may be in a stronger position than a school with a larger endowment that is not. Simply listing endowments numbers doesn’t mean a lot.
Schools with healthy endowments are able to subsidize tuition costs. If one is offered a luxury automobile for the same price as a subcompact, then which would be the wiser, safer purchase ?
Again, the smaller a school’s endowment, the more dependent the school is upon tuition revenues.
The best facilities, newest technology, top notch teachers and administrators, along with appropriate & necessary maintenance of the grounds and facilities is not free.
Endowments are one very important source of information about an educational institution which is objective and verifiable.
All things being equal, is it better to have more money? Gee, let me think about that one for a while. :))
I’m not entirely sure I see the point of this thread either, but I agree that in a general sense a larger endowment is likely to make for a better school. Obviously, there are plenty of other factors, but money helps address all kinds of problems. Also, although it has been pointed out that a particular individual might get better financial aid from a school with a modest endowment, that student might then be one of comparatively few receiving FA. That could make the culture of the school quite different from that of a school where 40% of students receive aid and where the student body contains many actual representatives of the middle classes.
@twinsmama: I think that you answered your own question–actually questions (one about money & the other about the point of this thread under the assumption that readers are not capable of utilizing factual knowledge. My view is that most readers are capable of handling facts and do not need to be told what is important & what is not according to someone else’s agenda.)
This thread is intended as a resource for those seeking important information about boarding schools which is objective & verifiable. (Apparently objective & verifiable information scares some posters.)
Folks are free to use this information as they see fit, just as you have.
While I would certainly look at the endowment, I think it offers very little insight into the school. For those who need large FA packages, perhaps taking a closer look is advised. But then again, a small school could also offer these students needed aid. The numbers could clearly be impacted by a number of factors ( Having a single Rockefeller alumni donor for example) or having had a head of school who wanted to focus on a large endowment years ago which has grown.
To me, these endowments portray an abundance of riches. Schools where the offerings are beyond what nearly everyone else in the US gets in high school.
Personally, all things being equal, my monies on the school with a current headmaster who runs it efficiently and focuses on the things my family considers to be valuable. I don’t care a whit about money in the bank. It’s what they are doing with it and what they plan to do with it that matters.
It is also helpful to be aware of which schools have the highest & lowest endowments per student.
Boarding School Reviews breaks down EPS (endowment by student) into categories of :
Greater than $600,000 of endowment per student–listing ten (10) boarding schools in this category:
St. Paul’s School, Exeter, Andover, Groton, Woodberry Forest, Deerfield Academy, Hotchkiss, Middlesex, Mercersburg Academy & St. Andrew’s School.
The next BSR category lists boarding schools with $300,000 to $600,000 of endowment per student. Seventeen boarding schools are in this category:
Peddie, Lawrenceville, Thacher, Episcopal High school, Culver Academies, Choate Rosemary Hall, Foxcroft, Milton Academy, Chatham Hill, Taft, St. George’s, St. Mark’s, Miss Porter’s, Eaglebrook, Berkshire, Cate School & Westover.
The third category lists boarding schools with endowment per student of $200,000 to $300,000. This list includes 11 boarding schools:
Kent School, Loomis Chaffee, Cranbrook Schools, Emma Willard, Westminster, Westtown, Blair Academy, Missouri Military, Northfield Mount Herman, & Salisbury School.
The fourth category lists about 11 schools with endowments per student of $100,000 to $200,000:
Asheville School, Trinity-Pawling, McCallie, Madeira, Brooks, Governor’s Academy, Fountain Valley, Pomfret, Portsmouth Abbey, Wyoming Seminary & Concord Academy.
These 49 or 50 boarding schools are the most sound financially.
BSR continues listing schools with EPS of $50,000- $100,000 per student, and also lists boarding schools with less than $50,000 EPS.
Hampshire College, as a point of reference, has about $50,000 endowment per student & deems that amount insufficient for continuing to operate.