the Sam Jackson College Experience

As a Yale student, it’s a nice reaffirmation of the resources available when I load the New York Times webpage and find a nice photo of the squash courts in an article about schools with massive endowments. Only in late January, when that happened, it wasn’t Yale at all–it was my high school, Phillips Exeter Academy. I could even spot some of my friends in the photo (not featured here).

The article begins by profiling Curtis Thomas, a student made able to attend Exeter thanks to its generous financial aid. Curtis is really cool, I don’t know him especially well but did work with him on the Martin Luther King Day committee; in any event, I can certainly say that I’m very glad Exeter has the enormous pile of money to bring him and people in similar positions to Exeter.

Despite Exeter’s expanding commitments, which include a new promise to pay the full cost for any student whose family income is less than $75,000, the school’s endowment keeps growing. Last year — fueled by gifts from wealthy alumni and its own successful investments — it crossed the $1 billion mark, up from just over $500 million in 2002.

Exeter may be a particularly successful example, but its ballooning endowment also reflects a broader trend. In the 10 years through the 2005-6 academic year, the number of students at independent schools, which does not count parochial schools, rose just 11.6 percent, according to the National Association of Independent Schools. Over the same period, the average endowment per student, adjusted for inflation, increased by 93.5 percent.

So the rich are getting richer, both individuals and institutionally–independent school spending per student is up 40% between 1999 and 2004, versus 28% for public schools; at the high end of things, Exeter-style, things

Over a recent breakfast in Exeter’s cafeteria, Tyler C. Tingley, Exeter’s principal, said the school had commissioned a report showing that in 1980, 40 percent of American families could afford to pay tuition at Phillips Exeter, but by 2004 that number had declined to just 6 percent.

The ability of Exeter and other wealthy institutions to underwrite students helps explain why they may enjoy an advantage over other independent schools in competing for the best students. [...]

“If your selection pool is only 6 percent of the population,” Mr. Tingley, the principal, said, “that is a small percent to draw from. We are trying to create a level playing field. It used to be that we gave financial aid to 34 percent of the student body. Now it is 46 percent. We anticipate it will increase further as a result of the changes.”

Now, it’s striking to see that Exeter is in the top 25 endowments for ALL private schools–including colleges. I knew many friends who were sad to realize how much they might end up lacking for resources after they left high school. Here at Yale, I’m better off, but it can still be mind-boggling. Looking at this story about rich old schools doling out big bucks for financial aid sounds positively heart-warming: for whatever income disparity there might be, and whatever wealth gap, at least attempts are being made to mitigate the difference… right?

Not so fast. At the high end of things, Exeter type schools have that flexibility. But for schools that don’t run capital campaigns in the hundreds of millions of dollars range, they still want to compete for the dollars that students from rich families bring, as well as searching for the best students. Even Exeter does this. It says it looks for “students from every quarter” and it makes sure that it doesn’t overlook the “extremely wealthy” quarter (not that that’s 25%). For schools which don’t have the same resources, what can this mean?

“Private school is a luxury, and rich families want the best facilities,” said Michael Gary, director of admissions at Exeter. “All too often fund-raising is about the buildings and the sports facilities. The schools need them to attract the wealthy families. They don’t have high on their priorities providing access to kids who can’t afford it.”

The schools that want to attract students have to choose to spend on aid or facilities if they can’t compete on both–and in a financial bind, they often choose facilities. Something to remember about all of those bulging endowments. Exeter had lots of its endowment tied up only for athletic or other restricted purposes. The best of all RIDICULOUS endowed things? There is a prize, given out on prize day, to any student who receives the same prize that their mother or father received when they were a student. To my great delight, in recent years it has garnered some booing and hissing. Its recipients still shrug, and go and collect their money for being both talented at whatever achievement they’re receiving… and being legacies… and the cycle continues.

Sorry for the delay, folks, I’ve been busy of late coming back from D.C. and then gearing up for yesterday–my high school graduation. I don’t have any good digital photos from the diploma-grabbing itself, but I’ll upload some from the random goodbyes afterwards later today hopefully. If I am feeling particularly sharing I will put up some Prom photos… But yeah, myself and the rest of the Phillips Exeter Academy class of 2007 are now alumni.

Anyways, I am catching up on everything and will be back in a posting schedule soon. Also, if you know of intellectually redemptive decently-paying jobs in the Boston area, don’t hesitate to let me know : )

Hey everyone! I’m sorry that I have not been posting for more than a month, but I’ve just been really involved in everything going on here in Washington. I’m having a pretty great time and learning a lot and experiencing tons of new things. I’ll be posting as I can, skirting the NDA of my internship (though I suppose that’s flimsy anyhow) and highlighting the extracurricular fun activities that I pursue on my own and that Exeter’s Washington Internship Program has scheduled for us.

Problems technical and logistical have stopped me from getting the time I want to post, but rest assured that I have been reading the same blogs as ever and am as up to date as always on the topics most important to you, my readership. Which, interestingly, only continues to grow even as I ignored the blog…

I’ve fixed the site, more or less–if you see any glaring problems please report them along with browser, etc info, and I’ll try to fix them. Banner should be working again now, double-sidebar modules mostly in place… You’ll notice also the Text Link Ads (aff) link on the left sidebar; I just got accepted to TLA’s ad program, finally. To those of you who have expressed an interest in the past about buying adspace or links on my site, now is your chance to get in before the rush!

I’ll have more to say later, but that’s all for now! I’m going to do a little more blog housekeeping today and tomorrow, updating old plugins and fixing bits of the K2 nightly I just put in place, so watch out for falling pieces.

As covered by the Yale Daily News, Yale University has elected to continue its Early Action program.I’m not sure I like their reasoning.

The decision was made by weighing the benefits of joining Harvard, Princeton, UVA etc. vs. sticking it out with MIT and Stanford (who both vowed to keep Early). Opinions of those watching the decision were rather mixed (Decision to keep early action earns mixed response, YDN).

The University made the right strategic decision to maintain its early option after Harvard and Princeton discontinued theirs, said Chuck Hughes, president of the college admissions counseling firm Road to College and a senior admissions officer at Harvard from 1995 to 2000. Many of the students who would have applied early to Harvard or Princeton will likely apply to Yale, said Hughes, who predicted that Yale will see a 25 to 50 percent increase in early applications next year.

Hmm, Chuck makes it sound like Yale was just looking out for #1. What about all those poor students who didn’t have the resources or know-how to apply early, the ones that Harvard and Princeton claim to be helping?

“This provision provides students the option of expressing a preference for Yale, while freeing them from the pressures associated with binding early decision programs,” he [Brenzel] said.

Because students admitted under early action are not required to accept the school’s offer until May, Brenzel said, applicants from low-income families are able to compare financial aid offers before making a decision about where to go to school. Since switching from early decision to early action in 2002, Yale has seen an increase in the number of financial aid students who apply early, Levin said. [YDN]

On the first point, couldn’t there just be some sort of standardized “first preference” checkbox on the common application? A standardized agreement which says: this school is my first choice school. Legally the signer would be obliged to send this form to only one school, but it would be completely nonbinding (assuming this is a new fantasy world where early programs do not exist). On the second point, might it not see a greater still increase if it dropped its EA entirely? I’m not really feeling convinced that Yale has the high ground when talking about whats best for applicants, particularly lower-income applicants.

An interesting problem that is on many people’s minds here at Exeter: the very best applicants poaching spots from multiple schools if they apply regular everywhere and thereby creating admissions chaos. I’ve had more than a few people, after congratulating me, express their happiness that I won’t be competing with them for slots at other schools. I’m not even the archetypal ’spot-stealing’ student, either–it’s just one fewer competitor.

In conversations with Yale admissions officers, high school counselors and administrators also expressed concern that eliminating early admissions might lead to more competitive students receiving multiple offers from top- and second-tier schools that would otherwise have gone to other students, Levin said. [YDN]

Am I happy that I had an Early Action acceptance last month? Absolutely. All the same, I don’t feel that the system can’t be improved here somehow. My real question, which I haven’t seen adequately answered by anyone at Harvard or Princeton or UVA or elsewhere, is just how eliminating early programs reduces college stress. ‘Starting the process early’ isn’t a big concern, since it’s just one application. If anything, starting the process early with just one school is a good way of ‘easing in’ to the college admissions process. There are some stress-relieving factors that would come up if everyone had only regular decision, but I think that the looming fears and threats of super-applicants applying to more and more schools might counterbalance that relief–and then some.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, is coming to my school to give an assembly on January 26th. This is because he was an alum, ‘02. Phillips Exeter Academy is running some year-long assembly series for the 75th anniversary of the Harkness method at Exeter–the discussion-based teaching around a table that was made possible through the money of Rockefeller chum Edward S. Harkness. You can be sure I’ll be asking hard questions.

If this is part of the Harkness 75th series, which I expect it is, there will also be an hour long talk afterwards. The assembly will offer me maybe one opportunity to ask a tough question whose straight answer would embarrass Zuckerberg in front of the school. More realistically any question-answering would be done with the night-time talk. I’m specifically looking for questions about privacy, something that many of my peers sometimes worry about. All the same there are lots of avenues here for lots of fun.

If you have any questions you think I should try to ask, please share them! Post them in the comments.

(Sidenote: Unlike everyone else in the world, I’d like to acknowledge that though it’s his baby, Zuckerberg had a lot of help in time and money and wasn’t some genius Zarathustra. All the same he’s got the reins right now and is the frontman whenever it comes to making absurd gestures like wearing flipflops to business functions and hugely overvaluing his company while snubbing potential partners and throwing paper billions down the drain.)