Tuition Conundrum

^^adn don’t forget that (some of) the Ivies have a very high threshold for determining eligibility for financial aid: $180k, which would be full pay at nearly every other college.

Or higher. Entertain yourself with Harvard’s net price calculator: https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculator

Harvard’s full pay is at $270k. But @ucbalumnus your full pay is tuition only or including R&B? According to Harvard own press release two days ago less than half is full pay.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/5/16/matriculation-rate-2022/

U-San Diego - 31% full pay

Santa Clara - 30% full pay

highly misleading numbers. ~40% of the total debt is for grad/professional loans. The average undergrad leaves college with $25k (public) or $33k (private).

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=166027#finaid indicates that 55% of Harvard frosh get grant or scholarship aid, but only 44% of all undergraduates do. I used the all undergraduate number to get 56% as full pay.

“But that still leaves over 600 full-time undergrads who got neither need-based nor merit awards nor athletic scholarships.”

Just guessing but I’d bet that most of those 600 undergrads who got no aid were international students (full pay.) Does that mean there are zero full pay students at Loyola? No. But I would be surprised if the number of full pay students was even 200, or 2%.

Quick glance at the DePaul website indicates approx 500 international undergrads, who will also mostly be full pay. So potentially approx 1500 full pays of the 13,000 undergrads

Yes, 95% is “everyone” to me. Full-time, first-time freshmen is where the rubber meets the road, because they’re the ones who count in admissions statistics. 95% get some kind of aid at Hawaii Pacific, 98% at Redlands, etc. In other words, getting accepted at Hawaii Pacific and being charged the full sticker price is about as unlikely as getting into Harvard.

Just as a general business marketing proposition – more people will a product at a discount than the same product offered originally that the discounted price. In other words – if one business is selling widgets for $100 apiece – and another business announces a 50% off sale on $200 widgets… the “discounted” widgets will move faster.

This has been studied in the context of college tuition pricing & merit aid as well – so basically a college will do better to keep its tuition high and then discount it through merit offers than to reduce tuition across the board.

So when looking at pricing, hard to tell what is a reflection of a market problem vs. whas is the result of an intentional marketing strategy.

Hawaii Pacific full pay (including those whose only FA is loans or work study) students are 9% for frosh but 41% for all undergraduates. The “all undergraduates” number makes more sense when looking at how colleges meet budgets.

I doubt either students or parents are picking colleges for their original price tag or big endowments. Most teens and families doesn’t even grasp financial side even at acceptance time. Aim is neither to find the cheapest product nor the lowest price. People go by selectivity, academic rankings, reputation, chances to graduate on time and help finding internships, jobs etc. and then pick what looks like best product for the price that they feel comfortable with, it can be $0 or it can be $80,000. Just because EFC or sticker says $80,000 on paper, it doesn’t mean its worth the same for every family. Everyone looks for resources like merit scholarships, need based aid, loans, work study etc.

Financials were important to us from the very beginning. We did not consider selectivity or chance to graduate on time or the other things you listed. We considered the school’s fit for each child, the majors/courses offered, and cost. For one we were also looking for a sport.

There was no point looking at a school we couldn’t afford.

This may be true for the savvy consumers on CC, but I doubt it’s true for the general run of college-bound students and their parents. There are an awful lot of people out there who aren’t as hung up on selectivity and academic reputation as we are on CC, except insofar as selectivity puts some top colleges beyond their reach. And I suspect there are many people who are underinformed on things like graduation rates, internship opportunities, and career services. I’ve known many students for whom the key questions are: 1) Is the college in a convenient or desirable location for me (which often means, how close is it to my home)? 2) Can I commute, and do I want to commute, or do I want a residential college experience? 3) Does it have a program or major that I’m interested in, if I even know what I’m interested in? 4) Can I afford it? 5) Can I get in? And for some, a school’s religious affiliation might matter, either as a positive or a negative factor.

We’re in a little bubble here on CC, generally people focused on highly selective colleges—a pretty small fraction of the total market. We reinforce each other’s thinking through the echo chamber of CC, then casually assume that everyone must think like us. 'Tain’t so.

I also suspect that despite net price calculators, many people are still underinformed about financial aid and either unrealistically assume more aid will be available or are deterred from even applying to colleges with a high stick price because they don’t know how to find the net price.

There is no question that the majority of my daughters’ peers were going instate first, both for money and location reasons. Only a small portion even looked OOS or at private instate schools. Most were more concerned about the rank of the football team than the rank on USNWR.

While the state schools might not be the first choice in the New England states, they really are in the rest of the US.

Private universities have to rely on alumni donations to subsidize their outrageous prices. Therefore, they have to limit enrollment and select kids with wealthy parents. Few kids who get admitted actually go to private universities, because the actual financial aid package is almost always different than the net price calculator. With limited enrollment, they can find another rich person willing pay their outrageous tuition. Children of rich alumni get first priority in admission.

This pretty much means that, generally, kids who go to private universities aren’t the smart ones. They’re the rich ones. They keep a small handful of smart kids and give them alumni donations to help them pay for school. That’s why it’s so hyper-competitive to get into these schools. After the rich kids get in, there’s only a small handful of slots for the ones that are genuinely academically gifted. The prestige is really just a big lie. What it really amounts to is a big donor cartel with the richest and most influential pulling the strings. Notice how none of this has anything to do with educational quality.

The best colleges to go to are the “public” ones, which is actually a funny contradiction. The private schools act more like a corrupt government and the public schools act more like a competitive private organization. Prices are low and volume is high, eliminating the need to pander to wealthy donors. Students are admitted based on genuine academic merit and capacity.

Coolguy- the high yields of the top colleges directly contradict your alleged “fact” that few kids who get admitted end up going to these schools. The majority of kids who get admitted to a place like Harvard or Princeton end up going there. And if they don’t- it’s because they’ve gone to Yale or Stanford, not because they’re going to Southern Connecticut State College.

I won’t bother to contradict the rest of your post- since there is abundant evidence which proves your wrong. And there are at least ten public flagship U’s where prices are NOT low (ask residents of PA or IL about their instate tuition), and dozens of public U’s where “genuine academic merit” is absolutely false since they are essentially open enrollment. They are measuring “academic merit” on the basis of whether or not you have a HS diploma. So good luck with that “merit” argument.

“And there are at least ten public flagship U’s where prices are NOT low (ask residents of PA or IL about their instate tuition)”

Though note that the “high” in-state tuition charged by schools like UIUC and PSU (who charge among the highest in-state rates among publics anywhere) are still less than half of the list tuition at the elite privates.

The most “elite” schools have endowments of billions, which allow them to give extremely generous financial aid to poor, as well as middle-class (not getting into an argument about what middle class is). They aren’t admitting sub-par students for the sake of $$$.

My son picked a school with full national merit ride at a school where only 30% are full pay but his other top choices were Rice and Amherst. What percentage pays full at these schools?

^ Roughly half would be my guess. Maybe a little less than half at Rice.

Why does it matter to you, though?

You are right, it doesn’t. I guess just curiosity. Just like my question shouldn’t matter to you but you felt curious.