<p>vtmt, the school gives out 50 Richmond Scholars per class, which is 200 students per year at $50,000 a year in benefit (this is merit, not financial aid). That’s $10,000,000 per year in just on scholarship program. The endowment to guarantee this aid every year has to be in excess of $210,000,000 million. Then you have programs like Bonners, Presidential Scholarships, and some other smaller grants that are merit based. I’m not the most knowledgable on the subject, but giving out a minimum of $10,000,000 per year in merit aid is quite a bit. Now, it does go to a small, extremely deserving group. I for one wouldn’t mind seeing the awards be 50% grants rather than full grants and spread to twice as many people to help even more students, but that’s not my decision. I hate it any time that UR loses out on a student due to financial concerns, but I guess it’s always going to happen.</p>
<p>ncmercn, UR was just recently listed as the hottest school in the country for International Studies by Newsweek magazine. Also, UR received a $9 million donation from one of our largest benefactors to create a dedicated building for International Studies, which, in my opinion, will help strengthen the program further. It’s scheduled to be completed by the Fall 2010. </p>
<p>shecallsemedad, you’re not just talking “larger” endowments, you’re talking 10x the size of the endowments (and in Harvard’s case, you’re talking 30x the endowment). If you were to take our merit program and mulitiply what we give out by 10, that would mean that 500 of 750 students each year would be going on a full ride. In my opinion, that is more impressive than what Harvard and Yale are doing, as they don’t have 66% of their students going for free. Even if you calculate it as endowment per student, Harvard has 3x what UR has and Princeton on the high end has 4x the endowment per student than UR does. </p>
<p>Like I said previously, I would like to see UR hand out maybe 25 full rides each year and then 50 50% rides, so more people are helped. Currently, Ayers has requested that UR looks into expanding the full ride to any American family making less than $40,000 a year and he has also asked to see how high we could make that threshold. Unfortunately none of this will effect any of you trying to make decisions now, but UR is looking into it.</p>