Colorado College is in Colorado. I have no idea how well it is regarded among people in the Northeast, but >80% of the student body comes from outside of the Northeast, so they certainly do not dominate the campus. The point is the key criteria is having wealthy student bodies, rather than being in the Northeast. The Chetty study summarized at Economic diversity and student outcomes at Colorado College - The New York Times found the following SES distribution among students at Colorado College:
Median Income = >$300k (after inflation conversion to 2021 dollars)
24% of students from top 1% income
22% from bottom 80% income
Perhaps I shouldnāt restrict the phrase āthe country club setā to a home region, merely to a high enough number of the well-off. I think itās a fair assumption that if a college has a student body that is fairly rich, on average, then that school is regarded well by the well-off.
As for my comment about the Northeast, it hasnāt escaped my notice that a disproportionate number of the privates (below the near-Ivy tier) who manage to keep their percentage of full-payers at a decently high level are in the Northeast. The well-off donāt have to send their kids to a private college (well below Ivy level) at Ivy prices but in the Northeast, there seems to be a cultural tendency to do that that doesnāt seem so evident elsewhere.
For Colorado College in particular, I expect being highly selective and need aware also is a key for the especially the wealthy student body. If a highly selective college is need aware, it doesnāt need to be a top college in the eyes of wealthy families. It just needs to favor the minority of applicants who are wealthy in admission decisions enough to make up the difference. I expect being need aware and related influences on admission decisions is the primary reason why Colorado College had a far wealthier student body than need-blind Ivy-type colleges at the time of the Chetty study.
Plenty of LACs are need-aware yet hand out scholarships/grants/discounts to a greater percentage of their student body than Colorado College does. Most of them, in fact. Knox, for instance, is need-aware.
Note that my post said, " For Colorado College in particular, I expect being highly selective and need awareā¦" I was talking about Colorado College in particular and mentioned the combination of being highly selective was also required.
Being highly selective is required, so the college has the opportunity to notably favor wealthy kids while still keeping a high quality class. This wouldnāt be practical for a college like Knox that admits the majority of applicants. I also stated for Colorado College in particular because it also involves the details of how the specific college uses their need aware policies in admission decisions, which can vary wildly between colleges. I donāt assume that Knox would make the same admission choices as Colorado College, even if they were equally selective with identical applicant pools. That said, if you look at highly selective private colleges that are need aware, there is clearly a correlation.
Isnāt this in part though due to prestige / ranking - Colorado College is a well known (and highly ranked) program with an $800 million + endowment whereas Knox is not well known and has an endowment a 7th of the size.
In essence, Knox has to compensate for itās lack of prestige, itās lack of brand recognition - with discounted tuition. Given the smaller endowment, thatās an even bigger risk.
Perhaps the professors or staff it is able to obtain are also less.
I look at U Tampa - their tuition is low and their discount is high. They are building insanely - yet their endowment is only $40 million.
A comparison of average net price among aid/scholarship recipients at the different colleges that have been discussed is below, as listed in IPEDS. Tampa may be giving aid/scholarships to a large portion of students, but the net cost for those receiving aid seems quite high. The average price for kids of all income levels is near $30k, which is not affordable for most lower/middle income kids, so the vast majority of students get loans. Tampa also appears to be spending far less per student than the other listed schools.
Average Net Price Among Aid/Scholarship Recipients
Colorado ā $32k (24% of students get loans) Tampa ā $31k (77% of students get loans)
Knox --$23k (61% of students get loans)
Harvard ā $15k (7% of students get loans)
Average Expenses Per Student (From IPEDS, ātotalā = total ācore expensesā)
Harvard: Total = $164k (Instructional = $46k, Institutional = $34k, Academic Support = $31k)
Conn Col; Total = $67k (Instructional = $30k, Institutional = $12k, Academic Support = $10k)
Knox: Total = $31k (Instructional = $14k, Institutional = $7k, Academic Support = $4k) Tampa: Total = $17k (Instructional = $7k, Institutional = $4k, Academic Support = $2k)
Iām not sure why youāre only looking at net price among only those who receive grants when you need to look at net price among all students to see how finances would work. For example, Harvardās net price among those who receives grants is lower than that of Tampaās who receives grants but Tampa gives 94% of its students grants while Harvard only gives 57% of its students grants. Add in the full-payers and it appears that Harvard has a higher average net price.
Basically, Harvard is taking in a lot more well-off kids than Tampa is. Should anyone fault Tampa for that? Arguably, we should find fault with Harvard (with its gigantic endowment) not using its huge pile of money to further the education and life prospects of a lot more people than it currently does.
As listed in the post, the price is for the students receiving both scholarship and aid, which is ~97% of students at Tampa, so it should provide a good representation of tuition at Tampa, which is the college asked about in the earlier post I replied to.
Among the other 3 colleges used in the comparison, tuition only provides a minority of revenue at all of them. For example, tuition only brought in 14% of Harvardās revenue in the reference year (should be less today with endowment increases). Looking at tuition revenue alone is not going to show much about how finances work at Harvard, regardless of whether you look at tuition revenue for all kids or just the majority receiving aid, yet it can still be meaningful in a comparison with Tampa to show that the college has a very different aid/scholarship system (all income levels pay ~$30k at Tampa vs widely varying cost by income at Harvard) and to emphasize that Tampa is the most expensive of the 4 schools for typical not high income students rather than simply being low cost, as was implied in the post I replied to. A key reason why Tampa is financially solvent while charging a relatively low price for wealthy kids is because they charge lower income kids a similar ~$30k price to the wealthy kids.
However, the main reason why I listed in that format is because thatās the format listed on College Navigator at College Navigator - The University of Tampa . College Navigator lists average net price for āFull-time beginning undergraduate students who were awarded grant or scholarship aid from federal, state or local governments, or the institutionā, rather than the full student body.
The one thing about elitist schools I find amusing is how they can call themselves better because of the students they admit. Itās like GM saying their trucks are ābetterā because their drivers are more experienced. Itās a medieval business model thatās more about social class than education. We would be wise not to lower ourselves to their expectations.
Tampa tuition - just tuition - is an unbelievable $31K. My daughter got $17K. They claim they give up to $18K so that would be $13K tuition. So itās reasonable at full pay relative to those charged $58-$62K and with heavy discountingā¦ But yes, iām sure most kids are getting decent merit rebates - and then we havenāt talked about needā¦But with a huge building program and tiny endowment, how do they do it? I bet they hire a ton of adjuncts. I donāt see them as in trouble - but I could see where it could become that way. Its probably a fine tuned balancing act.
Sweet Briar almost went out - the alums saved it. Marboro did go out.
Will others be in the same boat? I guess it depends on investment returns and alumni support if they get in trouble.
On the flip side, W&L gave me not a cent - so $81K - so I eliminated from my daughterās potential. They have fantastic merit - if you get it. Yet, they are strong - but as been pointed out, someone will pay full pop whereas maybe not at Knox or Tampa.
Yes Coolguy- for many students this is exactly the appeal of ālow admissions rateā universities. Folks understand this-- thatās what they are buying. If youāve had a kid who has been asked to ātutorā or help or team teach their math class since 2nd grade, then having your kid surrounded by top students is what you are looking for. If your kid has done 95% of the work on group projects since middle school, if your kid was told by teachers and administrators, āitās ok if you donāt find the classwork challenging or if you are bored during science class because you can read whatever you want on your own timeā then this is a significant reason why many families seek out an āeliteā school.
Can a kid engineer his/her classes at Stonehill or Endicott so that he/she is with equally driven/well prepared students? Possibly. But it takes a LOT more effort than if you enroll in a college where you are among academic peers.
As a society, weād gripe about an Olympic caliber athlete having to play against casual competitors, fulltime, instead of competing at the right level. āWaste of potentialā, blah blah blah. But itās fine if a math prodigy is stuck in a class in the 4th grade with kids who are still memorizing times tables???
Huh? What evidence do you need that some (not all) talented students prefer to be surrounded by academic peers?
I have a family member who graduated from HS at 15, and his math class at an HYP freshman year was the first time he had EVER had homework which required actual effort on his part. Should he have enrolled at the local college (which had math- as part of itās Elementary Ed major, designed to train math teachers) instead of where he did to fulfill some bizarre need to claim āelite colleges are just about marketingā?
Thereās a vast gap though between HYP and your examples of Stonehill, Endicott, and community college. Thereās also a vast gap between a math prodigy and an average bright student. HYP has few prodigies. The world has few true prodigies. Why do folks always use extreme examples to make their arguments? Itās just the CC way. Smh
Eyemgh wants āevidential strengthā. As in- a piece of evidence.
Thatās why extreme examples get used. If I were to compare the math sequence available at Harvard to strong math students to-- letās say U Mass, the argument quickly gets bogged down in a hostile game of āI went to U Mass and Iām plenty good at mathā. To which the answer is- āIām sure you are- and Iām sure you were able to craft a terrific academic plan at a comprehensive flagship U like U Massā.
And then another poster chimes in that itās all marketing and BS and that the strong math sequence at Harvard canāt possibly be as challenging as some people claim it is".
Etc.
Some times extreme examples work best to make a point- many students- in fact- want to be surrounded by other strong students, and that is the chief appeal of a ālow admissions rateā university. That- and VERY generous financial aid.
My family member would have had to pay more than TWICE what he paid at the HYP for his flagship U. Which is not Berkeley, U Michigan, or UVA, btw before the whole āthere are elite public Uāsā argument gets going.
Iām not talking about squishy stuff like āprefer.ā Iām talking about evidence that a student is better served at an elite than elsewhere. Dale and Krueger showed that with the exception of first generation that is not the case. If you have evidence to the contrary, Iād love to see it. What you offered was anecdote, and a soft one at that. MANY students coast through even very high level math until they get to college. Itās not the students surrounding them that challenges them, itās the advancing material and pace.
Both of these were true for two of my kids. One of them chose to go to the local magnet high school ā even though it involved a lot of inconvenience and logistical challenges ā in order to be surrounded by like-minded academic peers, and later had a similar and rewarding experience at Swarthmore. The other, who attended the town high school and sometimes felt insufficiently challenged, is now happily attending a T10 university. Although Iām sure that both could have found their tribe at the state flagship, they preferred an environment where they felt part of the academic āmainstream.ā And both received fabulous need-based aid, which made the cost of attendance similar to that of the flagship.
Will they be more successful in life because they attended elite institutions rather than a state school? Probably not to any meaningful extent. But I have no doubt that they had a more satisfying college experience ā because those schools, and those student bodies, were a better fit for them.
This is different, and what appears on the surface to be a no brainer. Congrats to them!
Iām in no way trying to be insulting. When I say āevidenceā I mean it in the context that my science background puts that word, a large body of study or better studies looking at the average outcome. In science/medicine, āanecdoteā is used when people describe one off situations. Lay people frequently conflate the two, but they are not the same.