This question is emblazoned on all sorts of college paraphernalia at the Grinnell College bookstore.
Watch this short video and you’ll be asking yourself a slightly different question: “Why the hell have I never heard of Grinnell?”

**Correction: My buddy, Dan Jarrett, wrote in to show me the most recent IPEDS data: among non-sectarian, liberal arts colleges, Grinnell actually ranks #4 in per capita endowment resources, behind Pomona, Swarthmore, and Amherst. Wiliams ranks a close fifth. For more on how these figures can be pulled apart to reveal a real wealth disparity among American colleges and universities, see Dan’s post.

If you prefer, you can check out the transcript below.

Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant
*********************
I’m here now on the campus of Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, and as I walked by the bookstore. I saw these water bottles that say on them, “Where the hell is Grinnell?”

Grinnell is definitely is in, well, it’s in Iowa. There’s a lot of corn around it. But this is a cute, little town and an absolutely marvelous liberal arts college. It has everything going for it. It has got the highest per-capita endowment of any college in America, the facilities are second to none. The library right over here has been renovated a couple of times. Absolutely drop dead gorgeous study spaces for students, looking out the windows, it’s phenomenal.

The science center has been renovated twice in the last 15 years or so, fantastic facilities, and great science. The gym and the fitness center, oh, my gosh!  I mean, I could go on and on. In the dormitories, we talked to one student and he was from Angola, okay. How did a student from Angola find Grinnell? I’m not sure, but this is a very international campus. Anyway, he was talking about the dormitories and saying, “I love my dorms!”

Look, if you are interested in a small, liberal arts college of the highest quality and all you’re thinking about is Williams and Amherst, think again. Think Iowa. Think Grinnell. Grinnell has fantastic resources for students, financial as well as human. I talked to a guy in a café downtown and he was a graduate of Grinnell and he said, “Oh, no, all the professors live here, they don’t live in Des Moines,” which is about an hour, hour-and-a-half away, “No, no, they all live in this community.” If you want tight relationships with your professors, Grinnell, my gosh, it’s really going to be hard to beat.

What else can I say about this place? Oh, again, international. This has one of the highest ratios of international students anywhere, here in Iowa. Why? Because people are looking for the highest quality education they can get in the United States. There are many other places, of course, and I don’t mean to suggest that other places aren’t equally good. But if you’re really looking for a top-notch school in America, think about Grinnell.

Another example, we were walking through the student center and a young man stopped us and said, “Can I help you?” And I said, “Well, we’re just looking around, but can I ask you a question, how’d you decide to come here?” And he said, “Well, I’m from Massachusetts and I was originally thinking of Williams and Amherst, but I needed money, I couldn’t afford those schools.” And Grinnell gave him a hefty merit package to come here and he said he has no regrets at all. People here are extremely passionate about whatever they’re interested in, and they are pretty laid back.

I mean, students who are willing to consider Iowa, they’re not as pretentious as some people who are looking necessarily for the name. They’re not looking for the geography of American education, they’re looking for the quality of American education. So you’re getting a slightly different tone here at Grinnell. Fabulous facilities, international campus, really bright student body, and it can be very affordable.

So if you haven’t figured out where the hell Grinnell is, you had better get it on your list.

The post Grinnell College–Amid the Cornfields Lies A Global Liberal Arts College first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Many public universities are facing deep budget cuts, and some are hoping to make up their revenue shortfalls by recruiting out-of-state students.   The article expresses many doubts that this will be a good strategy for most state universities.

One of the doubts–raised by me, as I was quoted in the article–is that most students from the west and south who desire to go out-of-state for college are looking at either the most prestigious and reputable public universities (Virginia, Michigan, North Carolina) or at the private colleges and universities.  Why, for example, would a qualified Colorado student choose the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (at out-of-state tuition prices) when he can go to the University of Colorado at Boulder?

I also pointed out that some public universities closer to home may be attractive to some students, especially if they offer generous scholarship programs.  The  University of Wyoming and Montana State University, for example, offer great packages to some students to attract them to their campuses.

But it seems unlikely that many state universities will be able to make significant increases in their out-of-state applicants.

With budgets being cut back, might it actually be time to reassess how  many university slots a state actually needs?  If there is more supply than demand, then why not cut back the supply to match that demand?

Or, might it  make more sense for a UMass-Amherst to put more energy into retaining and graduating students within six years?  For example, recent data suggest that only 84% of freshmen at UMass-Amherst return for their sophomore year.  If UMass could raise that to 93% (which is the first-year retention rate at University of Washington-Seattle), it would be able to make up a heck of a lot of revenue that way.

Similarly, only 68% of entering freshmen at UMass will graduate in six years.  If UMass could raise that rate to, say 78% (which is the six-year graduation rate at the University of Texas-Austin), the university would fill quite a few holes in its budget.

Sometimes the solution to a problem is closer at hand than we think.

Mark Montgomery
College Counselor

The post Out-of-State Public Universities–A Good Idea? first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

The core of college is the curriculum, after all.  I mean, the residence halls, the athletic facilities, and the free massages are all nice, of course.  But this is school, not a resort.  So it makes sense to think about the kind of curricular structure is right for you.

This short video explains the “Open Curriculum” of Amherst College, and compares it to the more structured–but still very individually directed–academic structures of Bennington and Marlboro Colleges.

Great College Advice

The post Choosing the Right College Curriculum–How Much Choice Is Right For You? first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Now with the economic downturn, I expect the outrage about ballooning college endowments will subside–because they’re not ballooning very much right now.  Up until the past few weeks, the “American Way” has been characterized by debt burdens, excessive leverage, and wanton spending.  Our collective profligacy has caught up with us, and the immediate future doesn’t appear very rosy.

If we remember Aesop’s fable of the grasshopper and the ants, we can think of Congress and the rest of the outraged public (or, the grasshoppers) complaining that private colleges (the ants) were unnecessarily stuffing their mattresses with investments.  Well, winter has now come, and the ants are sighing with relief that they made some good decisions.

Congressional grasshoppers, left out in the cold, how have to turn their attention to the messes they neglected, rather than continuing to complain about the apparent wisdom of the ants.  Most private colleges have weathered economic storms for decades, if not centuries in some cases.  While some colleges have gone under (and a few of the more spendhrift colleges may lose their shirts in this downturn), we don’t hear about Harvard or Yale or Vanderbilt going belly up like AIG, Lehman Brothers, or Washington Mutual.

Undoubtedly well-endowed colleges and universities will feel the economic pain of the current crisis, and while many (like Amherst) will try to continue to offer large financial aid packages to those who need them.  It will be interesting to see, however,  if all of them will be able to make good on every pledge they made a few months ago when their endowments were at record highs.  If university endowments have shrunk by 40% in the past year (as has the average portfolio), we may see some colleges backtracking.

Ants will be ants.

College Admissions Consultant

The post In Defense of Large University Endowments first appeared on College Admission Counseling.