^^^ Building on post #99, I’ve often wondered about the future of these colleges that are meeting full need - or those that come close. Right now they are able to do this because of their huge endowments. But what happens as they deplete the endowments? Will today’s students be tomorrow’s donors? When you see generations giving to a school and then all of a sudden the family admittances stop, will the families keep donating? If a school can no longer meet full need, will applications decrease - and with them the selectivity prized by USNWR? Which then begs the question - is the quality of a school based on the quality of the admitted students or the teaching quality of the faculty?
It is based on both. If high quality students are admitted and experience low quality teaching then the retention and graduation rates will fall as those students will tend to transfer.
“Right now they are able to do this because of their huge endowments. But what happens as they deplete the endowments? Will today’s students be tomorrow’s donors? When you see generations giving to a school and then all of a sudden the family admittances stop, will the families keep donating?”
A properly managed endowment won’t be depleted. Any decent college board of trustees and admin team should place a properly shepherded endowment at the top of its priority list. I think that is why the better off institutions don’t feel compelled to take the same number of legacies than they might have in the past. They just don’t need to. For less selective institutions and those with lower endowments, it’ll be a different picture though. The rich get richer and the others will have to scramble.
That being said, anecdotal evidence suggests to me that many alumni who have received FA while in college are generous at paying it back. In contrast, family fortunes can often be depleted or diminished with subsequent generations so there is no guarantee that the stream of donations from a current family will continue with or without family admittances. I think development teams have to constantly work on forming relationships with the next generation of new donors to maintain and grow giving goals. Obviously, not all offspring will want to follow in their parents or grandparents footsteps when choosing a college anyway.
It would be interesting to see data on how often families continue to donate in subsequent generations.
Re: #96
@bernie12 has made similar comments based on comparisons of course materials and exams from various highly selective colleges, and has named names (and has noted that there can be variation across different instructors in the same department, and different departments in the same school, in terms of depth/rigor of the courses).
@tutumom2001 "Right now they are able to do this because of their huge endowments. But what happens as they deplete the endowments? "
Schools like the Ivies, MIT, and Stanford with large endowments are not depleting their endowments. They invest the money to earn a return on it. They also limit spending to about 5% of their endowments. That means that if their return can average over 5% in the long run, they will not be depleting their fund.
Additionally, these schools are mostly getting additional contributions of hundreds of millions annually, so these endowments are almost all growing except for a few of the small ones with contributions of say $20 million or less. Even those may not be growing but should be stable unless there is a significant drop in markets.
@Much2learn I understand that they won’t let the endowments completely deplete. Which is why I wonder how long they can continue to meet full need for every applicant and remain sustainable. Will there come a point when they can no longer meet full need? Will applicants only receive partial need or will they start to admit fewer full-need students. Once they reach that point, how will selectivity be affected?
Well, in 2008/09 there was a HUGE drop in the size of endowments in many top schools. Literally nearly 40% at some of the schools mentioned on CC over and over.
They’ve basically fought their way back, but there aren’t any guarantees for the future.
It is an interesting discussion to say the least. I am not convinced that kids will transfer necessarily if they realize their program is weaker than they expected although I had my last transfer for that very reason. I know back in the day, when ratings were not prevalent, I based my college choices on the strength of the program I was interested in. Those college now are ranked all over the place but I still maintain kids should pick their college based on the strength of the individual major if they have a firm major in mind without being terribly concerned about the college’s “ranking.”
I do believe that there is a segment of mass donor who will discontinue donating if their student is not accepted. Probably not major donors, but mid and mass yes. I’m sure there are statistics on that somewhere in the colleges so they know.
I also believe that colleges can rise and fall in popularity regardless of the quality of their education. There are just places that have brief periods of “popularity” for a multitude of reasons just like any consumer good or service.
FWIW, colleges listed below dropped by more than 10 positions in the USNWR national university rankings from 2011-2018. For example, Yeshiva ranked #50 in 2011 but #94 in 2018.
Source: http://publicuniversityhonors.com/2016/09/18/average-u-s-news-rankings-for-126-universities-2010-1017/
Yeshiva -44
Alabama -31
UC Riverside -30
Missouri -26
Dayton -25
Iowa State -21
Nebraska -20
Auburn -18
Marquette -15
Indiana -15
Kansas -11
[University of the] Pacific -11
UT Austin -11
Whether these schools were “overrated” in the first place, I don’t know
(however, all schools tracked on this site have ranked within the USNWR top 150 during the tracking period).
Oh, absolutely. Alumni in the $10,000 - $50,000/year range would probably be disinclined to continue giving at that amount if little junior is turned down, and would be more inclined to give it to another non-profit or junior’s new university. (Or just pay tuition!)
“Based on what do you judge their excellence?”
Probably the same materials and data you and everyone else can see, plus 35ish in-person campus visits each year, and talking with admissions staff and counseling colleagues at 5-10 conferences per year.
Some of this rise in the rankings has to do with popularity trends that unpredictably benefited some schools and hurt others. The high school and college aged cohort right now is showing a huge shift in preference for big cities relative to earlier cohorts. That’s not due to special marketing efforts by urban schools; it’s just what kids today want, even when they’re out of college.
Most of them set their admission processes and criteria to result in incoming classes with large numbers of students paying list price without financial aid (although some of the highest spending colleges may still be subsidizing list price students with endowment investment income). Note that this does not mean being need-aware for individual applicants, because things like legacy preference, heavy use of ED, etc. can be use to tilt the class toward wealth without being need-aware for individual applicants.
But also, if the endowment is large enough, its investment income (over years) can be large enough so that it can throw off plenty of money to subsidize students’ educations and fund other things that the university wants to do while also continuing to grow the endowment faster than inflation.
@tutumom2001
In other words, are those Top 10 schools really providing a Top 10 education or are they relying on prestige?
In general, the Top 10 schools do push their students harder because they can, however it is a very gradual slope. The difference is more clear when you compare what is expected at top 10 schools to schools outside the top 50.
The reason is that professors at any school have to pace courses for below-average students to be able to pass. For example, If you compare a below-average student at Penn or Chicago to a below-average student at Michigan State (a school in the 50-100 range), the difference is just too great to teach the same material at the same pace in most courses. The middle 50 ACT range at MSU is about 24-29 and at Penn and Chicago it is about 33-35. Additionally, the level of high school rigor and gpa are quite different for most of these students. Keep in mind that none of this is bad. MSU has great students, and you get an excellent education there. However, not many of their students would thrive at Penn or Chicago because they have not been prepared to compete in that environment. Many MSU students are top students from small villages in Michigan. They may have never even met another student who functions at the Penn or Chicago level before. It is a completely different world. If they were thrown into that environment unprepared, they would not last a semester.
I don’t know that I agree with that as a “total” statement. I personally think it is a major by major comparison. I think it is always too much of a generalization to take high school ACT scores and make a blanket statement that those students will not fair as well at a college with higher median ACT scores.To presume they will “fail out” is a disiproven theory. I think that is just one of those things that people want to believe but may not necessarily hold up to scrutiny. There are too many studies that show why smart students don’t always go to “smart” colleges to make generalizations about students who may not come from situations/wealthy K-12 districts and who may not have been exposed to depth, breadth, pace etc. to say that they will automatically not succeed. Regardless that has little to do with college rankings rising or falling.
@ucbalumnus Can you point me to where? Since I’m on cc considering doing volunteer college counseling at my high school next year, I’d like to see his thoughts wondering if they correlate with mine on any schools I’ve experienced - then adding his thoughts into my mind should I talk with students where content like that matters.
See @bernie12 's comments in this thread:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1619090-schools-that-are-considered-to-be-on-ivy-league-level-for-undergrad-p1.html
Also, some comments on related subjects in this thread:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21556818#Comment_21556818
@tk21769. OP here. Thanks for posting that. I have been looking for this information and couldn’t find it. This is exactly the kind of information I hoped to see when posting this topic.
@ucbalumnus Many thanks! Due to time constraints I’ve only read the first page, but it’s given me enough info to know that bernie and I look for similar attributes and he/she has far more experience and depth than I do considering most kids at my high school don’t make it to top level schools, then many only return to say “hi” freshman year or afterward. I’ve only compared math/bio as well with only a few anecdotes from other fields.
When we do get some top notch kids who thrive on depth it’ll be good to have his info in my mind to share.
The Catholic schools are actually doing very well. Notre Dame, Boston College, Villanova, Gonzaga, etc. They’ve got a real niche, and I see the numbers applying to not just Catholic schools, but Christian schools are on the rise. The ones I’ve looked into have also seen increases in test scores and GPAs among admitted students.
Just to be clear, while Michigan State does enroll some students from “small villages in Michigan,” they represent a small percentage of the student body. About a quarter of MSU’s undergrads are internationals (predominantly from China and Korea) and OOS U.S. residents (predominantly from Illinois, California, and New York). Of the in-state students, nearly two-thirds are from metro Detroit, and another 20% or so are from smaller cities like Grand Rapids, Lansing, Flint, and Kalamazoo. So that leaves about 15% or so of the in-state students (or about 12% of the student body) coming from smaller towns, “small villages,” and rural areas. And of those, a fair number come from upscale areas like Traverse City or college towns that often have quite good schools. Residents of “small villages” typically enroll in the nearest state directional university—though to be sure, some do find their way to Michigan State.
I’m not saying all these students are Ivy-ready, but the focus on small villages is misleading in the Michigan State context…
And some students from small towns and villages do make it to the Ivies and equivalent schools. Cornell, for example, enrolls students from every county in New York. Some of these are in the state-supported contract colleges, but many are in endowed colleges like CAS and Engineering.