Schools on the Decline

College Search & Selection
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<p>*
Vanderbilt has since completely eliminated loans, and others like Penn, Duke, and Dartmouth have eliminated loans for many of their students.*</p>

<p>Just because a school has eliminated loans for their students’ FA packages doesn’t mean that the students still didn’t take out loans to cover EFCs or study abroads or whatever. </p>

<p>*Does anyone have a guess for why the indebtedness is so high at NYU? *</p>

<p>Because NYU puts a lot of loans in their FA packages. Also, NYU seems to engage in the practice of “admit/deny”. That is when a student with moderate stats is accepted, but not given any FA except for loans. There was a student admitted ED to NYU this year that had very modest stats. Her FA package was nearly all loans.</p>

22

<p>I sorted and cut my table off too soon. See the correction below. No data for Columbia and Wash U. </p>

<p>1 , $5,859 , Princeton
2 , $9,871 , Caltech
3 , $10,813 , Harvard
4 , $11,108 , Rice
5 , $12,297 , Yale
6 , $12,589 , WILLIAM & MARY
7 , $14,148 , MIT
8 , $14,291 , UC BERKELEY
9 , $14,323 , UC IRVINE
10 , $14,946 , U N CAROLINA
11 , $15,155 , UC DAVIS
12 , $15,318 , U FLORIDA
13 , $15,724 , Stanford
14 , $16,317 , UC SAN DIEGO
15 , $16,733 , UCLA
16 , $16,800 , U WASHINGTON
17 , $17,000 , U TEXAS
18 , $17,107 , UC S BARBARA
19 , $19,016 , U VIRGINIA
20 , $19,085 , U Penn
21 , $19,358 , Boston College
22 , $19,390 , Brown
23 , $19,839 , Vanderbilt
24 , $19,891 , U ILLINOIS
25 , $19,908 , Northwestern
26 , $20,095 , Brandeis
27 , $20,126 , Dartmouth
28 , $20,881 , GEORGIA TECH
29 , $21,123 , U WISCONSIN
30 , $21,984 , Johns Hopkins
31 , $23,181 , Emory
32 , $23,333 , Georgetown
33 , $23,687 , Tufts
34 , $23,961 , Tulane
35 , $24,205 , Duke
36 , $24,500 , U Miami
37 , $24,750 , Cornell
38 , $24,827 , Wake Forest
39 , $25,586 , U MICHIGAN
40 , $26,800 , PENN STATE
41 , $27,121 , U Rochester
42 , $27,562 , U Chicago
43 , $27,692 , USC
44 , $29,756 , Lehigh
45 , $29,835 , Notre Dame
46 , $30,375 , Rensselaer
47 , $30,533 , Carnegie Mellon
48 , $34,850 , NYU
49 , $37,892 , Case Western</p>

<p>Also, this data is from the CDS for 2008-2009 which means students who entered in 2004 or earlier. Lots may have changed since then, but as I previously commented, my hunch is that the comparisons get worse for the publics going forward.</p>

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<p>Now…is this indebtedness only tracking loans like Staffords, Perkins, and Sallie Mae loans?</p>

24

<p>doesn’t columbia award one of the most financial aid
many pell grants or soemthing liek that</p>

25

<p>^^^^^ I don’t know. How would they know what outside loans students get? All they know is someone writes a check for tuition and room/board. </p>

<p>Eliminating loans is another thinly veiled attempt to become even MORE elitist and improve their rankings by making them even more selective as thousands of kids try for the annual lottery of being admitted to a school with no school loans. Its preposterous. And Vandy is notorious for admitting kids from legacy and those who are LOADED to the gills with money. They say they are completely needs blind but that is a complete joke. Look at who they admit and who they reject/waitlist and its a who is who of money people. </p>

<p>UVa and UNC are facing severe cuts in the coming years as their states are in severe deficits.</p>

26

<p>Columbia does have a high (for the top tier) percentage of Pell recipients.</p>

27

<p>According to the CDS, the calculations above for average indebtedness include the following:</p>

<p>…the percentage of the class (defined above) who borrowed at any time through any loan programs (institutional, state, Federal Perkins, Federal Stafford Subsidized and Unsubsidized, private loans that were certified by your institution, etc.; exclude parent loans). Include both Federal Direct Student Loans and Federal Family Education Loans.</p>

<p>Note that this does NOT include loans from family.</p>

<p>Gb,
I don’t know why you’d attack schools for providing more grants rather than loans. How is that anything but a positive for the student??</p>

<p>As for your Vandy comments, I think you’re about a decade off. Things have changed in Nashville. A lot. And don’t kid yourself in thinking Vanderbilt is the only top private that is admitting students from wealthy families. Lots of rich kids get into and attend all of the top privates. Places like HYPS are full of ‘em. </p>

<p>Finally, I don’t think that state funding is a huge part of the funding for U Virginia. They have been preparing for many years for a day when they might be getting zero help from the state. Right now, I think that it is less than 10% of their budget. </p>

<p>U North Carolina is not as far along and will be impacted by the state’s current economic troubles. Chapel Hill will probably retain the highest share of the state’s funding, but even they are under some pressure. Are you aware of Bowles’s departure? Given his relatively short tenure and the state’s fiscal challenges, I wonder if he’s getting out before hard decisions have to get made.</p>

28

<p>Brandeis is hardly on the decline. To the contrary, although discussing belt-tightening in certain areas, those are small individually and where the university isn’t excellent. In fact, Brandeis isadding exciting new programs like an undergrad Busness major and the independent-study Justice Brandeis Semester. Resources are being plowed into student aid. The school is focussed on building from its strengths–i.e. an excellent small liberal arts college within a top-notch research university–where prominent professors teach in small classes.</p>

29

<p>And don’t kid yourself in thinking Vanderbilt is the only top private that is admitting students from wealthy families. Lots of rich kids get into and attend all of the top privates. Places like HYPS are full of ‘em.</p>

<p>I have to agree with that. I think it was Hmom5 that pointed out that the elites still end up with a certain percentage of full-payers each year. A school may be need blind, but a school can often tell who has what money by the high school they went to, their home zip code, their EC activities, etc.</p>

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<p>Apparently the cost of living in downtown Manhattan is high. Who knew?</p>

31

<p>Schools with the smallest increast in applications 2001-02 to 2009-10</p>

<p>(At a small school, a small increase might be a large percentage.)</p>

<p>change in number of apps, name of school</p>

<p>-2543 Carnegie Mellon University
-930 Trinity College
-624 Sarah Lawrence College
-471 Bucknell University
-81 Brigham Young University
-21 Principia College
55 Wheaton College
60 Hamilton College
61 Thomas Aquinas College
100 Barnard College
131 Sweet Briar College
152 Hollins University
173 College of Saint Benedict
180 Mount Holyoke College
229 Saint Johns University
242 Wheaton College
259 Yeshiva University
376 Virginia Military Institute
396 Millsaps College
398 Connecticut College
425 Bennington College
433 Beloit College
438 Lafayette College
455 Wabash College
483 Albion College
499 Hendrix College
503 Bates College
504 Presbyterian College
515 Earlham College
518 Muhlenberg College
526 Illinois Wesleyan University
567 Clark University
610 Colby College
610 New College of Florida
636 Juniata College
651 Kalamazoo College
710 Centre College
719 Carleton College
738 Skidmore College
746 Austin College
754 Bryn Mawr College
763 Pepperdine University
765 Gustavus Adolphus College
780 Stevens Institute of Technology
782 Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus
819 Harvey Mudd College
829 Haverford College
831 Hope College
861 Scripps College</p>

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<p>schools with the smallest percent change in apps 2001-02 to 2009-10</p>

<p>-22.4% Sarah Lawrence College
-17.0% Trinity College
-15.2% Carnegie Mellon University
-11.2% Principia College
-5.9% Bucknell University
-0.8% Brigham Young University
1.3% Hamilton College
1.7% Wheaton College
2.5% Barnard College
4.1% Michigan State University
5.7% Rutgers University-New Brunswick
6.2% Mount Holyoke College
6.3% University of Colorado at Boulder
6.8% Ohio State University-Main Campus
8.3% Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus
8.4% Lafayette College
8.9% Auburn University Main Campus
9.2% Connecticut College
9.8% Tufts University
10.8% University of Rochester
10.9% Washington University in St Louis
11.8% Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
11.8% Bates College
12.1% College of Saint Benedict
12.4% Pepperdine University
12.9% Wheaton College
13.1% Skidmore College
13.3% Muhlenberg College
14.6% Yeshiva University
15.3% Clark University
15.6% Colby College
16.1% Brandeis University
17.6% Wesleyan University
17.7% Carleton College
17.7% Iowa State University
18.8% Illinois Wesleyan University
19.1% University of Pennsylvania
20.5% Saint Johns University
21.7% George Washington University
22.0% Georgetown University
22.7% New York University
24.1% University of California-San Diego
24.1% University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
25.1% Purdue University-Main Campus
26.1% Furman University
26.9% Clemson University
27.1% University of Puget Sound
27.1% Hollins University
27.2% University of Iowa
27.6% Middlebury College</p>

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<p>Ch,
Again, can you publish change in # of apps and % change together? </p>

<p>Also, why did you choose an 8-year measurement period? Why not 10? Or 5?</p>

34

<p>Wells is struggling a little bit, but it seems to be slowly on the rise once again.</p>