<p>One factor is competition from flagship public schools in the various regions. In New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey there are no publics with any prestige, and IMO only Penn State has any esprit at all.
Every state in the South has a "destination" public or two, typically with school pride, and often with the majority of the best students in their states. All of these schools have a public function and tax payer support which pushes them to expand the size of their student bodies rather than become increasingly selective. I'm including Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma here. This does not work to improve their "rankings".
In contrast the privates work hard to improve their selectivity with the approval of the donating alums, so long as a generous number of spaces are reserved for their offspring!
And then, of course, there is shear wealth.</p>
<p>gadad and bennyblanco,
I think you make an excellent observation about test-taking patterns in the South. A few states (FL, GA, SC) take the SAT in large numbers but their results are decidedly lower than the other states. Generally, if you go through each region, the states that tended to have the highest scores also had comparatively fewer test takers. I did weight the regional and natinoal results so they are accurate for all of the regions, but that nuance would be easy to miss.</p>
<p>danas,
I think you are right in your comment about the role that State Us play in most of non-Northeastern regions. However, the privates in those areas clearly score lower than the Northeastern schools on the PA measure.</p>
<p>On wealth...
Dividing the Endowment Market Value in the NACUBO survey as of June 30, 2006, by the total number of graduate and undergraduate students in the Newsweek-Kaplan 2007 issue, you get endowment per student of-</p>
<p>Princeton $1,933,151
Yale $1,578,309
Harvard $1,494.043
MIT $ 824,115</p>
<p>Those are the top 4, excluding Olin (Northeast, obviously)</p>
<p>Some non-Northeast schools-</p>
<p>Notre Dame $ 389,109
Emory $ 404,318
Northwestern $ 305,030
U of Chicago $ 345,349
WashU $ 387,617
Duke $ 321,013
Vanderbilt $ 259,046</p>
<p>Stanford, Cal Tech and Rice are in the $700Ks.</p>
<p>Given the markets, I'm sure Princeton's endowment per student is now well over $ 2,000,000.
Given a target payout of say 4.5%, Princeton needs to take out about $90,000 per year per student. Add in about $15,000 per student in the annual drive, and you have over $100,000 per student that MUST be spent, even assuming no other income. There is plenty of other income in research dollars and student fees.
Top, wealthy LACs like Swarthmore spend about $80,000 per student TOTAL!
HYP can spend unprecedented amounts on cherry picking professors, financial aid, etc., etc. I'm not saying that all of this spending will appeal to all students, or is even worthwhile. I'm just saying that it is a competitive advantage that isn't going to disappear.</p>
<p>hawkette...
The poster child for your thesis is Rice. Rated way below where it should be based upon both wealth and student quality. I am ready to believe that there is some prejudice operating there. The northeast elites aren't fond of Texas.
Rice would help itself in the ratings (if it cares) by increasing the size of the student body (which I think it has plans to do ), and getting the percentage of instate students below 40%.</p>
<p>I don't think that anyone is going to catch HYPSM, either institutionally as an academic powerhouse or financially. However, the difference between the other five Ivies and the next five Division I universitities (Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame) is actually very, very narrow on a wide range of measures. For endowment, this group actually is wealthier:</p>
<p>ENDOWMENT PER CAPITA
$298,301 Lower Ivies
$429,326 Duke/Northwestern/Rice/Vanderbilt/Notre Dame</p>
<p>danas - The same could be said for UT-Austin. It has exactly the same peer reputation score as Rice (4.1), and many more programs ranked among the top in the country than Rice. The big issue with UT is as you stated previously - at the undergrad level, it is required by state law to be at least 90% in-state, which doesn't do much to improve selectivity (or even national stature).</p>
<p>danas,
You may know that I have been a strong proponent of Rice which I believe is a very underrated Top 20 school (though certainly not the only one) that is located outside of the Northeast. Their student body has an impressive statistical profile and their graduates really are the gold standard in Texas and the Southwest. I have said many times that if Rice were located in Philadelphia, I believe very strongly that it would be a fixture in the USNWR Top 10. BTW, I am not a graduate of Rice and I have no affiliation to the school. I just think it is a terrific place and very underappreciated, particularly in the Northeast. </p>
<p>Re your comment about the high percentage of Texans (46%), many are surprised when they learn about this, but don’t forget that other top schools also have very high percentages of in-state students, eg, Stanford-44% Californians, Cornell-34% New Yorkers, Caltech-32% Californians and Columbia-26% New Yorkers. This doesn’t seem to have hurt their ranking and certainly not their Peer Assessment scores as compared to Rice’s 4.1 (Stanford-4.9, Cornell-4.6, Caltech-4.7, Columbia-4.6). So I’m not sure why Rice should be marked down for this. And as for size, obviously Caltech is a lot smaller (864 undergrads) and Dartmouth is not tremendously bigger than Rice (4085 undergrads vs 3049 undergrads).</p>
<p>hawkette...
I'm not saying that the ratings of schools like Rice or Texas are justified. I'm saying the opposite.
The only private elite with an instate percentage anywhere near Rice is Stanford, and California is one big state. People in the Northeast, IMO, for whatever reason, are ready to concede that Stanford is a peer to the top schools.
I don't get the same numbers as you do, for whatever reason, for the "lower Ivies" and their out-of region peers. I stated the source of the numbers I used. I have Dartmouth at $540,577 per student.
Brown and Cornell bring up the Ivy "rear" at $274,223 per student and $222, 204 per student.</p>
<p>danas,
For the endowment calculation, I used the following numbers:</p>
<p>Lower Ivies
$ 301,297 AVERAGE
$ 224,151 U Penn
$ 537,476 Dartmouth
$ 258,166 Columbia
$ 220,032 Cornell
$ 266,663 Brown</p>
<p>The Next 5 Division I Schools
$ 429,326 AVERAGE
$ 385,079 Duke
$ 302,322 Northwestern
$ 801,980 Rice
$ 253,846 Vanderbilt
$ 403,403 Notre Dame</p>
<p>or another way to look at them all together</p>
<p>$ 801,980 Rice
$ 537,476 IVY Dartmouth
$ 403,403 Notre Dame
$ 385,079 Duke
$ 302,322 Northwestern
$ 266,663 IVY Brown
$ 258,166 IVY Columbia
$ 253,846 Vanderbilt
$ 224,151 IVY U Penn
$ 220,032 IVY Cornell</p>
<p>Interesting and informative discussion. Thank you all…I could help but think of the New York Yankees as I read the posting on finances.</p>
<p>
Interestingly enough, for a time Rice University owned the leasing rights to Yankee Stadium, which was given to the school by an alumnus.</p>
<p>Connecticut is in New England, which is part of the Northeast, thanks. ;)</p>