How good is Fin Aid?

Joe_Caltech_04 · May 3, 2007, 8:57pm

Rocket,

I know it must be frustrating for you–I’m sorry about that, it’s honestly not intended to be, but the facts of the matter make it almost inevitable that it will be. (Hey, it frustrates me to think of Harvard’s endowment. It’s pretty huge and Caltech will probably never catch up.)

I know that Harvey Mudd makes good use of the resources it has.

But when you make a statement like

I have to tell you as politely as possible that although that’s not exactly the point I’m making, it is a direct consequence of it. More precisely–bear with me here–it’s the counterpositive of what I am saying is definitely not true. I’ll explain:

I’m not going to let people get away with saying that Caltech’s endowment “doesn’t benefit” students, which is essentially what you’re arguing. It clearly does, and can be shown to in a numerical fashion (the prime example in this thread being extremely generous financial aid). Unfortunately the consequence of this is that if the endowment is removed, you remove the benefits (extremely generous financial aid, etc.) as well. Money does not come from thin air.

You may believe the gardens on the Caltech campus to be irresponsible–and you might be right, even, in environmental sense, but I am not sure about that since there are many “green” folks in the Caltech administration–but an alumnus died a long time ago and left money in the endowment specifically for gardens and campus beautification. It can’t be spent on anything else.

A lot of the money in the endowment is designated or earmarked that way. That’s why Caltech has to spend so much of the endowment on things that benefit the students (like financial aid…): a large part of the money was given specifically for that purpose, mostly by alums, and alums want the students to benefit directly. This fact makes LabRat’s assertion in a different thread [which incidentally is what got me interested in looking into this topic in the first place] that “Caltech’s undergraduates don’t benefit from the endowment” just laughable. Caltech couldn’t deny undergrads the benefits even if they wanted to.

But you may be right on the water use. I don’t really have any data on that. I just know it’s really pretty.

Seiken · May 3, 2007, 11:38pm

What is the endowment to the 5Cs as a whole, since the endowment from Pomona obviously sponsors some programs beneficial to Mudders and vice versa?

Anyways, back to the other thing I was talking about. When I said “two” I was referring to MIT and Harvey Mudd. The truth is, you HAVE to consider the wealth of the money behind certain college decisions. Caltech is obviously the cheapest of the three, which in turn attracts some people toward it (from MIT at least). And those who would likely follow that 10k cheaper sticker price will most likely need greater financial aid.

rocketDA · May 4, 2007, 6:50am

To answer the OP’s question qualitatively:
Mudd supposedly gives a lot of money away to people who need it. Besides the CSF and a few other small awards, they don’t give much merit-based aid away.

I, for one, didn’t get CSF or really anything so I’m paying $46k/year…$20k of which is loans. Albeit my family isn’t poor, the fact that my mom is a doctor makes me get very little aid. They must think she makes a lot because she runs her own practice but when all said and done, my mom and dad sold their house and got apartments (after divorcing) to pay for college. The Mudd administration really doesn’t care about white male people… sigh. (Supposedly, white males make up the large % of the waitlist as well)

So… if you REALLY need aid you’ll get it. If you are a under represented minority, you’ll probably get a full ride. If you are a girl, you’ll probably get $20k/year scholarship.

It appears they have quite a bit of money to give away but they seem to concentrate it oddly… I have half a dozen friends (all minority girls) that are on a full ride not because of merit but ethnicity/sex.

Talk about equality. Reverse sexism?

rocketDA · May 4, 2007, 7:13am

“What is the endowment to the 5Cs as a whole, since the endowment from Pomona obviously sponsors some programs beneficial to Mudders and vice versa?”

Pomona-$1.46 billion
CMC-$373 million
HMC-$229 million
Pitzer-$89 million
Scripps-$200 million

Keck- unknown
CGU- unknown

Comes to be $2.35 billion for the 5Cs (without Keck or CGU)
2500 courses
3300 faculty/staff
6000 students
300+ acres of developed college land
something like another 300 acres own by the consortium to eventually build more colleges/facilities

Joe_Caltech_04 · May 4, 2007, 10:48am

Although Scripps, etc. may benefit from Pomona’s huge endowment in terms of being able to take classes there, I would be very surprised if (for example) any money at all in that endowment went to directly fund financial aid at the other colleges.

So over the whole Claremont system, endowment works out to $392,000 per student, which is pretty good. But what is your point? Caltech is around $800,000 per student (and yes, that includes the grad students too–not cheating).

In terms of “quite a bit of money to give away, but concentrated oddly”, Harvey Mudd makes 156 non-need-based awards of an average value of $5157 (so clearly it is not true that females will “probably” get $20,000, for example, as claimed above). Caltech makes 78 non-need-based awards of an average value of $29,818.

To the “richer families at Harvey Mudd” claim, Harvey Mudd students graduate with an average debt of $16,055; Caltech students graduate with an average debt of $5395–which makes perfect sense as Harvey Mudd’s average “need based” aid package includes $4246 in loans per year, while Caltech’s average need package includes $1491 in loans per year (despite the fact that the total value of the average Caltech aid package is $3000 higher).

To be clear, these loan amounts are offered as part of the school’s own financial aid package (i.e. they represent each school’s approach to meeting “demonstrated need”) and are not outside education loans. (To put a finer point on it and answer a challenge that would otherwise be made, they do not represent “rich Harvey Mudd families” making their students take on outside education debt.)

One of the hallmark benefits of a large endowment is reducing or eliminating loan aid and replacing that with gift aid… Princeton has actually eliminated loans entirely; Harvard and Yale haven’t gone that far but have reduced the portion of their aid that comes in loans.

Seiken · May 4, 2007, 11:47am

Endowments dont go to students per capita, they go to fund things that the entire university can use, regardless of how big it is. It pays for speakers programs and what, that 800 or 5000 people can use. At least some of it. If Pomona uses its endowment to do something special, Mudders might be able to enjoy it, and if Mudd uses it do something special, Mudders can also enjoy it.

So the 2.35 billion for UG rather than 600 million is not bad when u factor in the idea that the money doesnt get uniformly distributed to the students.

rocketDA · May 4, 2007, 4:12pm

“So over the whole Claremont system, endowment works out to $392,000 per student, which is pretty good. But what is your point? Caltech is around $800,000 per student (and yes, that includes the grad students too–not cheating).”

Wow. This is totally not about Caltech. It was not even mentioned or hinted at in any of my recent posts. Leave it alone. If someone wanted to go to a school with a huge endowment per capita they’d be looking at Pomona, which beats Caltech at $942,000 per student.

"In terms of “quite a bit of money to give away, but concentrated oddly”, Harvey Mudd makes 156 non-need-based awards of an average value of $5157 (so clearly it is not true that females will “probably” get $20,000, for example, as claimed above). "

Considering the campus is ~33% female, all “need-based” and “non need-based” financial aid packages can average to $20k per female. I never said that $20k was purely “merit” aid.

“Although Scripps, etc. may benefit from Pomona’s huge endowment in terms of being able to take classes there, I would be very surprised if (for example) any money at all in that endowment went to directly fund financial aid at the other colleges.”
You are correct when you say that each school is independent when it comes to its internal finances. However, the point being (besides being able to take classes anywhere on the 5Cs) is that the resources of each school are open for all Claremont students. If I want to use a CNC Laser cutter I can just call up CGU and they’ll say “okay”. We also benefit directly from events funded by each college (i.e. concerts, job fairs, special dinners … although CMC wouldn’t let any other colleges come to Bill Clinton’s talk last month because it was expected to be overpacked…which is an extremely rare situation.)

The colleges do a good job of supporting their students…and although I’d like to see more financial support for “regular people” the aggregate facilities are some of the best in the country. The aviation club works with the small airport down the road to give students planes to pilot…we’ve recently acquired roughly 30 acres of land east of pitzer (in cooperation with the airport) for rocket-launching purposes and they are tossing around plans for the land (Sector D, E, 80 acres) known as the Benard Field Station (used for ecological preservation and study) for more facilities. I’ve heard jokes about a particle accelerator…but I’m not sure how realistic that is. If you’ve ever seen a map of the Claremont campus you’ll understand how much stuff, that costs a lot of money, is here. For now, the Claremont Colleges are in a growing stage, investing in not only in facilities and better students, but allowing their endowments to grow… so they can take over the world. (joke)

sriharifez · May 4, 2007, 6:40pm

“Pomona-$1.46 billion”
7 times as much as HMC?! Jeeez.
Returning to my question, is it worth trying to use caltech’s given fin aid (they have money, but i wanna go to mudd) as a method of pushing you out of mudd’s waiting list?

Seiken · May 4, 2007, 7:36pm

Returning to my question, is it worth trying to use caltech’s given fin aid (they have money, but i wanna go to mudd) as a method of pushing you out of mudd’s waiting list?

Like how…and wait, what?

Joe_Caltech_04 · May 4, 2007, 9:33pm

I would say just having been admitted to Caltech is enough to try to push you off the Harvey Mudd waiting list. Call 'em up and tell them. They’d love that, as I’m sure they lose the cross-admit battle at least 80-20 if not more. But you should be honest–over on the Caltech board you’re implying that you really want to go there. ;-)

Seiken · May 4, 2007, 10:59pm

I would say just having been admitted to Caltech is enough to try to push you off the Harvey Mudd waiting list. Call 'em up and tell them. They’d love that, as I’m sure they lose the cross-admit battle at least 80-20 if not more. But you should be honest–over on the Caltech board you’re implying that you really want to go there.

For somebody who likes arguing numbers, I am surprised you put those down without quoting a source. Please do, especially with the “But I got into that other college, now let me into yours.” I would enjoy to know the success rate of such practices.

And for reference, the OP is a junior in HS atm I believe, and will be applying for the class of 2012.

Joe_Caltech_04 · May 4, 2007, 11:45pm

I wasn’t going to bring this up because it seems a bit harsh, almost, but since you asked…

Check out this paper on “revealed preferences” (in other words, a paper that ranked schools based on where students who were admitted actually decided to go), for example, to get a good idea of my “80-20” stat (which was, most likely, conservatively stated).

<a href=“http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf[/url]”>http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf</a>

The key tables are on page 28 (this one doesn’t include Harvey Mudd, likely due to a small sample size, but you can easily see Caltech’s overall standing), and very interestingly the one on page 44, which ranks desireability of schools among students “who plan to major in engineering, math, computer science, or the physical sciences”. According to the paper, Caltech is the 2nd-most-desireable (right after Harvard and right ahead of Yale) school among these students based upon comparisons of where a student admitted to several of the schools on the list actually chooses to attend. Harvey Mudd is the 22nd-most-desireable (right after Chicago and right ahead of Georgia Tech).

Student615 · May 5, 2007, 3:28am

(Really? Did the other thread’s closure not speak sufficiently for itself? Everything here is “fine”…just…amusingly/dangerously close to being otherwise. Bear it in mind.)

Seiken · May 5, 2007, 4:36am

For Joe, do you think by any chance that that particular study might be skewed in any way whatsover. The idea of Yale being more preferable than MIT for science or engineering actually hurts my eyes (but its late and I just got back from SM3). Also, just because of preference, its really hard to get an idea of who would cross-enroll where. There was no one student who applied to all of the colleges and got a choice to pick, so people have to compare college A and B, B and C, then make a judgment on A and C. You gave a ratio, and would like to see the 80-20%, or whatever it is.

rocketDA · May 5, 2007, 4:46am

" and very interestingly the one on page 44, which ranks desireability of schools among students “who plan to major in engineering, math, computer science, or the physical sciences”. According to the paper, Caltech is the 2nd-most-desireable (right after Harvard and right ahead of Yale) school among these students based upon comparisons of where a student admitted to several of the schools on the list actually chooses to attend."

That’s funny, how many times have you even heard of Harvard and Yale’s engineering programs? Computer Science? Frankly, these instuitions are strong in many “pure” topics but lack applied excellence.

Honestly, would you consider Colgate half the colleges on that list “above” HMC truly over HMC. Nope. This is an obvious data-intuition alert…probably spawned by a ridiculously low sample number.

From the paper, page 1:
“The rankings we construct are based on a survey of 3,240 highly meritorious students
that was specifically conducted for this study.”
My suspisions are not completely erroneous. How many of these students do you think applied to Mudd? 5? Seems that the coherence for small specialized schools would be low in this study.

From the paper(pg 44):
"
Table 7 shows our basic ranking and rankings for students from each of the groups of
intended majors. Overall, there is a fair degree of similarity among the rankings. This reveals
that most schools have reasonably equal strength across the various fields of study. There are,
however, some notable differences. Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and
Harvey Mudd, schools that specialize in the hard sciences, are ranked more highly among
students who intend to major in the hard sciences. "

Sort of obvious but semi-odd at the same time. Mudd’s curriculum is very unique…between applied and theoretical.

and footnote 23:
"Self-selection may also affect inference on the coefficients. For instance, suppose that price
sensitivity is heterogeneous and students who are especially price sensitive seek out colleges that offer
them substantial discounts. We might overestimate the effects of prices because the variation in the data
comes disproportionately from price-sensitive students. For this reason, we do not give strong
interpretations to the coefficients on these characteristics. "

Ever stop to think that Mudd’s high price may also be pushing it down the list? Also, maybe students are turned off of the heavy workload once they get in and visit they see that Mudd really has a curriculum that is demanding. Prospective students for Caltech probably have heard rumors about Caltech’s rigor so they are expecting it. Mudd… maybe not so much since it doesn’t have a place in pop-culture.

Study is interesting but produces low-confidence results for small schools.

Ever take an “experimental engineering” class?

StillProudMom · May 5, 2007, 6:46am

Quoting Joe (Caltech '04): “…I’ve yet to hear of many people getting MIT offers nearly as good as Caltech’s …”

CalTech presented an extremely generous package to son with their acceptance letter. Due to incomplete info, MIT did not present its package until a few days ago. Despite MIT’s total need being $48,900 and CalTech’s being $45,360, MIT ends up costing a couple thousands less! We had not told MIT about any of the other packages. We greatly appreciate both MIT and CalTech’s offers and regret that son can attend but one college. Harvey Mudd did not have to compete with a package – son was not accepted there.

Joe_Caltech_04 · May 5, 2007, 8:43am

StillProudMom, sounds like you have the absolute best of both worlds with two huge aid packages! I’m sure your result must happen sometimes, but in my (anecdotal) experience it’s rare, which the overall averages bear out. Caltech is extremely good above revising aid offers with new information, though, so if you show them the MIT offer and a rationale I’ll bet they’d match or beat it.

Congratulations to your son!!

(To be honest, although my MIT aid offer was much worse than the Caltech one, if I’d wanted to go to MIT I would’ve shown them the Caltech offer and asked them to match it, and I have no doubt that they would’ve at least improved their offer. I think it’s only prudent to at least give it a try when tens of thousands of dollars are on the line. Since I preferred Caltech anyway, it wasn’t an issue.)

On the criticism of the study, it is at least an academic study that makes a serious attempt at answering these questions. I’m sure if you emailed the author he would be happy to give you more information on the sample, but his results look about right to me. Finally, many of the Ivies are extremely strong in the pure sciences, and some of them (Princeton comes to mind–nearly decided on grad school there) actually have extremely strong engineering departments too. Although the people on this thread went to very focused schools, we should open our minds and recognize also that potential engineers can still be drawn to a more traditional liberal-arts education, and that there’s nothing wrong with that. I had a friend in high school who wanted to be an aerospace engineer and had got into MIT and Caltech. She decided to go to Harvard instead. “I can specialize in grad school and I want a well-rounded education to start” was her rationale. Fair enough.

On the 80-20 ratio: this is well-known as the approximate ratio at which dual-admitted students prefer Harvard to Yale, and only one spot on the “revealed preference” list separates those two schools. With twenty spots on the list separating Caltech and Harvey Mudd, I can only speculate as to what the implied preference ratio would be.

Finally, I would be stunned if very many people who apply to Harvey Mudd don’t realize that there’s a heavy workload. Why would they bother to apply if they didn’t know anything about the school? Do a lot of people actually do that?

tiyusufaly · May 5, 2007, 8:47am

Well they would know it is an excellent school for math, science and engineering. When you’re looking for where you want to spend four years, you just look at whatever seems to fit your interests. I know plenty of Mudders here who did not realize how rigorous it would be till arriving and taking classes. Even among those that did know it would be hard before arriving, several of them only started finding out more about the school and its quality and rigor after they had been accepted and were trying to decide (or had already decided) where to go.

And I do think “a lot of people actually do that”.

Joe_Caltech_04 · May 5, 2007, 9:32am

OK. My impression of Caltech applicants is that they mostly know what they’re getting into and one of the selection criteria is in fact that they know that and look like they can handle it.

Besides, if Caltech admits, as you guess, know that Caltech is hard, discovering that Harvey Mudd is also hard should certainly not encourage them to choose Caltech over Harvey Mudd… (and yet, from the study, they apparently do).

I have to say that although Harvey Mudd was totally unknown to me before getting mailings in high school, I thought the mailings made clear enough that it was a science and tech-focused school with a challenging curriculum, but maybe that was just me. Frankly, most if not all “excellent school[s] for math, science and engineering” are pretty tough anyway.

I wonder how it would affect the Harvey Mudd admissions rate if those people who really shouldn’t be were dissuaded from applying in the first place.

rocketDA · May 5, 2007, 6:08pm

“I wonder how it would affect the Harvey Mudd admissions rate if those people who really shouldn’t be were dissuaded from applying in the first place.”

That is actually a really good question, Joe. This morning, we were emailed the preliminary enrollment numbers. Typically, ~180 students accept Mudd’s offer but this year 203 did. With a yield increase of ~12% I have to wonder why more students accepted. Is it because they were convinced that Mudd was the place they should be or is it because they really understand Mudd and know/like what they are getting into?

The admissions team even goes on to say that 42% of the incoming class is female. Wow. I hope they applied the same admissions criterion because (while I’m trying not to be sexist) females have a higher “leave” rate than males.

Finally, with a incoming class median SAT of 2220, Mudd probably should have tightened up the admission process a little. I believe the median SAT last year was 2250. Sigh

Anyways, while the curriculum is very ingenius in many ways… it is not that each class is extremely hard (but some of them really are)… it is the fact that you are taking 6-7 classes per semester in order to just get a degree and graduate. I don’t think prefrosh quiet understand this.

How good is Fin Aid?

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