<p>kyledavid80, do YOU have an INVESTMENT in WashU??? Well do you, huh? huh??? Show us your INVESTMENT CARD!!! What's that? You don't? Well then who the HELL do you think you are anyway, huh???</p>
<p>I'd advise you to shut your trap unless you do... (as per EditorinChief's new thought police rules)... which reminds me, we need to delete 99.99% of the posts on CC since most of us have absolutely NO INVESTMENT in the schools we are discussing... better get on that pronto</p>
<p>kyledavid80, Cornell is also gradually cutting enrollment! Are they playing the ratings game? <a href="http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000378.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000378.pdf</a> Check out the first paragraph... and read on.</p>
<p>yeah...I'm not even going to respond to that. You are really a sad person. you must really get off on people hating you through the mask of your big bad CC forum identity.</p>
<p>Anhydrosis2000: Possibly, though more gradually, as you say.</p>
<p>EditorinChief88: that seems to be what you're saying.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Then assume that only 14% is available for financial aid, which is the amount Princeton sets aside. For Princeton, these means each student can receive $266,000- more than enough to cover the cost of their education. WUStL, on the other hand, has a mere $49,000 set aside for each student's financial aid- barely enough to cover one year!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's not the way endowment works. Fiscally sound schools (a category that would include both Princeton and WashU) spend only the annual dividends from the endowment, leaving the principle intact. In fact, they target endowment spending so that the endowment grows to stay ahead of inflation. Most target to spend 4% to 6% of the endowment each year, figuring the endowment will earn 8% to 10% or more over time, so the earnings cover the spending and inflation. WashU spent 4.2% of endowment according to the most recent financial report. That's a conservative number and the mark of a school that is fiscally sound.</p>
<p>Here's where it gets a little tricky. Grad students, biz students, law students, and especially med students cost a ton more to educate than undergrads. Probably twice as much. WashU is half grad and professional students, so half to two-thirds of their endowment spending goes somewhere other than to undergrads. All you can do is guess about the real distribution between grad students and undergrads, but figure WashU had somewhere between $10,000 and $14,000 per undergrad in endowment spending last year (based on the total $187 million in endowment spending in their annual report).</p>
<p>To put that into perspective (using a LAC for a clean analysis because every dollar spent is spent on undergrads), Swarthmore had $39,000 in per student endowment spending last year. Neither of those numbers includes financial aid, which is treated as a discount in the revenue column, not an operating expense.</p>
<p>This per student endowment spending is a freebie to the students, kind of like a universal merit aid deal for every single student in the school. That's $14,000 (or $39,000) that is spent per student above and beyond the money received in tuition. So, again, using the LAC example, Swarthmore's per student operating spending last year was the $29,000 per student in tuiton/room & board plus the $36,000 per student in endowment spending plus annual gifts and other misc revenues, for a total of $73,000 per student. In other words, they charged $29,000 for a product that cost them $73,000. That's how you get applicants line up around the block. Do that over a period of decades and that's how you become "prestigious". Of course students want to go there. I'd like to buy a new Mercedes for $20,000; who wouldn't?</p>
<p>You can see how important per student endowment is when you translate it to the actual spending on each student (on everything from faculty to psych counseling to you name it). You can also see how increasing enrollment is not a good thing from the financial standpoint and how reducing the size of the student body can be a smart strategy.</p>
<p>Do you HATE me now? <em>sniff</em> <em>sniff</em></p>
<p>People who are posting these allegations about WashU are guaranteed to fall into one or more of the following categories:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Intellectually or analytically challenged kids or parents (considering how lame and illogical most of these accusations are).</p></li>
<li><p>Kids who applied to WashU and were rejected or waitlisted and their parents.</p></li>
<li><p>Students who got into schools ranked by USNews lower than WashU and who for some reasons are very angry about it (strangely WashU students don't talk much about rankings, they just enjoy the quality of education and life that they have).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>People, just get a life and move on. Moderator, could you stop this discussion ?</p>
<p>interesteddad, excellent post.</p>
<p>so what you are really saying is that going to an Ivy / Top LAC is like getting a brand new Merc for 20K and going to WashU is like buying what you thought was a Merc, opening up the hood and finding a Hyundai engine.</p>
<p>datadriven,</p>
<p>you forgot number 4:</p>
<ol>
<li>people who are calling WashU out on its shady practices.</li>
</ol>
<p>and, geez, what ever happened to free expression of opinion? why should this discussion be stopped? seems like we are all engaging in an interesting debate. what are you afraid of? the truth getting exposed?</p>
<p>There is a big difference between informed opinions and uninformed opinions. Seems like most of the negative posts come from people who have had either no or minimal contact with WashU, don't back up posts with facts just repeat hear say or want WashU to run the school according to their opinions. I agree with datadriven's statement "(strangely WashU students don't talk much about rankings, they just enjoy the quality of education and life that they have)." I don't understand why that is so difficult for people to comprehend and accept. If you don't like or agree with what WashU does, why not just ignore it? One wonders if it truly is bitterness, jealousy or what else.</p>
<p>
[quote]
...and going to WashU is like buying what you thought was a Merc, opening up the hood and finding a Hyundai engine.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I didn't say anything remotely like that. I don't have a dog in this hunt. From looking at the financial reports, WashU looks like a very well-run school with a very substantial per student endowment. I've never come across anything that suggests it isn't one of the top private universities in the country.</p>
<p>Just on the surface, cutting enrollment by 500 sounds like a pretty smart move to me. It will definitely strengthen the school.</p>
<p>
[quote]
and going to WashU is like buying what you thought was a Merc, opening up the hood and finding a Hyundai engine
[/quote]
</p>
<p>WashU consistently ranks among the best in the nation for quality of life, happiness of students, and overall undergrad experience. Do you have any evidence for this statement? I would suggest actually speaking with students at WashU first and getting their opinion before speaking for them: in the end, the only people that know how good (or bad) WashU really is are the people that go there! Notice that does not include all of you people on here that spend spare time discussing the school that you do not attend, just as I will not go around criticizing Harvard or any other school I have never attended.</p>
<p>I live in St. Louis. I have several friends going to WashU. I've seen the area around the school, and I've talked to people about the living situation.</p>
<p>There is little to no available land. There are too many people on campus. The last few years brought a swell of new students. It needs to cut enrollment, end of story. Any US New benefits just sweeten the deal.</p>
<p>datadriven and brand_182,</p>
<p>Criticizing people's arguments by stating that their motivations may be questionable does not lessen the validity of their arguments.</p>
<p>Criticizing people's arguments by stating they come from someone who has never managed a university or business before does not lessen the validity of their arguments.</p>
<p>Criticizing people's arguments by stating that they come from someone who is only 18 or 19 does not lessen the validity of their arguments.</p>
<p>Criticizing people's arguments by stating that they couldn't get into the school if they tried does not lessen the validity of their arguments.</p>
<p>If you wish to debate the arguments or points others' make, you may wish to deal with the arguments themselves and quit attacking by providing illogical ad hominem points.</p>
<p>P.S. I'm in my early 50s, have managed businesses for multiple years and was accepted into both an Ivy league school (Brown) and a top 10 MBA program (from which I graduated)--not that any of this should matter in the least relative to any point I'm trying to make here. </p>
<p>I really don't care about whether what Wash U is or is not doing is to increase their USNW ratings--but I'm getting sick of the ridiculous things that you think are passing as logical deductions/arguments.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Criticizing people's arguments by stating that their motivations may be questionable does not lessen the validity of their arguments.</p>
<p>Criticizing people's arguments by stating they come from someone who has never managed a university or business before does not lessen the validity of their arguments.</p>
<p>Criticizing people's arguments by stating that they come from someone who is only 18 or 19 does not lessen the validity of their arguments.</p>
<p>Criticizing people's arguments by stating that they couldn't get into the school if they tried does not lessen the validity of their arguments.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>For the record, I've done none of the things that you've stated above. I cannot speak for datadriven. You should read the thread again and not resort to raising false claims against myself.</p>
<p>My apologies brand_182. I should have directed my comments to datadriven only. Sorry for including you in my last post.</p>
<p>Hahahah WashU is kind of like Sanjaya on American Idol.:)</p>
<p>no offense taken calcruzer.</p>
<p>why insult Sanjaya?</p>
<p>ST2,</p>
<p>Please read Calcruzer's points. Do they apply to you?</p>
<p>
[quote]
strangely WashU students don't talk much about rankings, they just enjoy the quality of education and life that they have)." I don't understand why that is so difficult for people to comprehend and accept. If you don't like or agree with what WashU does, why not just ignore it? One wonders if it truly is bitterness, jealousy or what else.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Nobody is saying WashU's students aren't happy and WashU hasn't been good to them. Some people are criticizing WashU because they think all the good stuff are probably done at the expense of others. Some people voice their opinions because they care about social justice. So please don't make blanket silly statements like "they are jealous, rejected, or having nothing better to do". You were merely attacking the messengers while not adding anything valuable to this debate.</p>
<p>To me, WashU should get their act together and submit CSD. That should silent all criticism if they are indeed clean. In particular, WashU has seemed to waitlist just about everybody not admitted and if that's the case, the waitlist was used to manipulate yield and admit rate, not just for managing risk of under/over enrollment. CSD tells us those numbers. Another thing CDS shows is the financial aid information. WashU's admission isn't need-blind. Maybe those generous merit-based scholarships come at the expense of poor students, who would have been admitted if they ask for less aid. Maybe all those nice facilities are funded by a pretty wealthy student body. Maybe the funds that could have been used for need-blind admissions were used on food, merit-based scholarhips...the kind of things that make current students happy. So just because students are happy..etc doesn't necessarily mean the tactics behind are okay. Again, these are just speculations that have been made. If you want people stop talking about them, ask WashU to get more transparent with them.</p>