Here’s the irony: Wesleyan officially ceased being the wealthiest college in the country the moment it reached gender parity in the early 1980s. Unlike some NESCACs that cut back on the number of males admitted to each class in order to “make room” for women, Wesleyan seamlessly absorbed the equivalent of an eighth Seven Sister college in a period of ten years, beginning in 1969. That effectively halved its per student endowment just in time for publication of the first USNews poll.
Did it have any effect on the quality of the school? It depends on how you look at it. When I enrolled the Fall of 1969, the student:faculty ratio was 5 to 1. By the eighties it was 10 to 1. OTOH, when I enrolled my class of 360 guys had been selected from a pool of 1,900 applicants and the selectivity was north of 30%. Today the number of applicants is over 12,000 and the selectivity has been reduced by half.