Endowments?

Paying for College
1

<p>Not sure if this is the best place for this topic, but it seemed like a logical choice.</p>

<p>A thread someone else started on the Kenyon forum really got me thinking about the endowments of the 3 schools still being considered by my son. The 3 different amounts vary greatly to say the least!! I'm just curious (I like to hear what others think): How much do you all take that into consideration when putting out all of the pros and cons of each school. </p>

<p>We are absolutely NOT letting finances be the final and deciding factor for our son, but we are definitely taking them into consideration (who can afford not to these days?!?!)</p>

<p>Anyway, his final 3 choices are:</p>

<p>Kenyon at a little under $190 million
Vassar at about $850 million
Boston College at about $1.6 billion</p>

<p>(I got those numbers from the 2008 National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) Endowment Study.........I was pretty proud of myself for finding that little gem!!)</p>

<p>The Kenyon and Vassar FA offers came in pretty close, but the BC offer was lower (almost $8,000 lower). The schools with the smaller endowments are offering me more $. I think that's what really got me thinking..........isn't at least part of the whole endowment thing so you get better FA?</p>

<p>So, does anyone want to give me their opinions on just how much I should care about the size of a school's endowment? Thanks!!!!</p>

2

<p>The low endowment for Kenyon is scary. BC was never known for good FA. I think if you divide the endowment by # of students, Vassar comes out on top. Some schools also use endowment to keep COA lower overall for ALL students. My D’s school had a $1.1b endowment as of the last FY, ~2700 total students. COA about $12,000 less than lots of other schools.</p>

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<p>My obviously-smarter-than-I-am son just pointed out to me that whole “endowment per student” thing (which I sort of totally forgot about). BC is absolutely much larger than either of the other 2 schools. Vassar definitely does come out on top when figuring it that way…</p>

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<p>Bumping this to link directly to the table of 2008 endowments, which is a great resource:
<a href=“http://www.nacubo.org/documents/research/NES2008PublicTable-AllInstitutionsByFY08MarketValue.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nacubo.org/documents/research/NES2008PublicTable-AllInstitutionsByFY08MarketValue.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;