<p>Oh no. Not another thread that compares publics to privates.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>You can’t buy your way into Cal. If you are a billionaire and promise to “donate” $100 million towards a new building on the Princeton campus, yeah, your kid will get accepted.</p></li>
<li><p>School spirit in terms of what? USC might have more die-hard football fans who are willing to spend more money on football: does that money necessarily equate into a greater school spirit? My brother-in-law is a USC alum, and he pays the $20 “donation” (it’s more like a fee) because he feels compelled to. </p></li>
<li><p>Do schools with medical schools automatically have more school spirit? Medical schools are BIG in terms of endowment.</p></li>
<li><p>UC schools do not pay former CEOs $40 million to manage their investment funds, like one school in Cambridge, MA.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Of note, of the $26 billion in Harvard’s endowment, only $595 million are from alumni donations. Harvard only has a 39% alumni giving rate, while Princeton has 61% but give less money, so which school has more “school spirit.”</p>
<p>I will say that Cal does not rank high along the arbitrary term of “school spirit.” However, I did not come to this conclusion by looking at how students and alumni speak in monetary terms.</p>