Notre Dame or Georgetown

[Anonymous]

Endowment,

ND: 16.7mil
GU: 3.2mil

One will keep rising and one is declining.

[Anonymous]

Having gone to a Jesuit college & having relatives who went to ND & GU, I keep checking this discussion to see if anyone has said anything even slightly interesting. And all I get are childish spats over various versions of EA & which one is whiter. Or “Our endowment is bigger”! Come on people, you’re better than that. Start slinging some serious mud!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having gone to a Jesuit college & having relatives who went to ND & GU, I keep checking this discussion to see if anyone has said anything even slightly interesting. And all I get are childish spats over various versions of EA & which one is whiter. Or “Our endowment is bigger”! Come on people, you’re better than that. Start slinging some serious mud!

Endowment is actually a significant factor.

[Anonymous]

Um, I think those endowment figures are $ billions, not $ millions, or at least I hope they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Um, I think those endowment figures are $ billions, not $ millions, or at least I hope they are.

yeah looks like number sense is off from that poster

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having gone to a Jesuit college & having relatives who went to ND & GU, I keep checking this discussion to see if anyone has said anything even slightly interesting. And all I get are childish spats over various versions of EA & which one is whiter. Or “Our endowment is bigger”! Come on people, you’re better than that. Start slinging some serious mud!

Endowment is actually a significant factor.

Super significant. We're UMC and got zero dollars when Georgetown. I called to see if they could give me an idea of what the picture would look like when my younger child started college and I have two in at one time. They looked and said, yeah, still full pay.

They take your primary home equity into account. They take a lot more of the your salary than other schools. It leads to a college that has rich internationals and rich private school kids and then black and hispanic kids who are on FA. Very very 1980s-style barbell.

Why is their endowment so much lower than comparable schools?

ND is 1.3mm per student
Georgetown is 186,000 per student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD applied to both ND and Georgetown early action. We really think she'll get into both and are already discussing the differences, the pros and cons. Any insights on the schools from people who have kids there now. Things besides academics as both are great in that regard. Thank you.

To share my completely subjective and emotional impressions:

I found Notre Dame stifling when I visited. All those rah-rah, white, wealthy, Catholic kids who've been boy or girl scouts and who are just so wholesome, self-satisfied, and assured of their places in society. Self-congratulatory and naive about their privilege as rich, white Christians. I preferred Georgetown. I thought the students, on balance, had more humility and creativity and less artless myopia, and I preferred the religious diversity. These are my purely personal takeaways. Others will no doubt see these schools differently. I didn't apply to ND, got into GU, and went to Northwestern.

Whatever you saw on a tour, you saw on a tour. I don't doubt it. But Georgetown is whiter and it's wealthier. It's wealthier because, ironically, the school is much poorer. The richer the school, the more generous the aid, the more economically diverse the class.

ND is more Catholic than Georgetown. True fact.

I mean, people, there are numbers on this. Not on how many boys scouts or how "humble" it is (although Georgetown has never struck me as especially humble), but the whiteness and the wealth of the student body. Facts. Numbers.

I don't think Georgetown is whiter, but you may have a point about wealth. When I was there, somebody had put up a poster quoting the university president saying something to the effect of, "Either we are all Notre Dame or none of us is." How is that for demanding blanket conformity? Within that framework, perhaps there is room for individuality, but the school spirit thing is depersonalizing. They also talked about how they were going to change the world through their faith. They had the missionary zeal and self-righteousness of crusaders. Why didn't they all just dye themselves blue and green? Having parietals and separate dorms for men and women made me feel it would be like high school all over again.

meanwhile the Jesuits had three goals: to establish highly disciplined schools, to propagate Catholic beliefs through missionary work, and to combat Protestantism. All jesuit grads are told to "light the world on fire". So not sure about missionaries at ND, but it's at the core of GU.

parietals are the jurisdiction of ResLife and you'll only get in trouble if someone complains. this almost never happens when you have a single (so upperclassman). and it almost never happens if you're an underclassman and your roommate likes you even a little. also, even if you're written up, nothing happens until 3rd infraction and I've never even heard of that in recent years.

I went to ND undergrad and Georgetown Law (for a year), but my 21st century experience was teaching two years at ND pre-pandemic.

And the Jesuits ran the Inquisition, but that was a while back. These days, they're more chill. At Georgetown, I didn't pick up on a repressive religious vibe.

One of the girls at ND told me parietals are much more strictly enforced for women than men, which is in line with the 1950s vibe I sensed there. And my visit was very much in the 21st century. Just the existence of parietals, even if they're not enforced, is overbearing

If ND is what you want, more power to you. I found it suffocating.

And the more of you out there who hate ND, the better for my kid who desperately wants to attend ND. She is a wholesome kid who is devout in her Catholic faith and would welcome rules like parietals. Access to a chapel and masses right in the residential hall...it doesn't get any better than that.

So you do you!! Go to GU or anywhere else for that matter and have all the sex you want in the middle of the night.

It's not just about sex. Notre Dame infantilizes its students with these rules. Women are more likely to be punished (usually by a talking to from a rector, a letter home, or having to write an essay) than men, who are usually let off with a wink and a nod. If you want a paternalistic and misogynistic high school environment, go for it. I think it's disrespectful to treat adults in this way, but, as you say, you do you (or let your daughter do her).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having gone to a Jesuit college & having relatives who went to ND & GU, I keep checking this discussion to see if anyone has said anything even slightly interesting. And all I get are childish spats over various versions of EA & which one is whiter. Or “Our endowment is bigger”! Come on people, you’re better than that. Start slinging some serious mud!

Endowment is actually a significant factor.

Super significant. We're UMC and got zero dollars when Georgetown. I called to see if they could give me an idea of what the picture would look like when my younger child started college and I have two in at one time. They looked and said, yeah, still full pay.

They take your primary home equity into account. They take a lot more of the your salary than other schools. It leads to a college that has rich internationals and rich private school kids and then black and hispanic kids who are on FA. Very very 1980s-style barbell.

Why is their endowment so much lower than comparable schools?

ND is 1.3mm per student
Georgetown is 186,000 per student.

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having gone to a Jesuit college & having relatives who went to ND & GU, I keep checking this discussion to see if anyone has said anything even slightly interesting. And all I get are childish spats over various versions of EA & which one is whiter. Or “Our endowment is bigger”! Come on people, you’re better than that. Start slinging some serious mud!

Endowment is actually a significant factor.

Super significant. We're UMC and got zero dollars when Georgetown. I called to see if they could give me an idea of what the picture would look like when my younger child started college and I have two in at one time. They looked and said, yeah, still full pay.

They take your primary home equity into account. They take a lot more of the your salary than other schools. It leads to a college that has rich internationals and rich private school kids and then black and hispanic kids who are on FA. Very very 1980s-style barbell.

Why is their endowment so much lower than comparable schools?

ND is 1.3mm per student
Georgetown is 186,000 per student.

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, right?

you mean Georgetown should pull themselves up? Yes, I agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD applied to both ND and Georgetown early action. We really think she'll get into both and are already discussing the differences, the pros and cons. Any insights on the schools from people who have kids there now. Things besides academics as both are great in that regard. Thank you.

To share my completely subjective and emotional impressions:

I found Notre Dame stifling when I visited. All those rah-rah, white, wealthy, Catholic kids who've been boy or girl scouts and who are just so wholesome, self-satisfied, and assured of their places in society. Self-congratulatory and naive about their privilege as rich, white Christians. I preferred Georgetown. I thought the students, on balance, had more humility and creativity and less artless myopia, and I preferred the religious diversity. These are my purely personal takeaways. Others will no doubt see these schools differently. I didn't apply to ND, got into GU, and went to Northwestern.

Whatever you saw on a tour, you saw on a tour. I don't doubt it. But Georgetown is whiter and it's wealthier. It's wealthier because, ironically, the school is much poorer. The richer the school, the more generous the aid, the more economically diverse the class.

ND is more Catholic than Georgetown. True fact.

I mean, people, there are numbers on this. Not on how many boys scouts or how "humble" it is (although Georgetown has never struck me as especially humble), but the whiteness and the wealth of the student body. Facts. Numbers.

I don't think Georgetown is whiter, but you may have a point about wealth. When I was there, somebody had put up a poster quoting the university president saying something to the effect of, "Either we are all Notre Dame or none of us is." How is that for demanding blanket conformity? Within that framework, perhaps there is room for individuality, but the school spirit thing is depersonalizing. They also talked about how they were going to change the world through their faith. They had the missionary zeal and self-righteousness of crusaders. Why didn't they all just dye themselves blue and green? Having parietals and separate dorms for men and women made me feel it would be like high school all over again.

meanwhile the Jesuits had three goals: to establish highly disciplined schools, to propagate Catholic beliefs through missionary work, and to combat Protestantism. All jesuit grads are told to "light the world on fire". So not sure about missionaries at ND, but it's at the core of GU.

parietals are the jurisdiction of ResLife and you'll only get in trouble if someone complains. this almost never happens when you have a single (so upperclassman). and it almost never happens if you're an underclassman and your roommate likes you even a little. also, even if you're written up, nothing happens until 3rd infraction and I've never even heard of that in recent years.

I went to ND undergrad and Georgetown Law (for a year), but my 21st century experience was teaching two years at ND pre-pandemic.

And the Jesuits ran the Inquisition, but that was a while back. These days, they're more chill. At Georgetown, I didn't pick up on a repressive religious vibe.

One of the girls at ND told me parietals are much more strictly enforced for women than men, which is in line with the 1950s vibe I sensed there. And my visit was very much in the 21st century. Just the existence of parietals, even if they're not enforced, is overbearing

If ND is what you want, more power to you. I found it suffocating.

And the more of you out there who hate ND, the better for my kid who desperately wants to attend ND. She is a wholesome kid who is devout in her Catholic faith and would welcome rules like parietals. Access to a chapel and masses right in the residential hall...it doesn't get any better than that.

So you do you!! Go to GU or anywhere else for that matter and have all the sex you want in the middle of the night.

It's not just about sex. Notre Dame infantilizes its students with these rules. Women are more likely to be punished (usually by a talking to from a rector, a letter home, or having to write an essay) than men, who are usually let off with a wink and a nod. If you want a paternalistic and misogynistic high school environment, go for it. I think it's disrespectful to treat adults in this way, but, as you say, you do you (or let your daughter do her).

I liked having parietals. It wasn’t infantilism, it gave me a sense of control and security and privacy. I don’t find security rules disrespectful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Georgetown is objectively the most prestigious school, but the goal is the best fit, so if your child prefers ND, that's perfectly fine.

ND is much more conservative. Jesuits are different.

Not sure why this keeps being perpetuated. ND is somewhat left of center (which might be slightly right of some universities). Biden won easily among students. There is a wide range of political views.

I am in higher education. ND has some _very_ traditionalist / theologically conservative strands on its campus. Appealing for some, unappealing for others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD applied to both ND and Georgetown early action. We really think she'll get into both and are already discussing the differences, the pros and cons. Any insights on the schools from people who have kids there now. Things besides academics as both are great in that regard. Thank you.

What is your Catholic ideology, if any? I say this because Georgetown is Jesuit and more liberal whereas ND is very conservative.

Yep. You need to check out the theology courses and the faculty biographies if this is important to you, because at either school DC is going to be required to take theology and philosophy in order to graduate. Those subject areas can turn into echo chambers, so you want to make sure they are echoing things that DC believes in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Georgetown is objectively the most prestigious school, but the goal is the best fit, so if your child prefers ND, that's perfectly fine.

ND is much more conservative. Jesuits are different.

Not sure why this keeps being perpetuated. ND is somewhat left of center (which might be slightly right of some universities). Biden won easily among students. There is a wide range of political views.

I am in higher education. ND has some _very_ traditionalist / theologically conservative strands on its campus. Appealing for some, unappealing for others.

And how does a student encounter these “strands”?

[Anonymous]

there's a lot I personally probably wouldn't like about ND, but my own kid is dealing with a roommate who is taking up a lot of their shared room with "personal time" -- during hours when my kid would like to be sleeping in the room he's paid for. freshman year is hard enough without dealing with this nonsense.

Anywho, a school rule that you can't have guests in a shared room from midnight to 8am does not sound to be to be all that extreme to me right this minute.

I sometimes feel like we go from extreme to extreme. A cool mom comes on here and says she's okay with overnight guests in her home senior year in high school and you'd all jump all over her. 6 months later you balk at a rule that says no overnight guests in shared rooms, when beds are three feet apart. As pointed out, this really only impacts shared rooms bcs there is no bed check. If nobody is complaining, nobody cares.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Georgetown is objectively the most prestigious school, but the goal is the best fit, so if your child prefers ND, that's perfectly fine.

ND is much more conservative. Jesuits are different.

Not sure why this keeps being perpetuated. ND is somewhat left of center (which might be slightly right of some universities). Biden won easily among students. There is a wide range of political views.

I am in higher education. ND has some _very_ traditionalist / theologically conservative strands on its campus. Appealing for some, unappealing for others.

And how does a student encounter these “strands”?

Course offerings, campus speakers, extracurricular (or not) offerings, clubs, organization and staffing of academic units, messaging from leadership, funding priorities...