<p>fwiw: by law, a nonprofit MUST spend ~5% of its assets every year to remain a nonprofit for tax purposes.</p>
<p>concur with token: popular private schools like nyu and gwu provide great finaid to students they really want, and lotsa loans to the rest of the acceptees. However, that was not the point of this thread, which focused solely on colleges with large endowments, such as the Ivies. And, as I pointed out earlier, P'ton will give FREE money to someone with income of $175k and few assets unless the school is misrepresenting itself (which I doubt). In other words, a family with $175k income has financial need accoding to P'ton.</p>
<p>"In other words, a family with $175k income has financial need accoding to P'ton."</p>
<p>I believe that P'ton's assessment of your need migh vary directly with their need of you i.e. the higher your test score and gpa and better your ec's the more they can feel your pain and your need.</p>
<p>Princeton's aid does not vary by "desire to have you".
Also, Princeton's aid to International students is identical to its aid for domestic students. There are only a handful of US schools like this, including Harvard and Yale.
Princeton's website says that 75% of the students with family income over $160,000 receiving grants have more than one student in college. The site doesn't say what that percentage is for other income brackets.</p>
<p>Yeah and I have a bottle of snake oil that is guaranteed to grow hair on a billiard ball. Notice that Princeton, Harvard, and Yale ain't publishing their statistics either. If there is a formula then they should publish it but I think you will find that it is "holistic".</p>
<p>higherlead: So if we have income of say, $160k with three kids in college and one a senior in HS (our scenario in '09-'10), we should be "rich" enough to fork over $135,000 of that, AFTER TAXES, because our income is too high? Yet an income of $45k-$50k gets a full ride which is okay with you because they are "poor" enough? Fair or not, there has to be subjectivity in the analysis. If not, H and I will both just quit our jobs in 2009 - we'd probably be better off by your approach.
I don't mean to sound off, but as I showed in an earlier post, your numbers seem to be off with P'ton financial aid reality.</p>
<p>Question to ponder: Those who are willing to fork out the $45K a year for 4 years of undergrad because you value education. Does the state you live in value the K-12 educator and pay him accordingly? If so what state do you live in?</p>
<p>sewbusy your are barking at the wrong guy. I never said anything about the finaid packages of these merit blind Ivy's and elites made any sense. Quite the contrary I actually think their policies are anti-social and Un-American but that is another story. Luckily for me my chip off the old block wasn't in any danger of being admitted. But trust me I feel your pain.</p>
<p>"Does the state you live in value the K-12 educator and pay him accordingly? If so what state do you live in?"</p>
<p>My sons elementary school gym teacher showed up to work in a new Jaguar a few years back so am pretty sure we are not at the bottom of the heap in teachers salaries. To be fair he was close to retirment. I live in Montgomery County Maryland.</p>
<p>While I think teachers are generally underpaid I also know there is no correlation between what we pay teachers or spend on education and the outputs. Some of the states with the lowest per student spending have the highest test scores and some with the highest spending the lowest test scores. The fact is a huge amount of what kids learn is dependent on what goes on in the home. Until we have better homes we won't have better students.</p>
<p>teachers who are at the same stage in their career as H, are paid about $8 more an hour than he is and will recieve significantly more in pensions ( teachers recieve 80% of annual pay- H will receive $60 a month for each year of service)</p>
<p>Our state though I realize, pays less for education than others- especially higher ed.
We have about as many seats- or fewer actually in higher ed, as Montana, a state with much smaller population.
But we don't want to fund K-12, why should we fund 12+?</p>
<p>Higherlead, you wrote both of the followng statements.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I believe that P'ton's assessment of your need migh vary directly with their need of you i.e. the higher your test score and gpa and better your ec's the more they can feel your pain and your need.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>
[quote]
I never said anything about the finaid packages of these merit blind Ivy's and elites made any sense. Quite the contrary I actually think their policies are anti-social and Un-American but that is another story.
<p>You are correct in your second statement when you state that the financial aid packages at the the top three schools in question, HYP, with endowment per student greater than a million, award only need-based financial aid (merit blind). Why? 1. The students they admit are all extremely qualified. 2. This ensures that money is going to the students who need it most.</p>
<p>I disagree with your statement that need-based financial aid is anti-social and un-American. In fact, I argue that need-based financial aid at these institutions is the fairest method of ensuring all students have an equal opportunity at education.</p>
<p>
[quote]
"Princeton's aid does not vary by "desire to have you".</p>
<p>Have your son become a recruited football quarterback, and give it a test.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Actually, the Ivys have trouble recruiting athletes precisely because the Ivys don't offer merit based financial aid. If you were a recruited athlete and were accepted into both Princeton and USC but USC also offered you a significant athletic scholarship+stipend, wouldn't you be more inclined to matriculate at USC?</p>
<p>higherlead, this is getting pointless, but Princeton has an "Early Estimator" online that just about every parent I've come across says is spot on, including me.
This is getting to be a story of suspicions on your part which I'll never be able to overcome.
It may help if you stop to think the school thinks that its financial aid program is a competitive advantage and feels it is benefited by getting as much data as possible about it out there.</p>
<p>Yeah and I can get a tape of Bill Clinton explaing how he didn't have sex with that woman on the internet too.</p>
<p>If Princeton is totally merit blind then they ought to be able to publish the algorithm they use and fire the staff in the finaid office. One the other hand if they take into account individual circumstances....then they aren't totally blind are they.</p>
<p>dont know a lot about Princeton aid
beside replace loans with grants- need based aid.</p>
<p>I do know an athlete currently attending- he doesn't recieve any aid at all, but I would guess that his national rank in his sport contributed towards his offer of admittance.</p>
<p>Re schools that meet 100% of EFC and do not award any merit aid or negotiate EFC.
D1 attended such a school
No negotiating EFC, even though we had other expenses we thought should be considered
A school that offers 100% of need- and will give you a package of loans,grants and workstudy- will adjust the package depending on how much they want you to be unable to turn it down.
Ds school is high cost- tuition is about $32,000 ( not inc room & board)
She received small subsidized loans, small work study allowance and the rest in grants.</p>
<p>Other students may be offered fewer grants, more work study and more loans- they may also intrepret income and assets in a way that changes EFC.
Our income and assets were pretty straightforward, but another family might have more room for borrowing.</p>
<p>But of schools that meet 100% of need- supposedly total amount of package will meet need, how heavily weighted with money that you don't have to pay back, will be determined by merit over what it took for you to be accepted.</p>
<p>Im not sure of the term "merit blind" I haven't heard it before.
Ive heard of "need blind", when a school doesn't consider the amount or fact of need before they offer admittance- this is getting less common.</p>
<p>Finally, what good is a large endowment if it is spread across many, many thousands of students (like the Univ. of Texas). A gross number alone tells us nothing. A per student figure is far more accurate in terms of wealth.
</p>
<p>I agree with Marite... a gross number is indeed a better indicator than a per capita number, for the very economies of scale you allude to. It does not matter how many students may have to "share" a resource; the very fact is the richest schools are able to provide these resources in the first place. (e.g., top faculty, labs, highly ranked departments, libraries, museums, etc.). </p>
<p>In the case of UTexas, the endowment has allowed it to have top-ranked departments in every academic discipline it has, one of the largest academic library collections in the country, the largest university art museum (Blanton), the largest university performing arts complex, well-equipped state of the art labs, a rare book/manuscript humanities library (Ransom Center) that only Harvard and Yale come even to matching, and many other amazing things - all while offering tuition at a very affordable price for state residents. The majority of items in the Ransom, for example, are one-of-a-kind and priceless... so does it really matter if there are 480 or 48,000 students at UT in terms of having access to these resources? </p>
<p>Many other wealthy universities with large student bodies are able to provide similar resources that smaller "per capita wealthy" schools cannot.</p>
<p>Likewise, does a country with a higher per capita income than the US make it "richer" than the US in terms of worldwide economic influence?</p>
<p>
[quote]
I agree with Marite... a gross number is indeed a better indicator than a per capita number, for the very economies of scale you allude to. It does not matter how many students may have to "share" a resource; the very fact is the richest schools are able to provide these resources in the first place. (e.g., top faculty, labs, highly ranked departments, libraries, museums, etc.).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>There is no economy of scale for faculty, unless you are willing to compromise with a higher student to faculty ratio. That's really the rub with higher education cost. The biggest chunk of the cost structure is faculty and staff expense...expense that is (or should be) totally variable with enrollment.</p>
<p>I think UTexas is a very good school, but there are a number publics ranked much higher (by US News and others) with much smaller endowments (and of course smaller student populations). At last glance UT just made the US News top 50. No?</p>
<p>"Economy of scale" is a catch phrase. It is theoretical. In business we know the most efficient operations are usually the smallest. Few businesses for instance are more efficient than the mom and pop companies. Large companies develop buraucracies and we all know the waste associated with such.</p>
<p>If you look at the overall rank, then yes, UT is at the bottom of the 50. Where it gets interesting is if you look at the Peer Assesment score. In this case, UT's 4.1 ranks it in the top 25, which is higher than half the universities above it in the "overall" ranking, public and private. The PA score makes up 25% of the USNWR ranking; the other 75% of the ranking is composed of criteria that inherently are not favorable to large public schools (e.g., student faculty ratios, selectivity, grad rate, alumni giving rates). These criteria are also geared toward more of a per capita-type measure (e.g., faculty resources). While it can be fairly argued that these are very important criteria to look at for undergrad study, it is also true that at the same time none directly measure inherent program or faculty quality. This is readily apparent when looking at individual program rankings, where UT is basically ranked strongly in every academic program it has - quite an impressive academic breadth. Not to mention UT still has the unmatched resources I listed earlier that are available to everyone. That's why I still think the overall endowment number is more important - you could almost argue it has let UT achieve everything it has in SPITE of being a large public.</p>
<p>I'm not sure I completely agree with what you're saying about economy of scale... Yes, large organizations do develop bueracracies that lead to inefficiencies, but at the same time they are able to accomplish orders of magnitude more with them. Smaller "mom and pop" companies just end up paying more on a relative basis for the same services because they don't have the advantage of volume and the leverage that comes with it.</p>