<p>My D has applied EA to Marist, still waiting to hear. I have concern about small size of their endowment - only 23M before the recent market meltdown, so it may be as low as 12 -15M now. I'm concerned about how solid they are financially, and whether they can afford to attract or retain top professors, as well as absorb costs of maintaining their facility. Also heard from someone who is a professor elsewhere that Marist has high turnover in their faculty, and is always seeking professors. Even wondering if college could eventually go under. She's been accepted EA at Providence College and Fairfield Univ (CT), both of which seemed to be better positioned. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>dd is also waiting to hear. I l know one kid there now who loves it. IBM will, hopefully keep supporting the school. I have heard nothing about Marist being in worse shape than any other college.</p>
<p>Son is a freshman at Marist. Their Merit Scholarships are pretty straight forward--with a certain HS GPA and certain score on ACT or SAT, the amount of merit award to expect is specified right on the website.</p>
<p>NYsmile- Is he happy there? It is one of DD's top picks but she is worried about the population being homogenous. Also, can you tell me how it leans politically, she is a very liberal Dem and conservative population would not fit well.</p>
<p>I'm a Sophomore at Marist, and there has been no talk of any struggle during these economic times. We are no differently affected than any other school. The Professors here are great...I was even lucky enough to have the same Philosophy Professor as Bill O'Reilly last year. Marist has plenty of money trust me. We just built a new football field, and we attract big names for concerts. If you've ever seen the campus, you will realize it's one of the nicest in the nation and it's taken care of very well. They don't just have everything looking clean when the parents are here, it's always like that.</p>
<p>marist has its 2007 irs 990 on guidestar.org. the schools endowment at that time was around $130 million. the school also maintained around $88 million in debt. given expected endowment losses the ratio is approaching 1:1, higher than i would like to see, but not in any way dire. </p>
<p>going forward, i think the more pertinent financial question is whether you feel marist can continue to meet its tuition revenue goals while enrolling a sufficiently qualified class. with a smaller full pay pool, boston college is going to be poaching wealthier applicants from holy cross, which is going to be poaching full pay students from fairfield and marist. how much will this impact schools further down on the food chain, which have less of a margin for error? unfortunately, its too early to know.</p>
<p>cranfordrd, I sent you a PM (private message :)). He loves it. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask me.</p>
<p>redfox11, Have a great Spring semester.</p>
<p>I have checked 4 different websites and they place endowmt bet 22 - 24 M, including the USNews &World rept on colleges and the peterson.com website. Unfortunately, Marist is not among the 785 colleges on the Nat'l Assoc of College & Univ Business Officiers list of college endowments. Perhaps they chose not to be listed or aren't a member? I don't know of any other college that isn't listed there. I did check the 990 on guidestar, and think you're referring to line 54 about investmts, which does show 130+M (I'm way over my head now). But, I did notice it had typed "See Statement #6" -- that statemt wasn't attached, so I have no idea what it said. No other college I checked on guidestar had any disclaimer next to that line of the rept. Wonder what accounts for big discrepancy bet 22 - 24M and 130M - quite a diff.
In terms of poaching students - good question - but I'm wondering if Marist has received a sharp increase in aps from qualified students because it's tuition is so much less than others - Fairfield Univ is almost $50K, Providence is about $42K. Marist tuition looks very good by comparison, esp for parents who will have to pay full boat.</p>
<p>I would recommend going to the websites of all the colleges under consideration and searching for annual financial reports, strategic planning documents, statements from the Presidents, and so forth.</p>
<p>If colleges don't post their annual financial reports, ask them for a copy. Being curious about the relative financial health is alway a reasonable question.</p>
<p>You do have to keep it in context. Marist is not going to be as flush as Yale. And, all colleges will be under some financial pressure over the next three years.</p>