With regard to endowments - sure alumni giving is an important component, but for many of the LACs with very latge endowments, there was often a huge single gift made, or a fortuitous turn of events with donated stock. Tiny Grinnell, which has a huge endowment for a school of its size $1.5 billion, benefitted greatly by having a stake in Intel stock before it went public and also having Warren Buffet as a long time trustee who gave money and formulated extremely successful investment advice for the endowment. Richmond is another school with a huge endowment and they benefitted greatly by a $50m gift in the 1960’s by the Robins pharmaceutical family. By today’s dollars, that gift is still among the largest ever recorded by a school.