Oberlin College

Parents Forum
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<p>Well, Swarthmore has essentially the same sports teams as Oberlin, and chooses to spend about 70% more on them. That's not even per capita, but actual hard dollars. It hardly makes them a sports mecca. </p>

<p>Oberlin's big problem is the number of one-on-one classes they have to offer. There's nothing they can do about that, except reduce the number of students who take advantage of them (and the faculty who provide them.) But if they can reduce the percentage of students receiving need-based aid to Swarthmore levels, they'll do just fine.</p>

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<p>
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Oberlin's big problem is the number of one-on-one classes they have to offer.

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</p>

<p>They are planning to maintain the current 12:1 ratio of students to faculty in the arts & science undergrad program by reducing enrollment and faculty slots proportionally.</p>

<p>By increasing tuition revenues, Oberlin hopes to fund a reduction in teaching loads and higher faculty salaries.</p>

<p>Their per student spending is towards the lower end of elite LACs, so I don't think spending is a likely target for gains. Their strategic plan calls primarily for increasing student revenues. </p>

<p>Their plan makes a lot of sense. Oberlin is probably a bit larger than optimum based on demand and their endowment. Schapiro and Winston have written pretty convincingly that maintaining strict limits on enrollment size is advantageous for LACs from a financial perspective. Because tuition covers only a fraction of the cost per student, each additional student represents a drain on endowment spending. This is likely the thinking behind Wiliams not growing their enrollment by even one student in more than a decade.</p>

<p>And, of course, limited supply can mean exclusivity, which is a good marketing approach for designer brand luxury goods and services. Oberlin cutting 25 slots from each undergrad class means that they can reduce the number of acceptances by probably 100 or more per year. And, by shifting the mix away from need-based aid customers to a higher percentage of wealthier students, they can probably increase the median SATs, thus further driving exclusivity. It's a tried and true formula.</p>

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<p>For an athlete, with "only" a 4.0 and a 2020 (750 math tho) I fear that Wesleyan and Vassar would be over her head... not saying that Oberlin is "easier" but perhaps that that there is more room socially to be "different."??? All three of these are possibilities for my D, but so far she has only looked at Oberlin -- should she reconsider? (for an athlete her time is running out fast!). </p>

<p>While I want my D to get a good education, I want her to LOVE her college years and love GETTING the education too...</p>

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<p>I'm not reading any strategic plan, I'm just reporting what I've heard "from the trenches". As a practical matter I haven't heard anything, at that level, that I think my daughter should be very concerned about.</p>

<p>I can see where the tuition discounting can be an issue. The other midwestern LACs my daughter applied to are heavily engaged in this, at least for National Merit Semifinalists. Got to get those East coasters with the money out there somehow, I guess.
But if they want these same students they may feel that they have to provide a package comparable to what their closest regional competitors are offering.</p>

<p>Laxmom: sorry but I don't really understand what you're asking. If your daughter does not think she might love a particular school she might well look elsewhere. My own daughter looked at all three of the schools you mentioned and personally preferred Oberlin. The stats for the other two are modestly higher IIRC, but we certainly didn't expect there to be any huge difference in the level of the academics, overall. YMMV.</p>

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<p>I also think I understand the need-based aid proportion, and I don't think this characteristic of the student body will be that easy to change. I think these factors, in combination, play a role:</p>

<p>-They have a relatively high proportion of students whose career goals reflect a certain priority towards wealth accumulation- particularly musicians, but also writers,academics. It would not surprise me if the family backgrounds of these students had some correlation with their goals.</p>

<p>By the way this also predisposes their rankings on things like alumni giving rates and endowment, which forever will effect their rankings in US News. The school's peer ranking far exceeds its overall US News ranking. Musicians just don't give as much, or as often, as investment bankers do. You can't give when you don't have.</p>

<p>-From what I recall, Oberlin draws far more students from both coasts than do the other midwestern LACs my daughter applied to. But admissions everywhere has a regional aspect. Salaries in the midwest tend to be lower than on the coasts, and they did not enjoy anywhere near the same level of real estate appreciation in recent years. Simply put, fewer midwesterners, both absolutely and proportionally, have the money to pay full freight for a private college. Plus there's more of a mindset in the midwest to go to the state u.</p>

<p>-The school promotes diversity, and I'm sure this exends to economic diversity.</p>

<p>IMO per-student spending should reflect regional economics. A salary may appear very low, but after considering that the individual may be able to pay $300,000 less for his house, this may wash out in some cases.</p>

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<p>laxmom07 - I don't think Wesleyan or Vassar would be over your d's head. And speaking for Wesleyan, the women's sports community, IMHO is actually more representative of the college as a whole than the men's scene; women tend not to join fraternities to the same extent as male athletes, there's more of an "academic culture" among the female athletes. And some of the varsity women's teams enjoy a bigger following among average students(basketball is one example.)</p>

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<p>"John":</p>

<p>I tried to send a private message but it wouldn't let me. Are you AT Wesleyan, or have a connection to it? In "my" day Wesleyan was full of super, superstars, is that no longer the case? Can you send me a private message so that we can chat without boring everyone else?</p>

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<p>As I said, in my PM, Wesleyan is full of academic superstars. I just think that it's a big place with room for lots of ppl with different abilities.</p>

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<p>Just to spell out a point mini and monydad implied earlier: Oberlin devotes a significantly larger proportion of its resources to financial aid than most of its peers. This is regarded as part of the school's historic commitment to social and economic diversity, and a point of pride. Perversely, it also drags Oberlin down in the USNews rankings--if more of its resources were devoted to what USNews calls "faculty resources," Oberlin would be considerably higher in the list.</p>

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<p>Dave: </p>

<p>Saying that a college "spends more on financial aid" is just a way of saying that they charge a lower average price per student. From an accounting standpoint, "financial aid" is treated the same way as a car dealer taking a markdown during the end of year clearance -- as a reduction of revenues.</p>

<p>What you say is true. Oberlin is towards the low end of net tuition and fees and room/board revenue per student, but the differences are not really as large as people might think. Here's a list of LACs and their per student net revenues (the actual dollars they pocket on average from each student) gleaned from their Fiscal 2004 year end financial reports:</p>

<p>28,896 Haverford
27,490 Smith
27,352 Wellesley
27,328 Wesleyan
26,585 Swarthmore
25,734 Williams
25,727 Davidson
25,201 Muhlenberg
23,508 Mt. Holyoke
23,288 F&M
22,239 Oberlin
21,294 Occidental
20,399 Grinnell</p>

<p>Some of it is just semantics: sticker price versus discounts. For example, Grinnell offers approximately the same per student discount ("financial aid") as Oberlin. But, Grinnell's sticker price is a couple of grand less. I would argue that cheaper is still cheaper, no matter how you get there.</p>

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<p>I'm lousy at math and never took economics, or maybe I just don't understand what you're saying, but it seems to me that there is a very important distinction. A college that spends more money on financial aid, does not reduce the cost across the board. Thus, at a minimum, by definition it is going to have more students who need financial aid than a school whose tuition is say, $1000 less accross the board. (Yes, I know there's a break even point, but not with the schools that we're discussing.) That in turn means a greater diversity at LEAST economically -- but probably also philosophically, if not also in even more ways. And for our family, at least, that's a good thing!</p>

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<p>Yeah, this all gets a little esoteric after a while. I think that we can all agree that one person's "cheaper" is another person's "affordable". I also think it's interesting that even though the top five institutions have wildly divergent endowment per student ratios that they seem to be within a couple of thousand dollars a year of each other in "affordability".</p>

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<p>laxmom:</p>

<p>You really have to look at each school in detail to understand their pricing strategy and distribution of financial aid discounts. Some details to look at would include percentage of students qualifying for need-based aid and the average amount of that aid, the percentage of students receiving merit aid and the amount, the percentage of low income students (Pell Grant) and so forth.</p>

<p>Need-based aid tends to favor lower income students (although certainly not exclusively). Merit aid tends to favor wealthier students (because it typically requires high SAT scores). A high sticker price and signficant need-based aid would tend to be a more progressive pricing policy: sticking it to the rich to fund lower income students. Haverford, Wellesley, Smith, and Swarthmore are all examples of progressive pricing and they all have quite a bit of diversity as a result (along with a lot of wealthy students).</p>

<p>A lower sticker price (within this tier of schools) tends to be a less progressive pricing structure because the wealthiest full-fare customers pay a lower price, especially when combined with large amounts of merit aid. Davidson is an example of this and the result is a student body with relatively little diversity.</p>

<p>Of course, you really can't look at just one side of the equation (price) without looking at the other (per student operating expenditures). In other words, you have to look at what you are paying and what you are getting. The difference is, in effect, an across the board hidden merit discount funded primarily by the endowment. Schools with very high operating spending (big endowments) tend to have large numbers of applicants (for obvious reasons) and, therefore, very high admissions selectivity. </p>

<p>There is a much larger spread between schools on the expense side. The biggest single component of per student operating expense is faculty and staff salaries.</p>

<p>Here's the same list with the average per student cost (after discounts) and, the second number, the average per student operating expense:</p>

<p>$28,896 $54,223 Haverford
$27,490 $57,567 Smith
$27,352 $71,738 Wellesley
$27,328 $54,880 Wesleyan
$26,585 $68,304 Swarthmore
$25,734 $66,936 Williams
$25,727 $45,499 Davidson
$25,201 $27,355 Muhlenberg
$23,508 $44,558 Mt. Holyoke
$23,288 $41,461 F&M
$22,239 $40,135 Oberlin
$21,294 $34,488 Occidental
$20,399 $46,615 Grinnell</p>

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<p>Good thing many of those east coast schools have that extra endowment boost. That extra compensation is sorely needed to partially/fractionally offset the hyper-inflated real estate costs on the coasts. Since I moved back East, I am desperately in need of some endowment subsidy myself. I paid 3+ times the price of my midwest house, for a house 60 years older, with 1,000 square feet less space. On a net basis probably many of the east coast professors are actually worse off than their midwestern brethren. And, being very smart people, they undoubtedly are aware of this.</p>

<p>Salaries in the midwest are lower generally, for all the professions I'm familiar with, precisely because they aren't dealing with the same level of living expenses.</p>

<p>As for the "obvious reasons", sorry to be thick but they are not really that obvious to me, to be honest. In the end my daughter's last-cut decision was Wellesley ( biggest # on your list)vs. Oberlin. She made her decision based on the character of the schools, the student bodies, and their programs as they impacted her particularly. The endowment figures were not a major focus in this decision, for her. I really doubt that most other applicants really focus on this. I do not recall feeling that Oberlin's admissions selectivity was so very different than Wellesley's, at that time, either.</p>

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<p>We've had this conversation before, I.D. (thanks, to your yeoman research efforts in each case) and as I recall the bulk of the differences in "expenditures per student" between some of these places were in the non-academic areas -- the "sushi in the cafeteria" line-items to which I would probably add the salaries of much of the Williams College coaching staff.</p>

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<p>I'm sure the endowment figures do come into play. They are probably highly correlated with having good programs in the first place. Also they are an element in the US News rankings, and many applicants are influenced by those.</p>

<p>However in our experience last time through there were bigger more obvious and important differences in schools and environments, to us, than the endowment figures or at least their most apparent manifestations. I can't imagine someone saying, "I'll choose Smith over Davidson, because it has a larger endowment. a no-brainer, obviously." For us there were other decision criteria that were more evident.</p>

<p>I'm not suggesting that endowments are not a good thing; I think they are. I was just expressing that the "obvious reasons" may not actually be that obvious in all cases. They weren't really to me. There are other important issues involved in the decision to attend a particular college.</p>

<p>As an aside, years ago my kids attended a private school in NYC that had one of the lower endowments around there. It was the best school, for them, I could imagine. A year or two ago it was reported to have one of the best elite college acceptance profiles in the whole country. Their facilities may have been a bit shabby and a bit meager, by comparison to some, but what went on between the walls there was superb.</p>

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<p>Monydad soon to be SM.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
As for the "obvious reasons", sorry to be thick but they are not really that obvious to me, to be honest.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>By "obvious reasons", I was refering to really simplistic stuff: like USNEWS rankings. As much as we like to think every applicant makes a detailed college search, there are applicants who simply start at the top of USNEWS and work their way down. Note that the schools with the highest per student expenditures are also the three highest "ranked" colleges. I'm sure Amherst and Pomona would be there too -- I just haven't found their financial reports to run the numbers.</p>

<p>Also, I think you have to add a caveat in heads up choices between womens colleges and coed colleges. The market expresses a clear preference for coed. The women's colleges pay an admissions and yield penalty accordingly. In a similar vein, the midwest colleges pay a penalty for their locations outside of the trendy northeast.</p>

<p>I think that any parent who tries to generate enthusiasm for considering Grinnell has probably heard what I heard, "Dad, who wants to go to college in Iowa?"</p>

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<p>Scotty from Eurotrip supposidly went there so it can't be to good. J/K</p>

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<p>Yes, the Iowa location always attracts a few jokes, but in reality Grinnell attracts many urban east coasters who appreciate the combination of rigorous academics, a friendly, liberal social environment & a much less expensive ride. They seem to adapt to rural Iowa remarkably well, and to actually enjoy flouting convention by their choice of location. Anyone interested in applying should definitely fly out & visit . Fabulous facilities, smart, motivated kids, and none of that eastern college air of entitlement.</p>