Recruiting and Financial Aid

[Beeeej]

[quote KeithK][quote Beeeej]In all seriousness, I think a large part of the problem is that people think they can't give enough to have an impact.  I don't know what you think of as "not large enough," and it's not my business, but for argument's sake let's say you're thinking $25 isn't a large enough gift to bother with.[/quote]
The marginal impact of a $25 donation is insignificant.  But the aggregate impact of a large number of them is very significant.

It's very analogous to voting.  On the margin, the impact of an individual voter is insignificant.  It is vanishingly unlikely that the presidential race will be decided by my vote (rats!).  So it seems rational to not vote.

As with voting, the way to increase your power is to convince others to do what you are doing (donating to Cornell, hopefully).[/quote]

Bingo!

So, um... please donate to Cornell.  :-D

[RichH]

[quote KeithK][quote Beeeej]In all seriousness, I think a large part of the problem is that people think they can't give enough to have an impact.  I don't know what you think of as "not large enough," and it's not my business, but for argument's sake let's say you're thinking $25 isn't a large enough gift to bother with.[/quote]
The marginal impact of a $25 donation is insignificant.  But the aggregate impact of a large number of them is very significant.

It's very analogous to voting.  On the margin, the impact of an individual voter is insignificant.  It is vanishingly unlikely that the presidential race will be decided by my vote (rats!).  So it seems rational to not vote.

As with voting, the way to increase your power is to convince others to do what you are doing (donating to Cornell, hopefully).[/quote]

Cool.  So we can vote for Cornell this November, right?

[Beeeej]

[quote RichH]Cool.  So we can vote for Cornell this November, right?[/quote]

Well, you can if you want to.  But before you do, I think you should know that Cornell was educated in a strict, anti-American madrassa, betrayed his fellow soldiers while a prisoner of war, had his lawyer murdered, is a member of an ultra-nationalist church but also a secret plant by Islamofascists, adopted a black child, called Martin Luther King irrelevant, and spooged on your sister's dress.

[Rich S]

How does that compare with past practices of say, IBM?

[mnagowski]

[quote RichH]Cool.  So we can vote for Cornell this November, right?[/quote]

Looks like it will either be Columbia or the Naval Academy.

Turning the conversation back to athletics, but not necessarily hockey, it's interesting to note that the director of the Ivy League is going to retire next year. This, combined with all of the recent financial-aid changes and its impact on athletics, suggests that it may be time to start revisit the underlying structure of the League, its purpose, and its policies.

http://ivyleaguesports.com/article.asp?intID=6416

[billhoward]

Nice piece by the Daily Sun. Some feedback posts on the Sun site took the Sun to task for not doing the story about Cornell overall, rather than just the jocks. Fair point, but at least the sports board of the Sun had the drive to do this story and maybe it will drive the news board to do the same for the whole of Cornell.

If this the price of the Ivies not working in concert to provide the same aid package everywhere - which is a polite way of saying price fixing - then, fair enough, this is the price of competition. Don't go back to setting one aid package for all Ivy schools. Let Cornell be more competitive on athletics aid and student aid in general.

Cornell has a smaller endowment than Harvard, sure, but it's still bigger than the vast majority of universities. When our local high school did the college night last fall, the financial aid discussion used an example of how Cornell is cheaper than Virginia to attend because while Virginia starts out cheaper, Cornell offers more grant money to the typical student (this is student, not athlete). Maybe that data is a year or two out of date now.

Also you should measure the endowment not just in dollars but in dollars per student. That may be a fairer reflection of how much the school could (*could*) consider granting to students. One endowment per capita report shows endowment per capita. I was looking it up because I recall 20 years ago the University of Rochester supposedly had the best per capita endowment thanks to all that Kodak stock (not anymore). This shows Stanford and Princeton with $1.5-$2.0 million in per capita endowment and Cornell around No. 32 overall, but also last in the Ivies, with about $400,000 per student. (Columbia-Brown-Penn-Cornell are pretty close.) Princeton apparently generates more endowment income per student each year than Cornell generates in endowment income plus tuition. The Ivy order, if this report is accurate, is:
Princeton
Yale
Harvard (#4 overall)
Dartmouth
Columbia
Brown
Penn
Cornell

There was discussion here about trees and flowers. Seems like a waste if you want lower cost tuition. Except we just came back from a tour of a half-dozen Pennsylvania and NYS colleges and the places with poor plantings, broken concrete walkways, missing curbs, and muddy grass really made a lousy impression on would-be students and parents.

[BillCharlton]

I used the most accurate 2007 data I could find to create the attached pdf file. It ranks the Ivy schools by endowment, number of students (undergrad and total), endowment dollars per student, student costs, and percentage of the endowment required annually to cover all student costs (that is, to provide a free ride for all students). Based on these data, it appears that the "poorer" schools will have a hard time competing with the richer schools.

[mttgrmm]

and the west coast ivy gets into the fray:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/20/pf/college/stanford_tuition.ap/index.htm?cnn=yes

very interesting.

[mnagowski]

[quote BillCharlton]Based on these data, it appears that the "poorer" schools will have a hard time competing with the richer schools.[/quote]

After you factor in Cornell's support from the State of New York as 'quasi-endowment', the disparities remain. Princeton, Harvard, and Yale are really an order of magnitude richer than Brown, Penn, Cornell, and Columbia. Dartmouth is sui generis, somewhere in the middle. Princeton becomes even richer when you consider that it has none of the professional schools that the other Ivies have.

Page 25:
http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000398.pdf

[KeithK]

[quote mttgrmm]and the west coast ivy gets into the fray:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/20/pf/college/stanford_tuition.ap/index.htm?cnn=yes

very interesting.[/quote]
If these are hard cutoffs as the article implies then I'd expect to see parents of many current and future Stanford undergraduates playing a lot of financial games to get below the caps.  Dad makes $110k per year?  Maybe he should take a two month unpaid sabbatical and get it down to $93k.  Hopefully the schools use somewhat graduated systems when they implement these financial aid schemes.

[DeltaOne81]

[quote KeithK]
If these are hard cutoffs as the article implies then I'd expect to see parents of many current and future Stanford undergraduates playing a lot of financial games to get below the caps.  Dad makes $110k per year?  Maybe he should take a two month unpaid sabbatical and get it down to $93k.  Hopefully the schools use somewhat graduated systems when they implement these financial aid schemes.[/quote]

I wouldn't say the article even implies that. It says under $60K the school pays all (even room and board), and under $100K, they cover all tuition. It doesn't say that at $100,000.01 you're totally on their own. Everything else I have heard of is a graduated scale, and for good reason, as you point out.

[KeithK]

OK, hopefully it's just my lack of reading comprehension :-),

[mnagowski]

Part II in the series:

http://cornellsun.com/node/28002

By providing its own broader and more generous standard of "financial need," Cornell coaches, Noel and Bilsky agree the "Big Three" are establishing an athletic superiority in violation the Ivy Statement of Principles that mandate competitive balance.

Principle No. 4 states that each school "ought not merely to tolerate, but to value a balance of competitive success within the Group." Principle No. 3 states that the members should compare themselves with one another for "for standards of competitive excellence" and should use this as the sole measure for success and failure.

And some Cornell coaches believe the competitive imbalance has already begun.

This past fall, Harvard, Princeton and Yale accounted for six of the eight Fall sports Ivy league titles. In one of the two sports where the "Big Three" did not top the league — women's soccer — the Harvard and Princeton accounted for the rookie and Ivy League players of the year.

In winter sports, Harvard, Princeton and Yale also top the league in men's and women's hockey, men's and women's swimming and men's squash. Princeton is the favorite to win indoor Heps, repeating as the men's champion, and dethroning the Cornell women, who have won six straight titles.

"Before, we weren't even in the same league as scholarship schools in terms of being able to offer competitive packages, but now we're making a move and getting on the radar screen," said Fritz Rodriguez, director of admissions and financial aid for the Yale Athletics Department, to the Yale Daily News.

As a number of Cornell coaches pointed out, that's not a good thing, because even though schools like Yale, Harvard and Princeton can do it, the rest of the league cannot. So, not only are the "Big Three" now able to attract athletes from other Ivies, they may be able to attract top scholarship athletes from schools like Stanford and Duke.

[jeh25]

[quote Beeeej]
Okay, you're switching premises, but let's go with this one as long as we're at it.

Do you understand how endowments work?[/quote]

I'll take nursing scholarships that Cornell can't touch for $100, Alex.






EDIT: oops. now I see that you already raised the nursing school issue in a later post. Nevermind.

[jeh25]

[quote RichH]

Cool.  So we can vote for Cornell this November, right?[/quote]

No, but you can vote for the Cantab. No more @#$%ing Yalies. Twenty straight years is enough.