s/o Private college financial health and cultivating an application list

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I suppose this is one of many good factors to consider, but I wouldn’t compile a college list based around if. All listed majors are pretty popular and not likely to get dropped.

I'm OP and I agree--I didn't mean I was cultivating a list around it--rather taking the list that my kid had started generating and checking out the financial grades. It allowed us to winnow out some from further research, or push up some for looking at more. Since DC is only a sophomore we're planning where to visit this summer/junior year.

In what ways do you expect this (financial score) to impact your child?
I wonder how the financial score will impact merit aid offered? You may find out the schools with poor scores offer more aid.

I'm not the OP, but I would worry about the school suddenly shutting down. "A friend of a friend" had a kid at Concordia in Portland. What a nightmare!

[Anonymous]

"I'm not the OP, but I would worry about the school suddenly shutting down. "A friend of a friend" had a kid at Concordia in Portland. What a nightmare!"

My child applied to Hampshire this cycle and was admitted. He chose a different school, but not at all because of the financial issues.

I checked various "indicators" of financial health compared to other SLACs he applied to, and looked back to see if there were clues that outsiders had about its financial troubles. I found that it looked, on paper, just as healthy as several other similarly situated schools. The conclusion I drew was that you probably won't be privy to the pending doom of a school without insider knowledge. However, it seems you can take some comfort in a school's proactive affirmations about their financial health, especially if they are public about their financial challenges and how their efforts at addressing them are going. But few schools will do this.

[Anonymous]

This is PP. This is why we need to see info like #4 on the Forbes list --
4. Core Operating Margin (10%): This measures whether tuition, donations and investment revenues cover a college’s educational expenses by subtracting its core expenses from its core revenues and dividing the difference by its core revenues. Williams College has a comfortable surplus, with a 57% operating margin. About one third of the 921 schools ranked, including the University of Miami and the University of Southern California, had negative margins, with expenses exceeding revenues.

Knowing whether a school is meeting is able to hit its budget goals for multiple years in a row might have given everyone a heads up about Hampshire's crisis.

But really, one has to also consider qualitative factors like the ability and interest of alumni in keeping a school operating. When you have Ken Burns in your alumni pool, that really helps prevent a closure.