<p>Hawkette, you are comparing yield rates at UNC, Florida and Texas to that of Michigan? Florida and Texas are 90%+ in-state. UNC is almost 85% in-state. In-state yield at public universities is much higher than yield rate of OOS students at public universities.</p>
<p>THES</a> - QS World University Rankings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
<p>A post for Michigan fans. OK. It's not number 1. But it's pretty highly ranked by somebody.</p>
<p>Some people must like the school. That's my point.</p>
<p>So why all the negativity?</p>
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the fur didn't begin to fly until some questioned the motive behind the thread's creation and how the data was presented.
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Heh...but that's what makes your threads so fun.</p>
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However, you'd think from the tenor, and sometimes even the substance, of the posts here and your response that it is a unanimously acclaimed and accepted choice.
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<p>What a straw man. </p>
<p>It's not a unanimously acclaimed and accepted choice. Surely I do not have to add the caveat that, yes, students choose to enroll elsewhere. But in case anyone is confused by my lack of clarity: Dear reader, please know that there are thousands of qualified high school seniors every year who elect NOT attend Michigan. And hundreds of thousands of bright, capable, well-informed, amibitious, fully-admissable seniors who don't even apply. </p>
<p>Now that this is out of way, I stand by my previous response. </p>
<p>However, did I misread what you meant when you suggested U-M's tuition should be lowered to UVa levels? I assumed you meant out of some sense of fairness, which I questioned. Help me understand your meaning better. Why is lowering tuition the most productive route for U-M?</p>
<p>I think Alexandre's list is quite relevant. Look, I'm a Minnesota resident which means my D can get in-state tuition at the University of Minnesota or the University of Wisconsin under the two states' reciprocity agreement. Yet I'm encouraging my D, a HS junior, to consider the University of Michigan even though we'd pay a much higher OOS tuition. Why? Well, I'm willing to pay for academic quality. As an alum (and the spouse of an alum) who follows developments at my alma mater very closely, I know how Michigan works, inside and out. I'm absolutely convinced that in the particular humanities fields my D is most drawn to, she can get every bit as good an education at Michigan as at any elite private, and frankly better than most---all at a total COA that's generally $5K to $7K/year cheaper. That's not chump change; it's like a 10 to 15% discount off the sticker price of a private school. Although Wisconsin and Minnesota are both good schools and would be a whole lot cheaper for us, honestly I'd feel better about my D going to Michigan because in the humanities it's just that much stronger that I'm willing to pay the additional cost.</p>
<p>As it turns out my D isn't really interested in a big university and has her heart set on a list of small private LACs. I'm confident she'll get into a pretty good one and we'll probably end up paying full sticker price. I'll bite the bullet, dig deep and somehow manage to find the cash. But from my vantage point Michigan looks like a pretty good educational bargain even with its relatively high OOS COA. It's a bad mistake just to compare it to other publics, and it's also a bad mistake to look solely at tuition and not at total COA. It's misleading. I won't say deliberately misleading because I'm trying very hard to refrain from questioning people's motives here. But I do think Alexandre's list provides a much more relevant basis for comparison shopping.</p>
<p>Re the issue of cost and OOS students, this can certainly be a selling point for most public universities vis-a-vis most privates. I don't underestimate this and I have even suggested in past threads that rankings like USNWR consider cost as part of their rankings equation. Frankly, I think public school partisans could sometimes improve their arguments in making this COA contrast with other colleges. </p>
<p>Alex,
I'm not sure of the source for your earlier numbers about COA. However, it looks like there have been some pretty sizable increases (just over 10.5% more) in the COA for U Michigan. Here is the data that I see for your school:</p>
<p>Alex posts $40,591 for U Michigan</p>
<p>Current COA Information for U Michigan
<a href="http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_costest.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_costest.pdf</a>
<a href="http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_tuitfee_history.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_tuitfee_history.pdf</a></p>
<p>U Michigan Cost of Attendance for 2008-09
$33,263 Tuition & Fees
$8,518 Room & Board
$1,048 Books & Supplies
$2,054 Personal & Miscellaneous</p>
<p>$44,883 TOTAL</p>
<p>I think that this is a useful topic and I hope that you will create a separate thread to explore this.</p>
<p>Alexandre was just considering tuition+room and board.</p>
<p>Hawkette, I was using your source; the 2009 USNWR. That means tuition and room & board. If you want to use official website costs, including books and personal & miscellaneous, I would be glad to. Still, Michigan would be among the best values among the top 50 universities and one of the four cheapest among the top 25.</p>
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I'm absolutely convinced....she can get every bit as good an education at Michigan as at any elite private, and frankly better than most---all at a total COA that's generally $5K to $7K/year cheaper.
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</p>
<p>That is true only for the tippy top incomes in the US, i.e., full pay at a private. The top privates have much better finaid packages than the top publics (with the exception of UVa) and, as a result, attending a top private is less expensive than the instate public for the masses. Even at income levels approaching $150k, a top private with no loans can be cheaper out-of-pocket than UMich OOS.</p>
<p>I am a big fan of UMich, since it's the public standard-bearer west of the Sierras, and according to local high school counselors out here, easier to get into OOS than Cal is instate. But, not being a member of the full pay (private) club, neither of my kids could apply.</p>
<p>bluwebayou. It's going to be very interesting what will happen in the future is this economy doesn't turn around. Those financial aid packages might not be so great. We'll see.</p>
<p>^^true, dat, rk. But, state taxes are also declining so tuition and r&b has only one way to go: UP!</p>
<p>
Quote: "I'm absolutely convinced....she can get every bit as good an education at Michigan as at any elite private, and frankly better than most---all at a total COA that's generally $5K to $7K/year cheaper."</p>
<p>That is true only for the tippy top incomes in the US, i.e., full pay at a private. The top privates have much better finaid packages than the top publics (with the exception of UVa) and, as a result, attending a top private is less expensive than the instate public for the masses. Even at income levels approaching $150k, a top private with no loans can be cheaper out-of-pocket than UMich OOS.
</p>
<p>Well, "tippy top" is all a matter of perspective. In fact there are are a lot of people like us, nowhere near the Warren Buffett/Bill Gates category but say in the $150K to $250K income range, where need-based FA gets phased out, you don't qualify for all manner of tax credits, and yet paying the $50K/year full sticker price at a private school for even one kid, let alone two, all out of after-tax income, is a real backbreaker. At that level, that 10% to 15% Michigan discount off full private college COA looks awfully attractive, as good as a $5K to $7K merit scholarship. </p>
<p>By the way, according to stats published in U.S. News, Michigan does meet 90% of demonstrated need overall, so they've got to be giving pretty substantial FA to some OOS students. In fact, they report that 22% of OOS students get need-based gift aid. (I know, we won't qualify). And 59% of OOS freshmen and 42% of all OOS students get non-need based (merit) gift aid, averaging about $11,000 per recipient. That's not peanuts, either. </p>
<p>So given the odds of my D qualifying for some merit aid, Michigan might be even more of a bargain than the fancy privates she's looking at, very few of which give any merit aid.</p>
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$150K to $250K income range
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<p>Have you checked recently what income percentile range that dollar income range is in here in the United States? I think it fits bluebayou's description of "tippy top."</p>
<p>^ Sure, I know about those income percentiles. Over $150K in pre-tax income represents approximately the top 6% of income earners. But most people in that category are not among the "capitalist class", "the wealthy", "the rich", or the "super-rich", as various commentators label those with a million or more in assets and/or incomes above $500K---the Bill Gates and Warren Buffet types, and others slightly less wealthy with enough accumulated assets and disposable income that figuring out how to pay full freight at an elite private school is really not a cause for concern. The people in the $150K to $250K range are solidly "upper middle class" by most definitions of that term, though some would extend that category down to $100K or so.</p>
<p>Look, I'm not looking for sympathy. I know we're far better off than most, even---perhaps especially---in this lousy economy. I'm just saying that at an income level in the range of $150K to $250K you're not going to get FA at the elite private schools, but the cost could represent an enormous whack out of your after-tax income (depending on how much you pay in taxes, which in my case is a lot). And at that income level, OOS full-pay at a top public like UC Berkeley, UVa or Michigan looks like a pretty attractive alternative to full-pay at a top private. Especially in a year in which you've lost a large fraction of your home equity, your retirement savings are in tatters, and your after-tax investments are worth a fraction of what they were a year ago. That $5K to $7K price difference---possibly more with merit aid---starts to loom pretty large.</p>
<p>I didn't think you were looking for sympathy, and I wish your D well in her college search. But my friendly point is that maybe as many as 94 percent of high school students can shop at private colleges for as good a deal in total cost as at public colleges, all depending, of course, on what's actually on offer in a particular financial aid package. We share the same good in-state choice, and that will definitely be on my son's application list, but I'm sure he'll be looking out of state (public and private) too.</p>
<p>@hawkette: I specifically stated that I consider all general college ranking meaningless because a) every student is different and b) every school has its own strengths and weaknesses.</p>
<p>My name is actually fairly accurate in that I am a total perfectionist obsessed with verifiable facts. I seized on Michigan because it had already become an issue in this thread, but the list you posted at the start had a number of incorrect rankings. That doesn't reflect badly on you as a person; it just indicates my own obsessiveness.</p>
<p>@topic: a public school will charge what it can to OOS students. If many people want to go to Michigan, they can charge more.</p>
<p>^^ Well, yes, the 94% of students from families with incomes below $150K can shop around at privates, and in many cases they'll get good deals. But not always. Not all that many of them will be accepted at the cream-of-the-crop schools with (nominally) generous FA policies. I've seen reports here on CC that about half the students at Yale come from families with incomes OVER $250K. I can;t independently verify that, but it makes me wonder just how much FA redistribution is actually going on. And once you get beyond the top handful of schools that promise to meet 100% of need (and actually do so with grants rather than self-help in the form of loans and work/study), the net COA at many privates can quickly become prohibitive.</p>
<p>Yes, agreed that it's still unclear how many lower-income (which for these purposes means plainly middle-class, at 90th percentile down to 40th percentile) families have students who can even get into the small number of colleges that have generous financial aid. It's an issue worth putting to the test for the large number of families in that income range, but they also have to look to financial safety colleges, probably including the in-state public university, possibly including an out-of-state public.</p>
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I've seen reports here on CC that about half the students at Yale come from families with incomes OVER $250K
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<p>Perhaps not $250k, but suffice it to say, ~50% of the kids all all of the Ivies and other highly selective privates (except Cornell given it's SUNY affiliation), are full pay; data is verifiable on their common data sets and it is easy to back calculate when need-based finaid phases out. At some colleges like Colgate & Bucknell, it's 65% who are full pay. It has to be that way bcos admission to highly selective colleges just favors the upper-middle to upper class. </p>
<p>
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And once you get beyond the top handful of schools that promise to meet 100% of need (and actually do so with grants rather than self-help in the form of loans and work/study), the net COA at many privates can quickly become prohibitive.
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</p>
<p>Drop down a notch further, and even the colleges that don't meet full need will offer merit money to top kids. For example, there are plenty of colleges like NYU & GWU give great merit aid to the top ~half of their applicant class, but nearly all loans to the bottom half. Wake Forest has wonderful merit scholarships as does Richmond. USC gives big tuition discounts to anyone acing a 2.5 hour test (psat). Even Chapman University offers merit aid for what would be considered low stats on cc.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Drop down a notch further, and even the colleges that don't meet full need will offer merit money to top kids. For example, there are plenty of colleges like NYU & GWU give great merit aid to the top ~half of their applicant class, but nearly all loans to the bottom half.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The problem I have with merit aid at schools that don't meet 100% of demonstrated need is that some substantial fraction is a reverse redistribution to those who, in the college's own calculation, don't need it---or at any rate don't need it as much as less affluent kids who are getting "gapped" or being forced to take out huge loans to make up for the shortfall of need-based grant aid. Sure, I'd be delighted if my D could snag a $10K or $15K merit scholarship---and I know she would at some of these schools. It would make it a lot easier on our family budget. But I have real ethical qualms about going that route when I know it means some kid who really has to scrape to get through college is going to be at risk of leaving for financial reasons, or is going to come out at the other end under a crushing debt load. </p>
<p>I suppose I could rationalize it and say, "Well, that's just the college's policy; for understandable reasons they want to attract students like my D. And once they've made that decision, it's there for the taking, and if m y D doesn't get it, it will just go to some other applicant, possibly less 'deserving' in an academic/statistical sense."</p>
<p>OK. But the policy kind of stinks, and I don't feel great about playing into that system. It's a different story if the school is already meeting 100% of need, and especially if it's doing so with grants instead of loans. If it still has merit money available on top of that, wonderful---then my kid isn't taking it away from someone else who needs it more. But there seem to be precious few colleges and universities in that category.</p>