In California, my understanding is the cost of public flagship system keeps rising at least in part because the state chooses to invest less and less of our tax dollars in them when adjusting for inflation.
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It’s a Push-Me-Pull-You (a character from the “Dr. Dolittle“ children’s stories) situation where even the most expensive colleges are aiming for discount rates that will allow them to compete for in-state students with the likes of Penn State, UVA, Michigan and Berkeley.
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The super high endowment per student colleges on the list are often less expensive than in-state publics, not just out of state publics like Michigan, which has a sticker price of $84-$88k for out-of-state. Some advertise as less expensive than in-state publics for >90% of students (>90% of high school grads in US, not 90% of the mostly wealthy attending students). Many are ~$0 cost to parents for families that are not far above median US income, with typical assets.
For example Colby is on the list. For families with typical assets, Colby claims a cost of $0 for families with $75k income, and no more than $20k net cost for families with $200k income. https://afa.colby.edu/cost-and-aid/
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And yet, according to their self published profile (they don’t appear to have a CDS), 44% get aid.
The beauty of being need aware.
They are attracted and getting the wealthy to pay.
Yeah, I think what I meant to say was that expensive private colleges were in fact competing for in-state students and needed to up their discounting level which often means charging full-pay families more.
I’m making the correction.
Yes, being need aware contributes to Colby giving FA above typical for the endowment per student. However, there are others on the list with similar ballpark FA to Colby that are need blind, such as #6 Amherst. Amherst has an endowment per student of ~$1.6M, compared to $500k for Colby. In a typical year, investment gains on endowment at Amherst are larger than sticker price for all attending students.
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I think that goes more to the issue of selectivity than affordability. A need-aware college only has so much room for scholarship students before the odds of admission begin to shift in favor of a family that is full-pay. The best practice is to consult each college’s Net Price Calculator ()NPC) before writing off any collage as too expensive.
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Exactly. Do you care what the sticker price says if the college’s own financial aid calculator says that YOUR price is within your budget?
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You shouldn’t but you show take into account, if you apply there and need a big gift, that your odds are likely not as good as the regular acceptance rate - but for a school like Colby, all should realize it’s a reach anyway.
But if the NPC works, of course, it’s worth a shot if you want to attend.
Yeah, I get that. But the “inside baseball” calculations that are so popular on CC (“My SAT scores are ten points higher than the median but my need is 5K more than the average award, but I’m from Wyoming, and my history teacher says I’m the best student she’s ever had”) are such a waste of time.
Do the NPC. Be diligent about entering accurate information, and have your financial realities laid out in front of you. All the other drama seems to me to be a waste of energy. And at the end of the day- how does knowing that YOUR admissions probability is 16% instead of 13% going to help you? Need aware is need aware. Need blind is need blind. And for the most part, it doesn’t matter because most schools can’t award full need anyway.
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I think this can’t be emphasized enough…so much depends on the characteristics of the individual being discussed. Two people from the same family might go through the same type of environment and have very different reactions. One might try to keep up with the Joneses (or the Rockefellers) while the other can acknowledge the great things that the Joneses/Rockefellers have, yet have no yearning or expectation to have that same lifestyle.
So whether a family had enough interest in a trust fund to not make a dent on their principal to cover all costs, or scrimped and saved for decades to splurge on a full pay education, or had received sufficient aid (merit or financial) to make it a $50k or $10k or $1k enterprise, I still think a lot depends on the individual and not the school they attend.
That said, however, if a person who cared a lot about keeping up with the Joneses attended a non-flagship public U. or a private that was not a Top X + a good number of schools, I doubt they would be seeing quite the economic distribution as those that attend a school that is one of the 75 most expensive in the U.S. and thus would be less likely to be gunning for the pinnacle of consumerism that they might aim for at a school with folks who have more conspicuous consumption.
I’m in general agreement with this in terms of making generalizations based on high sticker prices, though I think that schools (excluding flagships) with low sticker prices generally have much less of a “country club-ish” feel.
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For me the surprise on the list was Carleton. It’s so much more expensive than St. Olaf. Not only does St. Olaf start off less expensive, they also offer merit aid. And they do all this while also meeting full need just like Carleton.
Why should Carleton be so much more expensive than St. Olaf? They are both located in the same rural MN town (so not a particularly expensive place to do business compared to some of the East and West coast schools on this list.) Actually St. Olaf’s campus, dorms and especially food are better than Carleton’s. Both offer good STEM (more expensive than humanities.) Both have small classes, excellent professors and classroom experience.
What gives? I guess it must be because Carleton is finding families that will pay it.
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“I doubt they would be seeing quite the economic distribution as those that attend a school that is one of the 75 most expensive in the U.S. and thus would be less likely to be gunning for the pinnacle of consumerism that they might aim for at a school with folks who have more conspicuous consumption.”
I don’t think this is correct. I wish I could find the article- but it was written by a faculty member at a public U in the South (therefore- certainly not one of the 75 most expensive in the US) and how much the staff AND faculty resented the U’s current policies. In particular, the administration moved the faculty parking lot to the outskirts of campus to make it more convenient for students- and so professors every day trek past the student lot filled with fancy, late model, trucked out cars– so they can retrieve their aging Nissan’s and Hondas for the drive home. This particular faculty person blamed merit pricing for the dramatic demographic shift that had happened on his campus- money that could fund one needy student was now being spread out among 10 or 15 affluent students, whose parents got bragging rights “Little Tommy is so smart, they are PAYING him to attend college!”. The merit money isn’t terribly meaningful to any particular family, but it’s a lot cheaper to subsidize a rich kid than to make it possible for a poor kid to attend. And then the law of unexpected consequences- TONS of conspicuous consumption- new retailers opening near campus because these kids now need fancy workout clothes, sushi at all hours, etc.
It is paradoxical that a public U should have so much conspicuous consumption- but it tracks with what folks in many states have observed as well. I don’t know why you think “gunning for the pinnacle of consumerism” is a particular quality limited to expensive U’s when the “market” evidence seem to be everywhere. Someone is buying the $100 hoodies and fancy handbags- and if you believe the TikToks, it’s not where you think the money and the consumerism is living.
Dorm/sorority decorators?
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One has a US News Rank of #10 and has been higher. One is #50 and outside of the CC, few have heard of (although you can say the same for Carleton).
I think when it comes to finding the full payers, pedigree/rank reigns supreme, even if all the “extra” items that might make the day to day experience better, are included.
Families and kid see rank. If they’re rank obsessed, they’ll never even get close to #40 in the magazine/website - they’ll have discarded it before then.
The reality is - St. Olaf offers money because they need to in order to get butts in seat.
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I believe it was someone on these boards who said that because their cost of attendance at the school was lower than elsewhere they could spend some large amount on dorm decor, etc.
All of which is also to point out that conspicuous consumption is not directly correlated to wealth. But the conspicuous consumption is what fellow students (and faculty) see. The quiet indicators of wealth (such as flying off somewhere fun every vacation period) are less obvious, especially to people not in the immediate friend group of those people.
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I think we’re likely in agreement on this, @Blossom (as seen in my initial post quoted below where I’ve bolded the parts about flagships for emphasis).
It’s one of the reasons why I specified non-flagships, because most of the instances of publics attracting lots of wealthy families via merit are generally the flagships. I can’t really think of many non-flagships that have been successful at attracting significant numbers of very wealthy families, though I’m happy to learn about any such instances.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about that question as my D26 gets more interested in St. Olaf. And to take it a step further, why is Olaf so much cheaper/more generous than virtually any other LAC? Carleton’s financial aid program is comparable to other selective LACs that give no merit aid, with the exception that it doesn’t consider home equity so need-based awards are likely even more generous for many middle-class families. But for our middle-class family with 250k home equity, Olaf is 10k/yr cheaper than Carleton and most other LACs…and yet they also give substantial merit awards to wealthier students. In fact, they guarantee 20k/yr minimum merit for ED applicants. With just a ~225k-per-student endowment in the latest NACUBO endowment chart I could find (FY 2022) - fine, but less than half of Carleton, Colby, and Vassar - I’m not sure how they are doing this. It’s Ivy-esque need-based aid with mid-tier-LAC-esque merit aid, simultaneously.
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I don’t think St. Olaf’s price is actually very different from many other solid LACs in the Midwest. I bet you would get similar COAs at Beloit, Lawrence, Gustavus, Kalamazoo etc. where $35K-$45K final COA after merit is possible.
I think the difference is that Carleton markets itself as a “national” LAC along the lines of Bowdoin, Williams, Pomona etc so doesn’t discount, while St. Olaf despite drawing an increasingly national student body still draws mostly regionally.
ETA: Upper Midwest LACs are often a real bargain. St. Olaf especially so. It’s just a great school. I see a lot of my Carleton classmates sending their kids to Olaf now.
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The economic distribution can be counterintuitive. Higher price for a particular group is often correlated with increased applications. Lower price is often correlated with decreased applications. For example, among high achieving, lower income kids, many high sticker price colleges are likely to be the least expensive option, with ~$0 cost to parents. Yet this group rarely applies to $0 cost to parent colleges (see analysis at https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w18586/w18586.pdf ). Instead they tend to apply to the often far higher cost local colleges. Similarly high achieving, high income kids are often the only ones who are actually paying the near $100k sticker price. Countless quality colleges are less expensive for this group,. yet he group disproportionately applies to high sticker price colleges. In both cases, the students as whole tend to favor the more expensive option for them.
The Chetty study looked up tax records to show economic distribution at colleges 10+ years ago. At that time, the colleges with the worst income distribution were
Worst Income Distribution Colleges
- WUSTL (57% in top 5%, 16% in bottom 80%)
- Washington & Lee (55% in top 5%, 19% in bottom 80%)
- Colgate (58% in top 5%, 23% in bottom 80%)
- Colorado College (54% in top 5%, 22% in bottom 80%)
- Trinity (56% in top 5%, 25% in bottom 80%)
- Middlebury (53% in top 5%, 24% in bottom 80%)
- Colby (51% in top 5%, 24% in bottom 80%)
- Bates (51% in top 5%, 24% in bottom 80%)
- Tufts (50% in top 5%, 23% in bottom 80%)
- Georgetown (51% in top 5%, 26% in bottom 80%)
The best income distribution among highly selective colleges were
- Berkeley (23% in top 5%, 46% in bottom 80%)
- Smith (25% in top 5%, 47% in bottom 80%)
- UT Austin (23% in top 5%, 44% in bottom 80%)
- Bryn Mawr (26% in top 5%, 45% in bottom 80%)
- UCLA (27% in top 5%, 41% in bottom 80%)
- Cooper Union (28% in top 5%, 42% in bottom 80%)
- UNC:CH (27% in top 5%, 40% in bottom 80%)
- Chicago (32% in top 5%, 42% in bottom 80%)
- Vassar (32% in top 5%, 41% in bottom 80%)
- Wellesley (33% in top 5%, 41% in bottom 80%)
And the highest sticker price colleges were
- Landmark (35% in top 5%, 40% in bottom 80%)
- Sarah Lawrence (25% in top 5%, 40% in bottom 80%)
- Chicago (32% in top 5%, 42% in bottom 80%)
- Columbia (36% in top 5%, 38% in bottom 80%)
- NYU (34% in top 5%, 38% in bottom 80%)
- Dartmouth
- Wesleyan
- Fordham
- Northwestern
- Occidental
There was no overlap between the highest sticker price and worst income distribution lists. However, Chicago appears on both the highest sticker price and best income distribution. High sticker price Columbia and NYU were also near the top 10 best income distribution. I expect being located in a large city is a key contributing factor. As noted earlier lower income kids tend to apply to local colleges, and there are large number of lower income kids who are local to NYC and Chicago.
WUSTL had by far the worst income distribution. At the time of review, WUSTL was need aware and gave a strong admission preference towards wealthy prep school kids. I expect this contributed to a being a more common application choice, among wealthy prep school kids, creating a “feeder” relationship. Many of the other worst income distribution colleges were also need aware.
I could continue, but my primary point is, it’s a far more complicated relationship than high sticker price leads to higher income distribution.
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They likely need to in order to stay afloat. They a 25% yield, less if you take out ED.
They likely give less merit ED so if so, that saves them money. So it’s a good marketing gimmick I think
I’m guessing their salaries are lower too.
But given some likely tour both, having better food and doems is a great way to flip some.
Carleton yield isn’t that much better - about 35% but they enrolled, per CDS, 507. St Olaf enrolled 859
So they have to find more applicants and admit and enroll greater amounts with a ‘lesser’ reputation.
So the school may not be as wealthy but using money and comfort features (dorm/food - like WUSTL does vs competitors)) - they have to hit a narrow target. They do have a strong A1 bond rating so they have borrowing capacity if needed.
But my guess is even though they are neighbors, they really have to execute well to compete. Carleton can get by, in many ways, on name alone