@apple23: I really was giving examples & did not mean those two to be an exhaustive list. But, not only do graduates of schools like Williams College & Amherst College do well with respect to graduate school success & real world success, but also–due to their tremendous endowment-per-student allotment–offer extraordinary value while in school. Princeton University is a prime example of the value of attending a school with a healthy endowment.
@homerdog When our D17 applied to school two years ago, our thought processes followed similar paths to where you are now. In our case, set a budget limit that was less than full pay and had her apply to LACs where merit was possible. Even so, we will be paying more for college than the list price of our home. It can be mentally dissonant to contemplate spending such large sums after an adult lifetime of relative frugality. Yes, it’s a first world problem, and yes, it’s still a lot of money.
Regardless of price point, it is reasonable to ask if there is sufficient return on an investment of this magnitude, however you choose to measure it. It could be intangibles (the quality of the “life of the mind”) and/or more concrete measures (post graduation salaries or professional opportunities; strength of alumni network; opportunities for undergraduate research, etc)
We attempted some research about spending per student (when that information was available) and size of endowment relative to number of students. In the end, neither of those measures were consistently available or particularly useful. Often it was impossible (or simply too time consuming) to discern where the money went - upgrading facilities could mean new labs or plusher dorms; research monies might not trickle down to undergrads, etc.
FWIW, if it were me, I would focus on the following:
While your child may not have a firm choice of major (and even if he did, that could change), I would dig deep into faculty credentials and areas of specialization of possible majors. At a LAC, you want to make sure there’s enough depth for your kid. Are there enough faculty that he could still meet his academic goals if a key person went on leave? Is there a good age distribution? You don’t want a slew of retirements to coincide with your kid’s tenure at that school because it can take awhile to rebuild a department. For these reasons, my daughter focused on larger LACs.
Assuming equally good social and academic fit, I’d consider prestige and rank. This is not to cast aspersions on lower-ranked schools; there are many of excellent quality. However, if you’re full pay, might as well get the name to go with it. I suspect that faculty retention also would be better at higher-ranked schools.
Finally, I do think there is value added at selective LACs that justifies the cost. Those in the top 20 are likely to be more similar than different. My kid has really thrived at her LAC - interesting and challenging courses, engaged fellow students, dedicated faculty and undergraduate mentorship, and lots of leadership and skill-building opportunities. If your kid is thinking of graduate school, an investment in undergraduate tuition at a selective LAC can have multiplier effects in the form of competitive fellowships for graduate programs later on.
I hope that your kid will have enough enticing options by March or April to make the choice a difficult one! Best of luck!
Why would such schools want to do this? They can afford to accept the students they want the most.
^^Well even need blind schools can’t afford to have 100% of kids on FA. I’m not saying they try to figure it out deliberately, but say they are reading an app from an Andover kid who has parents who are both doctors. The college can’t unsee that and has got to assume the kid is not applying for aid.
^ Only if they wanted the Andover kid more than they wanted the aid kid, assuming one spot open.
Schools at every level of selectivity are using predictive models. While the inputs can and do vary, many organizations (e.g., Collegeboard, ACT, enrollment strategy consultants) gather data, sell reports and/or take on private projects designed to inform these models.
On another thread there was much discussion about Collegeboard’s Environmental Context report. This report is sold to colleges to help them assess the likely financial picture of applicants. https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/professionals/data-driven-models-to-understand-environmental-context.pdf
Just as data mining has impacted many other industries, it is no surprise that it is impacting college admissions and enrollment. The predictive models of some schools include applicant financial inputs whether the school is need blind or need aware. No matter the schools endowment, every school has an annual financial aid budget that they try and stick to, they can’t just reach into the endowment when they want to spend more on fin aid in a given year. So, enter predictive models which help the school understand which applicants to give offers of admissions to, which students are most likely to enroll, and how much each applicant is likely to be able to pay, among other things.
Going over total operational budget for a number of years in a row is exactly what Middlebury is trying to address by their ongoing financial sustainability effort…which includes cost cutting, forced professor retirements and increasing student enrollment, to highlight a few initiatives.
@Mwfan1921 Do you have a student at Midd?
@homerdog I do not, but know a couple of current students and their families fairly well. FWIW they remain very happy there. I just used the Mid example as we had talked about it on this thread, and it illustrated the point I wanted to make!
P.S. Did you receive the PM I sent you last week?
Need blind schools are not looking at the impact of an individual applicant’s FA situation.
But, when deciding at the policy level what characteristics to increase or decrease importance to, or what processes to require applicants to do for the next admissions class, the impact on the FA need of the class is estimated and accounted for in decisions. For example, an adjustment to legacy preference will affect the class’ FA need, since legacies tend to be less FA-needy than non-legacies (individual examples notwithstanding). Similarly, whether to require CSS Noncustodial Profile can significantly alter how many FA-needy applicants will apply or be given FA (about half of children will see parental divorce, most of which are nasty and non-cooperative, so requiring CSS Noncustodial Profile will probably eliminate nearly half of potential FA-needy applicants from the pool).
Count me as a skeptic, but I believe some need blind schools have a high degree of understanding of a given applicant’s financial status. The data, reports and predictive models they are using get very granular at the zip code level (as well as other ways).
In our experience with athletic recruiting, every coach (ones which we had more than cursory conversations with), asked us if we would be applying for financial aid. This was true whether the school was need aware or need blind. When we answered that we would not be applying for fin aid, every single coach said something along the lines of ‘that’s good’.
Based on this info (why would a coach from a need blind D3 school with no merit aid need to know if we were applying for aid?), along with the other data points they analyze, I expect that some need blind LACs, when admitting say 250 students in the ED round, have a very, very good understanding of who doesn’t need aid, who does, and how much. Going into the RD round, they wouldn’t have the data for the 60-80 tagged athletes and Posse applicants, but they still have all the other data points they are gathering to help balance the class and stay within budget with regard to financial aid.
Let’s be sure we include “meets full need” in this context of need blind. Eg, NYU is need blind but is considered to give lousy aid.
^^^Yes, I neglected to specify that. Many of the D3 need blind schools where coaches asked our fin aid status meet full need (a number of the NESCACs). We also did speak with coaches from need aware and meet full need schools too.
Regarding Middlebury’s budgetary problems, I hope no one is under the impression that it is the only college guilty of overspending. On the contrary, the reliance on student services as an indicator of greater ROI has been endemic as T20 colleges all compete with each other for the tippy top of the USNews rankings which is the only major ranking system that explicitly gives bonus points to schools with the greatest “expenditures per students”, a virtual open invitation to run short-term deficits that then become structural in nature. Let there be no doubt about: There is not a college or university in existence that is not spending every penny they think they can safely get away with in order to “keep up with the Joneses”; not a single one that isn’t engaged in deficit spending as most people would understand the term, and not a single one that isn’t one recession away from having to slash staff or curtail programs in order to spare their credit ratings.
doubt about it
I think the answer to that is in ucb’s post:
At NESCACs recruited athletes are much more often full pay than the rest of the class (at Amherst 31% of non-athletes are low income vs 4% for athletes and 23% overall student body). I suspect part of the resistance to decreasing coach spots for them with admissions is because of that economic impact, so one could argue that (most) athletes are expected to be full pay in terms of their economic value to the college.
Yes, agree with all your points @OHMomof2
Point is that schools practicing this behavior, all the while communicating they are need blind with respect to admission, is disingenuous. If a recruited athlete has an EFC of 0, is admissions more likely to say no to the coach? It raises many questions.
What it seems is that some LACs (keeping with the example) would know financial status prior to admission of a significant proportion of those who are offered admission: slotted athletes, likely the athletes with soft support from a coach, some legacies, development cases, Posse and Questbridge students. Is this holistic? Holistic only for the applicants who don’t fit one of these categories? Need blind with respect to fin aid? A slippery slope to be sure, with much gray.
@Mwfan1921 @OHMomof2 my take on coaches asking about financial aid is simply I would bet if their entire class they recruited expected FA my guess is not all would matriculate if offered.
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. generally one can apply EA to public schools and ED so for kids with great in state flagships we are literally looking at a 500% difference in tuition for where our kid is accepted
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the schools FA calculator underestimated our contribution by 20K with another kid in college
coaches at NESCACs asking about aid are selfishly worried about how many recruits may not enroll if offered IMHO.
(The coaches we talked to didn’t ask FYI) . we are probably not the only folks where calculator didn’t match and have low cost ranked state schools as alternative.
I have some impression that schools like Kenyon and Oberlin use sports in fact to get higher paying kids into their schools!
Many schools do, esp with certain sports. There was an expansion of LAX teams at midwest colleges awhile back for this reason - they wanted to keep those full pay kids from going east.
It does.
One NESCAC (Amherst, who made their athletic impact study available) actually encourages coaches to bring athletes who are first gen/low income or URM to admissions attention so they won’t be counted against that coach’s quota - because that particular school actively looks for those kids. That is likely not the case at every NESCAC, they vary a lot in mission and resources.
Just a side note for others who have a kid wanting an excellent LAC experience but not a $70k price tag - Schools like Rhodes, Centre, Trinity U and Denison provide very similar experiences for half the cost for high stats kids. A high stats kid would likely pay $30k or less for a pretty equivalent education at these schools. The idea that one must pay $70k to receive a high quality LAC education is a total myth. See Colleges that Change Lives…
Also see Kiplinger’s Best College Values, which ranks Centre ahead of Midd. and Carleton, for example, and Rhodes above Bucknell, Dickinson, and Oberlin.
When D1 was looking 4 years ago, we were full-pay, and understood that she could get an excellent LAC education for half price with her (not even super high) stats. She has in fact received an amazing education on a beautiful campus with small classes, excellent professors, tons of amenities and a top-ten ranked career services office. For $120k total. Talk about ROI!