Miami doesn’t serve many Pell eligible students.
“the second lowest Pell Grant student enrollment rate in the country among public colleges”.
“Factoring in scholarships, grants and all financial aid, 29 percent of Ohio students at Miami last year paid between zero and $5,000 in tuition and fees to attend the Oxford campus,” spokeswoman Claire Wagner said."
“Miami has the second highest graduation rate of Pell grant-receiving students at Ohio public universities at 71 percent.”
“Very high endowment colleges tend to have outstanding FA, making them affordable for typical students who are not “super rich”… often far lower net cost than UCLA for not high income students.”
People bring this up all the time, but you have to get in, if your plan to reduce college costs is by getting into Harvard, good luck.
"Also, instate yield is very different to OOS yield. "
UCLA’s instate yield is 53%, UCB is 50%, UCI’s is 33%.
That’s pretty similar to overall yield.
Harvard’s NPC only has a box for combined parents’ income. There is not a way to input income different for 1 wage earner vs 2 wage earners, suggesting no difference in FA. Some “high tuition/high discount” colleges treat 2 wage earnings different from 1. Some do not. There are quite a few different FA models.
Did you use the NPC calc? I wouldn’t assume FAFSA default EFC or similar is the same for all HYPSM… type colleges. The NPC suggests Harvard’s assets formula involves something similar to below:
Parents are expected to contribute an extra (non-primary home and non-retirement assets - $200k) * 5%. Students are also expected to contribute 5%, without a minimum. Using a real example, suppose a family with 1 kid in college had a $1 million house that was paid off, $1 million in retirement savings, $1 million in non-retirement stocks/savings, and a $150k/yr income. Their expected contribution would be $55k/year.
Some other highly selective colleges would have completely different results for this family, including some ones that are known for top FA.
@Data10 wrote:
That’s surprising.
Agree with the above posts about Duke.
Something negative seems to be going on at the school for it to drop from #8 to #12 over the last 5 years or so.
I always considered Duke to be superior to Northwestern…I guess that’s not the case anymore.
On the other hand, something positive must be happening at Northwestern.
Why is yield the best way to rank? Yield is primarily a measure of selectivity, but also has some other influences, such as portion of class admitted through ED/REA/SCEA/… , “yield protection” type admission policies and degree of holistic, net cost after FA, location, and uniqueness (for example, BYU and USAFA have higher yield than might be expected due to unique aspects of the schools for which there is no good alternative).
In state yield is notably different than out of state yield. Specific numbers for 2019 are below:
UCLA – 53% in state, 25% out of state, total = 43%
Berkeley – 50% in state, 29% out of state, total = 45%
UCI – 31% in state, 6% out of state, total = 24%
At Berkeley, the yield by GPA among CA public HS students was:
= 4.2 GPA – 44% yield
3.8 to 4.2 GPA – 64% yield
3.4 to 3.8 GPA – 79% yield
< 3.4 GPA – 95% yield (small sample… 20/21)
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But what parents making $200,00 a year only have $200k in savings???
Yes I am clear on the math and yes we ran NPCs for all of S19 and now D21’s colleges. I was just curious how a college comes up with “typical” savings. Generally, people who have high earnings also know to save a lot.
And many if not most of those >=4.2 GPA instate kids will have secured admission to both UCB and UCLA since it is simply a matter of checking a box on the application. It is quite plausible that the joint yield to UCB and UCLA (ie accepted students who pick one or the other) for instate public HS students is well over 60%, perhaps even approaching 70%.
Depends on how recently you started to make $200k gross and your ability to save, based on COLA and/or spending habits. If you take a family in a high tax/high cost state who decides to live in an expensive house (Harvard does not include home equity) and you are fully funding your 401k, the $200k disappears pretty quickly. You could also be a great saver/savvy investor and/or making good money for a long time with investment assets in 7 figures or higher. Or you could be in between. Why I included different assumptions as to assets.
Sisternight: “The extremely high and ever rising (faster than the rate of inflation) cost of the T20 schools signals a continued consolidation of power and influence among the already wealthy and elite, which will lead to a continued shrinking of the middle class, and growing income inequality. Sure, the T20 supports a few low income students to attend…”
A chart in a recent Bloomberg News article shows that while the list price of a 4-yr private college has risen steadily over the past twenty years, average actual cost to a family (in constant dollars, of course) is almost exactly where it was two decades ago. I can’t show you the confidential income-segmented data from my T20 because it’s, well, confidential… but “supports a few low income students to attend” is largely backwards. That above-inflation rise in list cost has served as a wealth transfer mechanism from wealthy families to those with lower income.
Well, starting the baseline at year 2000 is a little disingenuous since most of the disparity occurred well before then.
I am one who had a zigzag path in life. I did not start saving and contributing to retirement until I earned by current degree and job at age 40.
I don’t doubt that you save a lot, but I’d expect you’d be surprised how few $200k families save a large portion of their income in non-retirement, non-primary residence assets. Some live paycheck to paycheck, and would have serious financial problems, if they were out of work for a month.
For example, the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances found lists the following medians. I am approximating $200k based on a midpoint between groups with median incomes of $150k and $280k. Net worth is high, but the bulk of it appears to be in primary residence and retirement accounts, which Harvard does not include as assets for FA purposes.
In the SCF table below, the median savings account value was $30k, and a large portion did not appear to have non-retirement stocks/bonds/CDs/… .
Net Worth – Median is ~$800k
Primary Residence – 89% have, median value is ~$400k
Retirement Account – 87% have, median value is ~$250k
Vehicles – 94% have, median value is ~$33k
Savings Account – 100% have, median value is ~$30k
Directly Held Stocks – 35% have, making median $0
Other Real Estate – 32% have, making median $0
Business Equity – 30% have, making median $0
Pooled Investment Funds – 27% have, making median $0
CDs – 11% have, making median $0
Does anyone know how Questbridge determines its financial qualifications? It is such a great program that has done much to provide access to deserving first gen students with limited means. Just curious since if primary residence and retirement accounts are not included, the definition of limited means seems murky. Clearly Pell grant recipients should get an edge but not sure how rigorous the metrics used by Questbridge are. It would be good to know since it’s often unclear if you should suggest Questbridge to prospective students or not. Also, perhaps USNews should broaden its standards to go beyond the Pell percentage. That would helps schools with smaller FA budgets than schools like Princeton and Williams.
Why is yield the best way to rank?
ED and SCEA does distort yield, so RD yield may be the best way, some one call that the open market yield, which is a reasonable way of putting it. Yield boils everything down to one number, and shows the relative strength of the college vs others. This comes from a NYT article a while back where they ranked colleges based on cross-admit preferences (basically yield), similar to how chess players are ranked, i.e. if one player beats another (college a beats college be for an admit), they move up in the rankings. Anyway when it was published Harvard was a clear #1, Yale was a distant second. Now I’m guessing it would be Stanford 1, Harvard 2, Yale 3.
“In state yield is notably different than out of state yield. Specific numbers for 2019 are below”
I meant that the oos yield for UCI still is about half of UCB, so the trend, not that the actual yields were the same.
Colleges that offer ED, SCEA, or similar that boost yield, rarely publish yield figures for RD only. Even if they did, yield is more a measure of perceived selectivity than it is “relative strength” or degree of preference.
For example, you mentioned Harvard was first by cross admit yield. Suppose you have a group of 100 top academic students in MA and survey them about their first choice college. If that survey reveals that 50 of them list UMass as 1st choice and 50 of them list Harvard as first choice, that doesn’t mean the 2 schools will have a similar yield among this group. The kids who prefer UMass won’t apply to Harvard as a backup in case UMass rejects them. That wouldn’t make sense because Harvard is far more selective than UMass. Instead the only kids who apply to Harvard in this group will be the ones whose first choice is Harvard, insuring Harvard has a near 100% yield. However, the kids who favor Harvard may very well apply to the much less selective UMass as a backup/safety in case Harvard rejects them, insuring UMass will have a much lower yield. UMass can’t win the cross admit chess ranking, if the kids who prefer UMass never apply to Harvard. I’m sure this perceived selectivity is correlated with “relative strength”, but there are other metrics that would have a higher correlation.
Yield also gets distorted by a variety of other issues, including the ones I mentioned in my earlier post. For example, BYU had a 81% yield in 2019, which is roughly the same as Harvard’s 82% yield in 2019. Both are near double Caltech’s 44% yield. Does that mean BYU is as “strong” as Harvard? And nearly twice as strong as Caltech? Or does that more mean BYU offers something especially unique, with their LDS religious focus combined with being located in the only state in which the majority of HS students are LDS?
A list of IPEDS 2018 yields for various colleges is below. While there is a clear correlation with selectivity or “strength”, there are also huge number of exceptions, for varying reasons. I think quite a few other single number metrics would do a better job. I think even the USNWR ranking would be better.
USAFA – 98%
Ozarks – 95%
U Puerto Rico: M – 94%
West Point – 86%
Harvard – 82%
Stanford – 82%
BYU – 79%
Chicago – 77%
MIT – 76%
Webb – 76%
Berea --73%
Soka – 62%
Brown – 61%
Yeshiva – 59%
U Alaska – 58%
Notre Dame – 57%
CMC – 56%
Barnard – 55%
Cooper Union – 55%
Duke – 55%
UNC: Arts – 54%
Davidson – 46%
Berkeley – 45%
U Florida – 45% (UF online was 91% yield)
U Georgia – 45%
Caltech – 43%
GeorgiaTech – 41%
U Nebraska – 40%
Harvey Mudd – 39%
WUSTL – 38%
Emory – 28%
Tulane – 28%
Northeastern – 23%
Case Western – 18%
Reed – 17%
Emory: Oxford --13%
I’m sorry, but that someone would come to these conclusions illustrates everything that is wrong about rankings.
From what I see, Stanford was last #1 in 1988. I don’t see how being #1 32 years ago means they should be ranked higher now. Their average ranking since then has been 5, they haven’t been higher than 4 in over 25 years, and they were #7 just two years ago, so being #6 is hardly an outlier.
The USNews methodology and data is provided - I’m curious why you think they should be higher.
Caltech was #1 much more recently and is now #9. Are they vastly underrated?
Gosh, if you think the rankings are scrambled now, with the addition of a few social mobility markers, wait until the pandemic is over!