Why is Villanova financial aid so low compared to peer univerities?

Just curious if anyone knows why Villanova’s FA packages for grant aid are so unbelievably low compared to other schools? Son was accepted EA to business school several years ago but FA grant aid was $12K/yr less than other schools he was accepted to (Lehigh, Bucknell, W&L, etc.). He didn’t go to Nova. Daughter wants to apply to Nova next year, really loves it, but I did the College Cost Calculator on all of the websites of the schools she is interested in and Nova aid once again is considerably lower than the others. Too bad. Just can’t justify spending $50K+ more over 4 years for her to go there. One would think they would be more generous, but I assume they don’t have to.

Maybe they can’t be more generous?

They have a very limited endowment - about $700 million - in view of the number of students on campus. That is about $70,000 per student. For comparison, W&L has almost 10 times that per student figure.

I bet Villanova would like to offer more FA, but that desire has to be balanced with the resources available.

I assumed that. I guess I wonder why a school like Villanova does not have a much larger endowment considering iits high rankings and relative success of their alumni as compared to similar schools. Agreed, W&L is not really comparable since it is a very small school with a huge endowment.

Very,very low endowment per student. My student was accepted last year but we did not apply for FA because Villanova’s NPC showed no chance of FA. Other schools with larger endowments did offer us FA. The only way Villanova would work for us was merit, which didn’t happen.

There was no way we would consider paying such a high full price for a school with such a low endowment. The school has less money to spend on the students and we didn’t consider that a good use of our money.

With Villanova’s increasing profile, both sports and academic, and good financial planning, I would hope that they will be able to increase their endowment. I read that they are working toward need only and away from merit. Even now, they say that they consider need in their merit offers.

Maybe someone should apply to work on their Development team. It does seem odd.

It’s not been that long ago that Villanova was added to the UN&WR rankings as a National University ca Regional school where it led its region for years. It has made the top 50 in the National ratings recently. But it is the new kid on the block in terms of that category. Not surprising that its endowment isn’t up there yet.

Nova does NOT guarantee to meet full need. So it makes sense that their awards are not going to match those schools that do guarantee to meet full need. It gives merit money to about 5% of entering freshmen and it also gives athletic scholarships.

Nova does well in our area with full pay students clamoring to gain entry. So they may not need to offer more financial aid. They prefer to put the money into keeping their athletic teams competitive and offering up merit to high performing academic applicants. They’ve “bought” kids from more selective schools with these scholarships. I think Nova is doing well with the balance they have.

I agree with the above postings, and would add…

Except for Notre Dame, the top Catholic schools (for a variety of reasons) tend to have relatively low endowments considering their academic rankings and popularity. Georgetown University, for example, has historically had the lowest endowment (by a good measure) of schools in the top 20. Boston College also has a relatively low endowment and Viillanova has the lowest of the three.

It is not a coincidence that Georgetown and BC, like Villanova, are not known as generous in terms of financial aid.

(Part of the issue, I think, is that some folks - who may not know the endowment issue - expect them to be as generous as Ivies and LACs and a few other top-ranked schools when it comes to need-based financial aid)

I agree with the above poster, nevertheless, individual results may vary. If interested I would suggest to apply and then compare the financial aid offer to the other acceptances. Through the years I have seen several generous offers from Nova.

They use different formulas from a lot of the Mainstream north east schools. Schools in the 568 schools use similar tenets.

In addition to how much money, it is also about how they use the money.

Nova is pretty typical for a school of its level in terms of how the money works. Nova doesn’t meet full financial need. Nova does a decent amount of merit aid. So Nova allocates the aid dollars (need and/or merit) to target certain applicants that they want and who they think are most likely to enroll. FYI, Harvard (with boatloads of money) does this too.

Schools at Nova’s level (like Santa Clara or Fordham) operate the exact same way.

Higher up the ladder (BC, Holy Cross, Gtown, ND and Harvard) the model is (i) more aid dollars overall and (ii) little to no merit dollars. Dollars are dollars; aid is aid. So dollars spent on merit aid are dollars not available for need-based aid.

For a low income/high stat kid, Harvard will often cost less than Nova because Harvard has so much need-based money available. The need-aid will make Harvard free or close to free. And Harvard really really wants a kid like that to enroll at Harvard.

For a high stat kid from a $200k income family, Nova will cost a lot less. At Harvard, that kid will get only a bit of need-aid. Harvard really doesn’t need one more kid like that to enroll. At Nova, that kid may get a full tuition or full ride merit scholarship. Nova really really wants a kid that could get into Harvard to enroll at Nova instead.

All schools use their available dollars to enroll the best class they can get. And “best” doesn’t just mean high SATs. The best class will meet budget on lots of characteristics – high stats, economic diversity, racial diversity, athletes, singers, full pay families, etc. etc. etc.

Said another way, all schools (Nova and Harvard) throw money at certain admitted kids (and not at other admitted kids) in order to raise the chance that certain kids will enroll.

@LaxMass Boston College endowment $2.6 billion with increased growth since 2012. Georgetown is $1.6 b which I thought would be larger.

Here’s some data from the NY Times database that shows how different schools have different targets for their money, as well as more/less money than other schools.

Median family income at Harvard is $169k. 15% of students are from the top 1%, 39% from top 5%, 67% from top 20%, 4.5% from bottom 20%.

Median family income at Gtown is $229k. 21% of students are from the top 1%, 51% from top 5%, 74% from top 20%, 3.1% from bottom 20%.

Median family income at Nova is $196k. 15% of students are from the top 1%, 43% from top 5%, 75% from top 20%, 2.3% from bottom 20%.

It all makes sense. Harvard has the most money and does zero merit aid. So Harvard has more poor kids than Nova and more low middle income kids (hence the lowest median income overall).

Gtown has less money than Harvard and does zero merit aid. So it has more rich kids than Nova but also more poor kids. Not so many from the middle.

With limited need dollars, Nova has the fewest poor kids. Fewer rich kids than Gtown but an overall higher median income than Harvard – that’s because of the merit aid offers that typically are accepted by middle/upper middle families.

/\ Just to add that Georgetown and Villanova do not simply have less money than Harvard, they have tens of billions less dollars than Harvard. Given that, one would expect (and the expectation is correct) that financial aid would be MUCH lower at Villanova and Georgetown than a school like Harvard.

(It is also true that schools like Holy Cross and Villanova and Boston College dedicate some very limited funds to academic merit aid…and dedicate money to athletic merit aid. Harvard does neither.)

/\ I did a quick look at the two most recent CDS (at H2A 'n and ‘o’)and it appears as though 79 (approx) of Villanova’s 1600 (approx) enrolled frosh received some sort of academic merit aid with an average of 20K (approx).

(Obviously and importantly there are some named [i.e. ‘Presidential Scholarships’] academic merit scholarships that are full sticker price [tution, room and board, etc.] and some academic merit aid awards that are well below 20k …all within the 79 figure.)

Some of the named schollies (including some of the ‘Presidential Scholarships’) are targeted at certain groups so one would need to further whittle the number down when eyeballing personal prospects.

So, there is actually very little in available academic merit aid at a place like Villanova as others have noted. (Although it is more than schools like Harvard who offer 0 academic merit aid)

How expensive Nova (or any other school) is also depends a lot on exactly what income bracket you are in. According to the USDOE Scorecard database:

Average Nova net price for $75-110k family is $34k. That’s really high. There’s not going to be many families at that income level picking to pay for Nova. Compare that to $16k Harvard, $14k W&L, $25k Gtown, $26k Lehigh. Bucknell is actually the same as Nova at $34k.

At $110k and above, Nova is $51k – also high. Compare Harvard $42k, W&L $38k, Gtown $47k. Lehigh ($51k) and Bucknell ($52k) are also as high as Nova. Of course that’s an average over a huge range – we’d know a lot more if USDOE showed the average for 100-200k, 200-300k, 300k+ for example.

But lower endowment schools (like Nova) are much more dependent on their net tuition revenue. Rating agencies indicate 84% of Nova’s revenue comes from student charges. That’s high. So each school is going to have a slightly different financial sweet spot for the kind of families that they can get to enroll so all seats are filled and the net tuition revenue budget is met.

Any aid money hits net tuition revenue. So any merit aid dollars means less need-aid dollars.

The jesuit/catholic schools have a complicated financial structure. Their presidents aren’t paid millions of dollars like their counterparts at other universities as they are usually priests who might be paid by the order or their salaries might go back to the SJ/order. I know the priest who was president of Regis University for many years and he made ~$250k per year but most of it went back to the order. Many of their former professors were priest, but are now professors who need to be paid.

Some of the buildings on campus may be owned by other church entities. Often there is a church owned by the archdioceses.

There are also a lot of private scholarships connected to these schools from Knights of Columbus chapters, local religious groups. Many (many) years ago when I was talking to Catholic University about attending, I was immediately handed a list of scholarships I should apply to and on it were a lot of things like “Knights of Columbus of Wheeling West Virginia” and a parish in Kansas.

Looking back at the question again, obviously schools like Harvard (with a whopping 38 Billion (!) endowment v about 700M for Villanova) are completely outside of the issue. As is W&L. Although useful to show the link between endowment and financial aid. Beyond that, the two (V and H) are not peers.

I’d guess that the closest peer/applicant overlap right now to Villanova is BC (that may have not always been the case). It would not surprise me to learn that BC financial aid is not too far away from Villanova’s financial aid (although BC seems to have about double the per-student endowment).

(USNWR lists BC, UPenn, Northeastern and Notre Dame as the 4 largest cross-applicants for Villanova.)