This is a key point. At HYPSM, undergraduate tuition accounts for a relatively small fraction of the operating budget, likely in the 10-15% range, give or take. Contrast that with a school like Colby, mentioned earlier, where tuition represents closer to 70% of the operating budget. Those are very different constraints.
Harvard, Yale, Princeton have a very low acceptance rate, most spots go EA, others to athletes, legacy, donors, URM, first generation, low income, geographical unicorns, internationals, private prep school grads, urban magnet school grads, transfers, community college applicants etc. in the end an unhooked but well rounded and academically strong upper middle class public school kid has less than 1% chances if not zero, even if he gets in by some miracle, it’s tough to afford high EFC so 50% out of that 1% will end up at some low rank high merit college.
“Unhooked middle class and lower middle class applicants who are not Pell grant eligible have the least chance for admission to elite colleges.”
Not sure that is entirely accurate as the study does not take into account families that didn’t apply for FA, i.e. that is upper middle class and the upper class, and that’s about half the students. From the local bay area high schools, unhooked, high SES (even though they’re full pay), has had the smallest acceptance rate.
@Data10: “Ivy+ colleges tend to get the bulk of their revenue from non-tuition sources, particularly endowment returns.”
True of some, not all Ivy+. Assuming list price tuition of $50K and net per capita tuition of $25K. If you take 5% of the endowment each year, to get $25K per capita a year, you need half a million endowment per capita. Ivies Brown, Columbia, and Cornell (as well as non-Ivies Georgetown and JHU) do not have endowments at that level.
“At HYPSM, undergraduate tuition accounts for a relatively small fraction of the operating budget”
I’m with @privatebanker in being perplexed about this focus on a tiny unrepresentative set of a tiny unrepresentative set of colleges that offer so few undergrad slots to nonhooked applicants that they barely matter in the grand scheme of things.
My understanding is that this thread is of Ivy+, and HYPSM aren’t terribly representative of even Ivy+, who actually are quite diverse in terms of how much endowment income per student they get.
It’s more that they don’t care. They want the “best” (by their own definitions) students they can attract, and some need-blind schools have endowments that can support need-blind admission while meeting full need. Other schools (like NYU) are need-blind but can’t support full-need aid; they’re called “come anyway” schools (you can attend if you can pay).
There is actually a legal definition of “need-blind”. See section 568(c)(6) of https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/house-bill/6/text . It is used in reference to a temporary antitrust exemption for a group of colleges that have need-blind admissions and award only need-based financial aid to coordinate financial aid. It has been later amended to extend the antitrust exemption (current expiration is in 2022).
In a narrow sense, the colleges can arrange for admission readers not to see whether any applicant applied for financial aid or (for those who did) what the financial aid office decided what their “need” was. But that does not prevent admissions readers from considering other factors which may correlate to financial need (e.g. estimated SES or (dis)advantage level being an obvious one, but almost all applicant attributes have some correlation to financial need). Before the application cycle, colleges can set policy on how each attribute is weighted, using historical correlations to financial need to tune the class’ overall expected financial need, even though exact financial need for each applicant does not have to be used in making admission decisions for this to happen.
Sadly, income categories are defined nationally, even though the cost of living varies greatly. In San Francisco, a family of 4 qualifies for low-income housing if they make less than $117,000/year.
There’s definitely a wide range of endowment levels at these schools, and significant variation in the size of that revenue stream that can be used for operating costs. But non- tuition sources include more than just endowment returns, such as medical group income, sponsored research, etc. So at Cornell, which can’t rely as heavily on endowment income, net tuition still contributes only 17% of the operating budget. Same at Duke. Brown, Columbia, and Dartmouth rely more heavily on tuition, with net tuition accounting for 20%, 23%, and 24%, respectively, of operating revenue. Those numbers will vary a bit year to year but it’s safe to say that the bulk of revenue at all schools in this group does not come from net tuition.
Students will see some of this play out in differing financial aid policies. So yes, I wouldn’t apply to Brown or Cornell assuming I’d get a Harvard FA package (unless also admitted to Harvard, in which case they will match). Still, even at those campuses middle income students are fairly well represented, less so at Brown than at Cornell given Cornell’s hybrid structure with the state contract colleges.
I’ve read this thread mostly in its entirety and I find these articles fascinating. We’re a middle income family (no hooks, AL below average public HS) with a daughter that had her eyes set on Harvard SCEA for c/o 2024. (If it were me I would have ED’d at Duke or elsewhere, but my daughter was concerned about the ED locked in price. Yeah, she was more money conscious than me.)
It was this type of thread that set our expectations for success low unless we really got our act together. If you’ve read any of my previous posts, she put together a great package that tells a coherent, compelling story.
I say all this not to brag that she’s been accepted (Harvard and Vandy), but to say that I feel it is absolutely critical to this success that we read through these forums. You have to be a phenomenal student in academics, student-teacher relationships, giving of yourself, determined to make an impact in your interest, and a genuine person in interviews. We would never had known to work this hard were it not for threads like this.
It’s not impossible as a middle class unhooked family in public schools to get into Ivy+ schools, but you have to really work hard for it. I feel like all this work was worth it.
Thanks everyone for this stimulating conversation.
These sounds like guesses. % of revenue from endowment and tuition as listed in IPEDS is below. I included two lists – one for the most recent available year, and one that includes the 2008 stock market crash, which often resulted in large negative endowment returns. The % revenue from tuition is indeed higher at Brown, Columbia, and Cornell than HYPSM and others with the highest endowment per student, but tuition does not appear to be a dominant source of revenue at either.
Endowment returns are highly variable. Endowment returns have been 80+% of revenue at Princeton in recent years, including $389k per FTE student in 2018. Endowment returns over this 10+ year period were larger than revenue from tuition at the majority of Ivy+ colleges, but not all of them. Many non-Ivy+ colleges with smaller endowments show a different pattern. You mentioned Georgetown, which appears to get ~half of revenue from tuition and relatively little from endowment.
Percentage of Revenue from Endowment and Tuition at Ivy+ Colleges: 2018
Princeton – 3% of revenue from tuition, 82% of revenue from endowment
Yale – 5% of revenue from tuition, 56% from endowment
MIT – 7% of revenue from tuition, 48% from endowment
Stanford – 7% of revenue from tuition, 48% from endowment
Harvard – 13% of revenue from tuition, 53% from endowment
Dartmouth – 15% of revenue from tuition, 43% from endowment
Penn – 19% of revenue from tuition, 30% from endowment
Columbia – 21% of revenue from tuition, 17% from endowment
Cornell – 26% of revenue from tuition, 19% from endowment
Brown – 28% of revenue from tuition, 34% from endowment
Percentage of Rev. from Endowment and Tuition at Ivy+ Colleges: 2008-18
Princeton – 5% of revenue from tuition, 67% of revenue from endowment
Yale – 5.5% of revenue from tuition, 46% from endowment
MIT – 8% of revenue from tuition, 34% from endowment
Stanford – 8% of revenue from tuition, 43% from endowment
Harvard – 15% of revenue from tuition, 41% from endowment
Dartmouth – 18% of revenue from tuition, 33% from endowment
Columbia – 20% of revenue from tuition, 17% from endowment
Penn – 24% of revenue from tuition, 20% from endowment
Cornell – 26% of revenue from tuition, 16% from endowment
Brown – 32% of revenue from tuition, 26% from endowment
Percent of Rev. from Endowment and Tuition at Selected Colleges: 2008-18
Cooper Union – 13% from tuition, 77% from endowment
Chicago – 18% from tuition, 20% from endowment
Williams – 27% from tuition, 43% from endowment
Swarthmore – 34% from tuition, 40% from endowment
NYU – 41% from tuition, 5% from endowment
Georgetown – 46% from tuition, 7% from endowment
Stevens Tech – 69% from tuition, 4% from endowment
@hebegebe Most people I know disagree with you. Rob Lowe was still a big star on TV at the time his kids were in/applying to college. Plus, he has a Net Worth of approx. $65 million and has been active in the entertainment industry for over 3 decades.
“being perplexed about this focus on a tiny unrepresentative set of a tiny unrepresentative set of colleges that offer so few undergrad slots to nonhooked applicants that they barely matter in the grand scheme of things.”
Well the report (I read the slide version) goes into more colleges, other selective privates and publics, and compares Harvard to Berkeley on income distribution and outcomes, among others.
There is a huge division in this country by income, getting worse, and these elite, selective colleges, private and public, are one of the reasons why. So if you’re trying to reduce the income gap, then you need to start with these kinds of colleges because most public colleges and community colleges are not guilty of widening the income gap. That’s why they’re not the subject of the research.
@politeperson: "
But non- tuition sources include more than just endowment returns, such as medical group income, sponsored research, etc."
Which would have costs associated with them. Patients aren’t paying a school to fund undergraduate education, but to get treated. The government and private entities aren’t paying research money to make undergrad tuition-free, but to see research done.
@Data10, I made educated guesses and they were in the ballpark, as your data shows. The schools that aren’t well above half a million endowment per capita (basically all research unis besides HYPSM, Caltech, Rice, ND, Dartmouth, and Penn) all get about as much or more money from tuition payments than from endowment income. Actually, even Penn takes in more from tuition than endowment income. So of the Ivies, half take in more from tuition and half take in more from endowment income. Of the non-Ivy research U’s, I think you’ll find that only MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Rice, and ND take in more from endowment income than from tuition so your assertion that “endowment returns over this 10+ year period were larger than revenue from tuition at the majority of Ivy+ colleges” would be true only if you include all 5 of those non-Ivies but only 4 more or exclude ND and include only 3 more (from Duke, Northwestern, the U of C, Georgetown, JHU, Vandy, WashU, Emory) or only count MIT and Stanford as Ivy+.
Looking at your data, possibly only Princeton (who has the highest per capita endowment by far so is quite the outlier) and Yale could potentially eliminate tuition if their endowment grows more. 8%-13% of a 4-5B budget is still a massive amount of money. If Harvard loses $600M+ in tuition revenue, they would have to eliminate many entire departments.
@PurpleTitan I don’t think anyone suggested that these schools could do away with tuition tomorrow and not feel it. My point earlier was that it isn’t out of the question that within a decade HYPSM would be discussing eliminating tuition. I don’t think that conversation is out of the question if endowments continue to grow (and the relative contribution of tuition shrink). But I think it’s more likely that they would expand financial aid ceilings, continuing to collect tuition from those at the high end. This is what the pattern has been. It probably sounded crazy 10 years ago to say that at some of these schools tuition would be zero for those making less than 120k or whatever the current number is.
In any case, I believe the role of endowment income and the relative contribution of tuition was raised to push back against the notion that need blind schools are somehow secretly need aware because they are desperate to avoid a budget shortfall. My understanding of the point is that, because tuition is not providing a large portion of the operating budget at these schools, they can afford to be “off” a bit from projections. Whereas a school like Colby can’t.
In terms of other sources of operating revenue, you can check out the operating budgets at most schools. They’re usually pretty public about it.
“Ivy Plus colleges” is defined in the Chetty report from the OP. “Ivy Plus colleges” includes Stanford and MIT. It does not include any of the relatively lower endowment per student colleges from your post. The statement is true for the definition of “Ivy Plus colleges” from the report.
The original statement was, “Ivy+ colleges tend to get the bulk of their revenue from non-tuition sources, particularly endowment returns.” Using the definition of Ivy+ from the report, Ivy+ colleges get ~70% to ~95% of their revenue from non-tuition sources, the largest of which is endowment returns (overall for the group, not necessarily at every individual Ivy+ school). If the range is 70-95% of revenue from non-tuition sources, I think it’s fair to say “tend to get the bulk of their revenue from non-tuition sources, particularly endowment returns.”
The point is that year-to-year changes in number of full pay or full need matriculating students is unlikely to be financially catastrophic. Variation in the stock market and related endowment returns leads to far larger variation in year-to-year revenue than variation in % full pay/need on average, and appears to be a far greater financial risk for the Ivy+ colleges. Whether the majority of Ivy+ colleges could eliminate tuition or not is irrelevant.
The ivy league is responsible for the widening income gap?
Wow.
There are many, many factors that have contributed to the widening income gap in America since the second world war, but I’d have to see a LOT more evidence to conclude that this small group of colleges has their fingers on the tiller of the entire US economy.
The fact that so many kids in America graduate from sub-standard high schools- yes, that’s a factor. Jobs as auto mechanics, working in manufacturing and production lines, getting an A&P license with an airline- which used to be respectable ways to enter and stay in the middle class-- many of those jobs have moved off-shore (this is Yale’s fault?) or require a level of skill that many HS grads just don’t have. (also not Yale’s fault). The shift from manufacturing to service economy- huge factor in the income gap-- especially when a job folding sweaters at the gap or becoming a home health care aide replaces a union job which used to have benefits and annual raises. But again- this is Dartmouth’s problem?
And the military- formerly a direct pipeline for kids from HS, to military, back home with either skills and a trade or the GI bill- just do some research on the huge problem the military has in meeting its numbers. Opiates- the Air Force doesn’t want people flying its planes who are high most of the time. Obesity- the Army doesn’t want people who can’t run a mile without falling over. Etc.
Huge, huge problems for our society but really- I fail to see the role of the Ivy League in all of this.
My state invests huge sums in state of the art athletic facilities at the flagship-- paid for by the citizens of my state, many of whom cannot afford to send their kids to this university. THAT’S a problem- policy, politics, financial, which for sure is increasing income inequality since the directionals and community college system in my area are good at some things (educating future teachers, accountants and pharm techs) and not good at others (comp sci, engineering, STEM).
Sorry- still not Harvard’s fault. The dorms at my state flagship are MUCH nicer than any dorm I have ever seen at an ivy league university. Ever see a freshman dorm at Columbia? Or walk up the steps to the fourth floor of an un-airconditioned dorm with no elevator on a hot August day at Yale? The amenities arms race is taking place at the state U level, which sadly prices out the citizens whose tax dollars pay for the university whose charter it is to educate these citizens.
“most public colleges and community colleges are not guilty of widening the income gap. That’s why they’re not the subject of the research.” I would argue the opposite. Which states have outpriced their flagship U’s for their own citizens? More than Pennsylvania, for sure. Which states have a community college system which does not feed into the flagship or comparable?
This certainly impacts more people per year than the trivial number of kids in the Ivy league…
@politeperson, I notice that you have this tendency to generalize from outliers to more general groups. For instance, using Harvard as an example of Ivy+ doing something or HYPSM as an example that “need-blind” schools act a certain way (when H or HYPSM aren’t all that representative and are outliers in wealth even among those groups). Colby actually isn’t even that poor. Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Vandy, Georgetown, JHU (though they got the big BBerg donation to meet full need), and USC actually have lower per capital endowments, for instance.
@PurpleTitan when have I suggested that HYPSM are representative of all need blind schools? I have felt that this discussion suffered from folks generalizing from non Ivy+ schools to schools like HYPSM and others in the Ivy+ group. So I’ve tried to be specific about which schools I’m talking about. I’m well aware that there are wealth differences among theses schools.
Colby was initially raised by another poster as an example of problems with Ivy+ schools. It is not an Ivy +. But it’s a good example of a school that relies heavily on tuition, with roughly 70% of its operating budget coming from student charges. The point is that Colby has less flexibility during admissions to miss their revenue targets than do any of the Ivy + schools. You can disagree, but that was my point.
@politeperson: In post #82 when “elite schools” were referenced, you brought up HYPSM. In post #120, when Ivy+ was referenced, you brought up HYPSM again. In post #138, you said that this discussion was about need-aware schools, but the one set of schools you said would behave a certain way in the future (eliminate tuition) was. . . . . HYPSM.
Forgive me for thinking that you meant to use HYPSM to stand in for elite/Ivy+/need-aware schools but if that wasn’t your intention, I don’t know why you keep bringing up HYPSM when elite/Ivy+/need-aware schools are being discussed. After all, HYPSM are a minority (the richest minority) of need-aware research U’s and, unless you restrict elite/Ivy+ to Ivies+MIT+Stanford, would be a minority of both “elite schools” and Ivy+ too.
@PurpleTitan I’ve tried to be pretty specific about which schools I’m referencing when making various points. I don’t think Ivy + schools as a group could reasonably expect to discuss eliminating tuition in the next decade. I do think the 5 schools I mentioned could have that discussion. That’s why I referenced them specifically.
Anyway, I’d encourage anyone who might be considering one of these Ivy + schools (or any school for that matter) to run the NPCs for themselves. There’s been a lot of back and forth on this thread but there’s no substitute for the actual numbers.