I find it hilarious that some have so much to say about Howard, having never attended nor sent a child there.
Regarding scholarships, Howard changed the requirements for the 2016-2017 entering class. I know this because I had a child there on scholarship at the time and my graduating HS senior anticipated going there as well, with a better scholarship as she had higher test scores. In typical Howard fashion they changed the game midstream, and upset a lot of folks. It certainly was their prerogative but no one knew they changed until the spring when it was too late to get merit st some other schools. They decided to start taking need into account, which put Howard out of reach for a lot of middle class families. Now personally we could’ve paid but with some of the drama you have to deal with there, I said no thanks, even though my child that graduated in 2017 is thriving and it was the best decision ever made. @NuScholar was absolutely correct in that Howard is filled with middle class to affluent black students. All of my daughters friends came from good school districts, nice homes, and weren’t stressed for cash. We personally paid room and board out of pocket.
@VANDEMORY1342 the us news rankings are a joke. Schools game them constantly by playing games with their yields , etc to move up a few notches. Considering the resources, Howard overperforms. Now having said that it will be interesting to see how howard transforms over the next few years. When they basically changed the merit scholarships to need based they removed a large swath of upper middle class families like mine. I don’t think it was a good move because you had a group of high performing kids that weren’t stressed out about money issues that are now not attending Howard.
Howard should be ranked higher just on outcomes. I literally knew kids who interned at Goldman Sachs, Boeing, Apple, google, Microsoft and a host of other prestigious companies. As I mentioned in a previous thread my child had a plethora of summer opportunities, job offers upon graduation , and she is already on her second job not having been out of school for a year.
@ReturningFavor you are right you want those kids as your alumni, and their parents, but guess what? Howard has never contacted me once for a donation! It boggles my mind. My son graduated from a PWI in 2015 and a student calls me every year and asks for a donation. Howard really needs to hire a quality alumni head/fundraiser. I went to homecoming in 2014 and I thought “wow why don’t they announce something like they during natural disasters text &4&4@ and it will charge a $25 donation. They had a captive audience, all with cell phones, but they don’t seem to think creatively.
@partyof5 I stop responding to VANDEMORY1342 for obvious reasons.
And you make some valid points, those rankings are misleading and has caused many students to make bad decisions in name of elitism and prestige. The mayor of my city didn’t go to a very prestigious and highly selective school, my governor didn’t either, nor did the senators of my state, nor did so many other people I know who are highly regarded, very talented and ambitious.
For black students debating if they should enroll in a HBCU vs particular non-HBCUs it usually comes down to should they pursue prestige/notability as mainstream (white) society sees it or community/social life.
I know Howard graduates that are active official alumni members and they get communications all the time about fundraising, I guess you should reach out to the alumni office to make sure they have your contact information .
@NuScholar we definitely agree and yes I could call but they need to do better. Funny I have a ton of friends that graduated from there, several are doctors and they say they never are solicited for donations. They are missing out on a gold mine, and now that they tweaked the scholarship requirements they are certainly missing out. I really don’t know why they would let a group of high achieving kids attend other schools. Howard isn’t cheap and yes these Kids come from families that are comfortable they don’t have 529 accounts with $160k sitting in them. Many families are like mine in that we didn’t reach high earnings until our forties which is when our kids were entering college since we were married and had kids fairly young.
@NuScholar
@partyof5
Y’all please leave me out of the HBCU corner of the site, this thread is 7 months old. It’s funny how some of you know that rankings don’t matter much, but are in other threads barking at the one spot drop in the rankings of a school, you have no business addressing in the first place.
@partyof5 But the gag is…most of the people that have “something to say” about Howard are current students/former students.
I find it disturbing that you all like to boast about Howard being full of affluent + upper class families. The elitism in the black community is beyond weird. Also, why are you guys bragging about homecoming and receiving a black/cultural experience at Howard??? LOL. I’m pretty sure you guys (or your kids) have attended predominately white high schools if you’re bragging about something so silly.
- I have another question..where are the donations from the affluent families going to??? Because I find it "hilarious" that the buildings are rotting, the classrooms have no air & there's barely consistent hot water in most of the dorms. Should I link you to videos?
Howard is a fake brand. End of story.
I am NOT saying that if your child graduates from this school, he or she won’t be successful. We are not blind, and we see a nice amount of successful Howard graduates. BUT I just find it weird how some of the alumni will justify the disgusting things that are happening at the school right now (according to MOST of Howard’s current students).
@penthouse Im not sure who the “ you all” you are referring to, but since you tagged me I will respond. Clearly you didn’t carefully read my post because I never boasted about Howard being full of affluent students. My post specifically said that I agreed with @NuScholar that there were students there that are middle class to affluent there but I guess you read what you wanted to see.
In addition I also said that howard does itself a disservice by not soliciting donations.
@partyof5 It surely came off as boasting. Are you going to ignore that Howard is falling apart?
I’m a Howard alum and I get asked to donate all the time. And every time I’m asked, I give.
@penthouse are you going to ignore that I said Howard had issues and without scholarship money I decided not to send my last child there? Again, you are selectively reading. I have praised Howard when it deserved to be praised and have criticized Howard when they deserved to be criticized.
I also stand by my statement that Howard did itself a disservice by basically cutting out middle class kids when they tweaked the scholarships.
This is my last post on it, at least where you are concerned.
I think we can all agree that Howard University has some issues and what they did with scholarships hurt some students. The money has definitely been cut to some extent but there is some still out there (member of family is a current freshman who received income based Capstone scholarship worth 32K). The full scholarship my daughter is in line for has an income limit ($150,000) before they have a clause that then makes the family pay 25% of tuition costs. The socio-economic status and class warfare statements are always used to divide us, but there is unused outside scholarship money every year for those who work/hunt/fight for it (even those of us without need). If Howard was not such a special place for the students, I think even more students would have moved on to other schools (NC&AT is a growing juggernaut without the National rep, yet has none of Howard’s big issues is a good example). Howard is definitely not a fake brand but a brand with some damage, and with 10,000 students, a brand (The Mecca) worth fixing. Despite all of issues Howard has, my freshman family member who complains about Howard also swears by the school as life-changing and could not imagine being anywhere else. The school must do better (transparency, renovation of buildings, communication from various offices, fixing its finances) and the alumni of HBCUs in general need to do better with donating our time, our talents, and our treasures to our schools.