College Comparison XXIII: USNWR Financial Resources Ranking

College Search & Selection
1

<p>In order to assist some in their college search process, I have prepared a series of threads that will compare colleges on a variety of measurements. In making these comparisons, I have created three broad groups (private national universities, public national universities and liberal arts colleges) and provide comparisons involving 117 colleges (national universities ranked in the USNWR Top 75 and LACs ranked in the USNWR Top 40). </p>

<p>Following is a comparison of USNWR’s ranking for FINANCIAL RESOURCES. Here is how they describe this metric: “Generous per-student spending indicates that a college can offer a wide variety of programs and services. U.S. News measures financial resources by using the average spending per student on instruction, research, student services, and related educational expenditures in the 2007 and 2008 fiscal years. Spending on sports, dorms, and hospitals doesn't count, only the part of a school's budget that goes toward educating students.”</p>

<p>To aid in the comparisons, I have included the level of the highest-ranking public universities with private national universities (but not the LACs in this category as USNWR ranking data was compiled by type of college). This should help families appreciate the way that the very top scoring public compares with their private competition. </p>

<p>I hope that you enjoy the thread and find some helpful information. Good luck to all in your college search process!</p>

<p>USNWR Financial Resources Rank , Private National University</p>

<p>1 , Caltech
2 , Yale
3 , MIT
3 , Wash U
3 , Johns Hopkins
6 , Harvard
7 , Wake Forest
8 , U Penn
8 , U Chicago
10 , Stanford
11 , Duke
12 , Dartmouth
12 , Northwestern
14 , Princeton
15 , Columbia
15 , Vanderbilt
17 , Cornell
18 , Emory
20 , Yeshiva
21 , U Rochester
22 , Rice
23 , Carnegie Mellon
23 , Case Western
25 , TOP PUBLIC (UCLA)
26 , Brown
26 , U Miami
31 , Georgetown
31 , Tufts
37 , USC
37 , NYU
42 , Notre Dame
43 , Rensselaer
47 , Brandeis
50 , Lehigh
53 , Tulane
53 , Boston University
58 , Pepperdine
64 , George Washington
67 , Boston College
71 , SMU
81 , Worcester
88 , Syracuse
122 , Fordham
195 , BYU</p>

<p>USNWR Financial Resources Rank , State University</p>

<p>25 , UCLA
26 , UC SAN DIEGO
30 , U WASHINGTON
31 , U N CAROLINA
31 , UC DAVIS
36 , U PITTSBURGH
37 , U MICHIGAN
37 , U MINNESOTA
43 , UC BERKELEY
46 , U FLORIDA
50 , GEORGIA TECH
50 , UC IRVINE
53 , U WISCONSIN
61 , U ILLINOIS
61 , OHIO STATE
64 , U VIRGINIA
67 , PENN STATE
71 , RUTGERS
77 , U IOWA
81 , UC S BARBARA
81 , TEXAS A&M
81 , U CONNECTICUT
81 , U DELAWARE
86 , U TEXAS
86 , CLEMSON
88 , WILLIAM & MARY
88 , U MARYLAND
88 , PURDUE
88 , MICHIGAN ST
88 , UC S CRUZ
110 , U GEORGIA
131 , VIRGINIA TECH
146 , INDIANA U</p>

<p>USNWR Financial Resources Rank , LAC</p>

<p>1 , US Military Acad
2 , US Naval Acad
3 , Williams
5 , Middlebury
6 , Wellesley
7 , Swarthmore
8 , Pomona
9 , Amherst
10 , Vassar
12 , Bowdoin
12 , Haverford
12 , Harvey Mudd
15 , Claremont McK
16 , Smith
16 , Scripps
16 , Bard
20 , Hamilton
20 , U Richmond
22 , Grinnell
22 , W&L
24 , Carleton
24 , Davidson
24 , Wesleyan
24 , Colgate
24 , Colorado College
24 , Bryn Mawr
24 , Mt. Holyoke
24 , Lafayette
24 , Trinity
34 , Oberlin
36 , Colby
37 , Bates
37 , Occidental
41 , Kenyon
41 , Sewanee
45 , Macalester
49 , Barnard
49 , Bucknell
49 , Holy Cross
56 , Furman
65 , Whitman</p>

2

<p>“Expenditures per student. Financial resources are measured by the average spending per full-time-equivalent student on instruction, research, public service, academic support, student services, institutional support, and operations and maintenance (for public institutions only) during the 2007 and 2008 fiscal years. The number of full-time-equivalent students is equal to the number of full-time students plus one third of the number of part-time students. (Note: This includes both undergraduate and graduate students.) We first scaled the public service and research values by the percentage of full-time-equivalent undergraduate students attending the school. Next, we added in total instruction, academic support, student services, institutional support, and operations and maintenance (for public institutions only) and then divided by the number of full-time-equivalent students. After calculating this value, we applied a logarithmic transformation to the spending per full-time-equivalent student, prior to standardizing the value. This calculation process was done for all schools. If a school submits fewer than two years of expenditures per student, then the average is based on the one year that is submitted. Higher expenditures per student score better in the ranking model than lower expenditures.”</p>

<p>Well… I work in the financial markets and after reading this… I still don’t understand how they get their numbers. :)</p>

<p>UC Davis is ranked higher than Michigan. :)</p>

<p>Hmmm. I’ve been to both schools many times. I really like UC Davis too. I would have been happy if my kids went there. But really…Must be the secret logarithm. :)</p>

3

<p>Why isn’t Grinnell higher?</p>

4

<p>

Medical school spending and research is still counted. This accounts for the difference between UCLA, UCSD, UC Davis and Berkeley. It is a flawed metric that rewards spending inefficiencies and universities with medical schools (and “in-house” govt. research labs)</p>

5

<p>LOL. Wake Forest ranks #7 among national universities in financial resources, yet according to US News Wake’s FA meets only 62% of undergraduate students’ full financial need. What!?! Either there’s something seriously wrong with USNWR’s financial resources formula, or Wake Forest’s spending priorities are seriously out of whack. Either way, it should tell us something pretty damning about the usefulness of this metric to prospective undergraduates wishing to evaluate colleges. </p>

<p>Also steaming into the top 25 in “financial resources” is Carnegie Mellon at #23, which according to US News meets only 32% of its students’ full financial need. Pretty gosh darned pathetic.</p>

<p>Nor is this curious phenomenon confined to private universities. USNWR’s top public in “financial resources”, UCLA, meets only 28% of undergrads’ full financial need. #2 UC San Diego meets only 22% of need, and #3 University of Washington only 33%. Yet US News would have us believe they’re in better financial shape—in ways that allow them to “offer a wide range of programs and services”—than schools like UNC Chapel Hill which meets 98% of undergrads’ full financial need; Michigan which meets 90%; or UVA which meets 100% of need.</p>

<p>Hah! Don’t believe everything you read in the funny papers.</p>

<p>There’s something seriously amiss here. Obviously, whatever “financial resources” measures, it’s not money that’s available for functions of critical concern to undergraduates like helping students with demonstrated need pay their tuition bills.</p>

6

<p>I wanted to check the accuracy of these numbers versus IPEDS data so I took the top five private schools and added up the data from FASB on these spending areas:
Instruction-Total
Academic Support-Total
Student Service-Total
Institutional Support- Total</p>

<p>I then divided the sum by 4x the entering freshman class.</p>

<p>Here are the results (note, I don’t know how to separate out these expenditures to see only undergrads, but I only used undergraduate enrollments. I don’t think any data exists that separates this stuff out for undergrads).</p>

<p>Yale University 300435.12
California Institute of Technology 291552.3
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 267591.97
Johns Hopkins University 265291.64
Washington University in St Louis 160718.72</p>

<p>I’m really not sure what data is being used. Someone feel like running endowment numbers to see if that’s all this is, endowment per student?</p>

7

<p>bc,
I I think you’re quoting from the wrong place on the USNWR data and inaccurately giving a bad name to the folks at Wake Forest and Carnegie Mellon and others. </p>

<p>I think that you are quoting the % of students whose need was fully met. </p>

<p>I think you meant to quote from the % of full-time student financial need that was met. Right? </p>

<p>They aren’t the same thing. </p>

<p>For some of the schools that you mentioned, the average % of full-time student financial need that was met was:</p>

<p>100% U Virginia
100% U North Carolina
98% Wake Forest
84% UC San Diego
83% UCLA
82% Carnegie Mellon
79% U Washington
90% U Michigan (IS is 100%, OOS is 62%)</p>

<p>I don’t know the IS/OOS breakdown for the other publics, but I suspect that they also favor their IS students in the same fashion as U Michigan.</p>

8

<p>"INTRODUCTION TO NEED-BASED FINANCIAL AID</p>

<p>We understand that applying for financial aid can be a complex process, particularly for first-time applicants. These pages outline the process of applying for need-based aid, including the necessary forms, documentation, and deadlines. Students and families are advised to start the process early, complete all applications accurately, keep copies of all documents and correspondence, and submit all information well in advance of deadlines. Do not wait until you are accepted to apply for financial aid. By submitting all of the information by the required deadlines, you will receive your financial aid award notice around the time that you receive your acceptance from the university</p>

<p>Your financial aid application materials will be used to determine eligibility for both federal and institutional aid. Wake Forest is one of a small group of private institutions that agrees to meet 100% of each regularly admitted student’s demonstrated financial need. The Office of Student Financial Aid coordinates a comprehensive financial aid program consisting of scholarships, grants, loans, and part-time employment. Funding sources include federal and state programs, need-based scholarships, the university’s own financial resources, and other sources. Students can generally expect to receive a combination of grant and self-help aid. Approximately one-third of our students receive need-based financial aid. If you think you will need financial assistance to attend Wake Forest, we encourage you to apply."</p>

<p>One third of the students get need based aid. Students should be aware of how many people actually get aid. When its one third, the odds might not be too good of even getting into the school if you can’t afford the school without aid. Looks like the school likes full payers.</p>

<p>Here is a school, that USNWR says is 7th in the country when it comes to spending per student, and the school only has 33 percent of the students on financial aid. </p>

<p>Another school where the richest 5% of the country fill 66% of the seats.</p>

<p>Most of the private schools that are supposedly the most generous, appear to fill their schools with wealthy students. I guess that is great for the wealthy students, but the other 95 % of the population should be aware that it might be tough sledding getting into these schools.</p>

<p>It would be nice to see the economic demographics of the students who apply to these schools. I’d like to see the acceptance rates sorted by economic demographics.</p>

9

<p>dstark,
Wake Forest is need-blind in its admissions.</p>

<p>Here is the full list of colleges in the USA that are need-blind in their admissions: </p>

<p>Private National Universities-Boston College, Brandeis, Brown, Caltech, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Princeton, Rice, Stanford, U Chicago, U Miami, U Penn, U Rochester, USC, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Yale</p>

<p>State Universities-U Virginia</p>

<p>LACs-Amherst, Beloit, Claremont McKenna, Holy Cross, Cooper Union, Davidson, Denison, Grinnell, Haverford, Knox, Middlebury, Pomona, Swarthmore, U Richmond, Vassar, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Williams </p>

<p>Not sure why you want to attack/slander Wake Forest. It’s no secret that the world of elite academia gives it little regard. Is that the reason? Academia aside, if you’ve ever met any of their students or graduates, then you know that Wake’s about as straightforward and upright a place as there is in the world of American colleges. </p>

<p>BTW, I know that they would like to attract a larger percentage of students from lower income groups and that was part of their reasoning behind going SAT-optional. If you know any good candidates, they should give it a look. It’s a neat place and a very pretty school.</p>

10

<p>I’m just looking at the numbers Hawkette. I don’t think the Wake Forest’s financial numbers are any great shakes when it comes to financial aid because of the demographics of the student body.</p>

<p>Need-blind… what does that mean? 50% of the student bodies of most of the schools you mentioned are not on financial aid. That’s why I would like to see how many students who need aid apply to these colleges you mentioned.</p>

<p>Because 95%+ of the students in this country can’t afford the schools. 80- 90% of high school students do not go to private high schools. So who applies to these colleges?</p>

<p>Are the schools really need blind or do they screen applicants based on zip codes, private high schools, parent careers, etc?</p>

<p>Because 50% full payers is a very large number. </p>

<p>I’m not picking on Wake Forest, but now that the school is going SAT optional (which is probably good), are the students going to be stupider at the school? If you don’t like the Wake Forest example, are students at schools where the SAT is optional, stupider than students at other schools that aren’t, assuming that reported SAT scores are similar?</p>

<p>“BTW, I know that they would like to attract a larger percentage of students from lower income groups and that was part of their reasoning behind going SAT-optional”</p>

<p>Gee…that’s what schools like UC Berkeley say and they look at students from lower income groups differently when looking at SAT scores. </p>

<p>Yet…you…cut Berkeley no slack and hold it to a standard it is not even trying to meet (high average SAT scores). Think about high average SAT scores when you look and see what Wake Forest is doing.</p>

<p>Maybe, Berkeley should just rip up the SAT scores of its 33% of students on Pell Grants. Kind of what Wake Forest is going to do on a smaller scale. Then Berkeley’s average SAT scores would be so much higher and the school would be so much better.</p>