<p>.... then there's that little college/alfalfa farm in Nevada! Very .... initimate!</p>
<p>Well, out of the top 10 national universities, Princeton leads with 61% of alumni donating, followed by Harvard with 48%, and then Dartmouth with 47%. The ten average 42.8%.</p>
<p>Out of the top 10 liberal arts colleges, Carleton leads with 66%, followed by Amherst with 63%, and then Williams with 60%. The ten average 55.7%. Incidentally, the lowest percentage (48%) is for Wesleyan, which has the largest undergraduate population of the ten.</p>
<p>This leads me to believe that size is correlated with alumni support, whether it is cause and effect, I cannot determine.</p>
<p>Why do you leave out Notre Dame, Yale, Duke, Stanford, Penn and Cornell - all fairly large schools that are among the top 15 national universities in percentage of alumni contributing, even though many of their alumni are graduate school alumni, and not graduates of the undergraduate colleges?</p>
<p>Only the top three were named individually. Only the top ten ranked schools (overall) were included in the sample.</p>
<p>All the others you mentioned, with the exception of Notre Dame (ranks 18), are included in the average for the top ten schools.</p>
<p>The problem with including graduate school alumni, of course, is whether it means including the entire university population (including Ph.Ds, med schools, masters programs, etc.) in the %. That would almost certainly lower the result for uni-docs.</p>
<p>10-20% increase- all of it in international student population?</p>
<p>No, not all of it. But Summers has often indicated his desire to make Harvard more of an "international" institution.</p>
<p>Almost all the top schools are thinking of increasing their student bodies.</p>
<p>There are so many "diversity" goals to be met these days that the size of the student body simply <em>must</em> grow at most Ivy addresses - if only to make sure that there will still be room for the football, basketball, hockey and lacrosse recruits!</p>
<p>Imagine what it's like at e.g. Middlebury, with football, hockey, lacrosse, alpine& nordic ski, etc. in a student body of ~2000. What room does that leave for pure academic admissions? Harvard advertises ~1500 varsity athletes out of 6500 students. Kudos to Swarthmore for losing the football team.</p>
<p>Swarthmore's decision to drop football almost cost Dartmouth's Dean of Admissions his job.</p>
<p>"Swarthmore's decision to drop football almost cost Dartmouth's Dean of Admissions his job."</p>
<p>lol.</p>
<p>How did that happen?</p>
<p>Here's a concise version of the story:</p>
<p>While his view point may not be incorrect, he should have kept those thoughts to himself or at least out of writing.</p>
<p>FYI, on the way home last night I noticed that the big nursery on the corner of Western Ave and Memorial Drive has vanished! Rumor has it that Harvard bought the property for a future House. Now its beginning to make sense....but carving out that much room along the river has got to be a challenge....and where will anyone ever park?! good gosh...</p>