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The Insane Cost of Attending Wake Forest

I've said it before, but this is not only wrong but coming from a place of great (and probably unacknowledged) privilege. Most Americans who go to college will go to community colleges, not four year schools. Of those that do attend four year colleges, there are literally thousands of schools you've never even heard of where students work hard to receive degrees and improve their job prospects etc. We can argue about what "elite" means to you individually, but suggesting that wake and Davidson are not elite institutions reflects your problems with scope.

I can live with that.
 
I can live with that.
Sounds like you've acknowledged it then.

There are probably loads of Georgia kids for whom getting into UGA would feel like getting in to Harvard. That doesn't make Georgia elite, obviously, but it is a reminder that just because Ayo considered or applied to HYP that doesn't mean that eliteness as a category should be defined by that kind of student.
 
Wake is probably the lowest ranked private school on the U.S. News ranking that I would consider ponying up for a private education. I'm hoping my oldest (5th grade) gets into a better school quite frankly. We will see.
 
And another thing, North Carolina's population has grown by 7.7% since 2010. Do you think UNC-CH's undergraduate enrollment has grown at that rate ? I have to admit that I don't really know, but I doubt it.
 
Where do you think Davidson would fall on the National List?

Fair question, but it misses the important distinction that they are in two, mutually exclusive categories. It's not big versus small or national versus regional (there's a separate USNW list for that) -- it's research university versus small liberal arts college. They have different goals, different missions, different student profiles, grant different degrees.

But to answer your question, Davidson would probably outperform a lot of highly ranked schools in categories like student-faculty ratio, retention rates, undergraduate teaching, access to faculty, alumni engagement, even student satisfaction. But they would also score terribly in categories like research grant acquisition, doctoral degrees granted, endowment, international faculty, etc.

What it took me many years to realize is that wake is incredibly unique in the way it combines the qualities of the R1 and SLAC models. Our relative lack of research hurts us some in the national rankings, but our smallness and teaching-centered focus makes us attractive to a certain kind of student. We wouldn't be eligible for the SLAC list even though for most wake Forest undergrads that's the experience they actually get.
 
Davidson's endowment is about 700 million while Wake's is about 1.1 billion. Still, like you said, they have different missions and vary larger in student body size. Davidson does have need blind admissions, like Wake.
 

If you are talking about me, my feelings have less to do with Wake than it does with diminishing returns on the other private schools (in my opinion). I would prefer my kid go to UF/Michigan/Maryland than pay all that money for Syracuse, GW or some other school like that.
 
Davidson's endowment is about 700 million while Wake's is about 1.1 billion. Still, like you said, they have different missions and vary larger in student body size. Davidson does have need blind admissions, like Wake.
Thanks for these clarifying numbers that bear out what I've said above.
 
Davidson's endowment is about 700 million while Wake's is about 1.1 billion. Still, like you said, they have different missions and vary larger in student body size. Davidson does have need blind admissions, like Wake.

Wake no longer has need blind admissions.
 
Fair question, but it misses the important distinction that they are in two, mutually exclusive categories. It's not big versus small or national versus regional (there's a separate USNW list for that) -- it's research university versus small liberal arts college. They have different goals, different missions, different student profiles, grant different degrees.

But to answer your question, Davidson would probably outperform a lot of highly ranked schools in categories like student-faculty ratio, retention rates, undergraduate teaching, access to faculty, alumni engagement, even student satisfaction. But they would also score terribly in categories like research grant acquisition, doctoral degrees granted, endowment, international faculty, etc.

What it took me many years to realize is that wake is incredibly unique in the way it combines the qualities of the R1 and SLAC models. Our relative lack of research hurts us some in the national rankings, but our smallness and teaching-centered focus makes us attractive to a certain kind of student. We wouldn't be eligible for the SLAC list even though for most wake Forest undergrads that's the experience they actually get.

Do you think the Wake admins consider Davidson a peer institution?
 
Do you think the Wake admins consider Davidson a peer institution?
No, because it is not the same kind of institution. Are you even reading what I post?

We might very well compete for some of the same undergraduates, but Davidson isn't giving doctoral degrees or sniping professors from Harvard to run research labs.
 
I'm going to steer my kids towards starting their own business so it doesn't mean a lick where they go. Seriously though, there is no way I would pay full freight or anywhere close to full freight to send my kids to any private school. Maaaaybe if it were in the HYP echelon and there was no where else they could go to study what they wanted to study. I've already told them that short of some major scholly's there's no way we can afford for them to go to Wake, and frankly it makes no sense for them to do so at that price.
 
I posted that just to get the #triggered betterphan response. I just can't bring myself to consider a place that lets in 3 of every 10 applicants "elite."

Harvard
Stanford
Princeton
Yale
MIT
Chicago
Columbia
Penn
Duke
Cal Tech
Dartmouth
Hopkins
Northwestern
Williams
Amherst
Swarthmore

That's probably the list for me, perhaps give or take one or two. We disagree. It's fine. All of this is pretty meaningless, though, as a Davidson or Wake grad is perfectly capable of doing just as well as a grad of one of those schools. Just as a UGA grad is perfectly capable of doing as well as a Wake grad. The books and resources to learn whatever you want to learn are there for anyone. Just gotta be committed and proactive and grind your ass off (obviously, certain fields are exceptions).

(Kinda felt like donaldross typing that)
 
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I posted that just to get the #triggered betterphan response. I just can't bring myself to consider a place that lets in 3 of every 10 applicants "elite."

Harvard
Stanford
Princeton
Yale
MIT
Chicago
Columbia
Penn
Duke
Cal Tech
Dartmouth
Hopkins
Northwestern
Williams
Amherst
Swarthmore

That's probably the list for me, perhaps give or take one or two. We disagree. It's fine. All of this is pretty meaningless, though, as a Davidson or Wake grad is perfectly capable of doing just as well as a grad of one of those schools. Just as a UGA grad is perfectly capable of doing as well as a Wake grad. The books and resources to learn whatever you want to learn are there for anyone. Just gotta be committed and proactive and grind your ass off.

(Kinda felt like donaldross typing that)

You're not wrong about any of this, I just think the definition of "elite" should be broader than you do. If we want to call this the "top tier," sure, though I'd knock of Swarthmore and Dartmouth (and then probably Williams and Amherst too).

This kind of list discounts the fact that a student at Williams is going to have an entirely different educational experience than a student at CalTech. The SLACs on your list could never make a dent in any R1 ranking, which is why inventing a category of eliteness without qualification is not really very useful.

Cool that you're just out to trigger me though.
 
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