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Wake Forest Tuition Trends

Merlin said:
Don't you also, have to take into account that some schools give out more merit aid (not based on family financials) than others. For example Tulane I believe gives out a lot of merit aid to bring down the price, while Wake gives out very little.
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Yes, I think all these nuanced metrics are important to consider.

I'm pushing back against thatguy, whose complaints about wake's tuition relative to other schools' is based solely on USNW ranking and publicly-listed tuition. And I largely disagree with him about which schools are "peer" schools.
 
In our family, the ultimate determination was student debt. They do an assessment of household income to determine how much you can pay for your kid's college. What do they do with the difference? Is it debt, or discounted through financial aid, scholarships, etc. Duke, for example, limits student debt to $5k/year. Graduating from Duke with $20k debt is not too bad. Graduating somewhere else with six figure debt is crazy for undergraduate. How can you afford a graduate degree? When are you going to be able to afford to buy a house? Start a family?
 
wakephan09 said:
Yes, I think all these nuanced metrics are important to consider.

I'm pushing back against thatguy, whose complaints about wake's tuition relative to other schools' is based solely on USNW ranking and publicly-listed tuition. And I largely disagree with him about which schools are "peer" schools.
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You are the one who brought USNW ranking into the discussion, and then listed a bunch of schools ranked ahead of WF

I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a WF graduate who has kids to be interested in the WF total cost of attendance relative to what are consensus top schools
 
thatguy2016 said:
You are the one who brought USNW ranking into the discussion, and then listed a bunch of schools ranked ahead of WF

I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a WF graduate who has kids to be interested in the WF total cost of attendance relative to what are consensus top schools
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I don't think this conversation, or your interest in discussing wake's cost of attendance, is unreasonable at all, so don't put those words in my mouth. I'm responding in this thread to the contention (not even yours necessarily) that wake is unreasonably overpriced relative to our peers.

I used the USNW rankings not because they are perfect but because I figured they are the standard used by high school guidance counselors and parents of kids like you to evaluate these things. As I've mentioned more than once above I take into account a variety of other factors when I'm considering "peer" schools (curriculum, degrees, student body, research reputation, etc.), and I don't put much stock in USNW.

In general, I don't disagree with your basic argument about outrageous costs in higher education. The important difference between our posts, as I understand them, is that you want to compare wake's tuition (and costs, whatever) to that of super-peer schools (e.g. Stanford), schools that are nothing like wake at all (e.g. MIT), and Harvard which should not (in my opinion) be compared to anything. We agree that none of these three are "peers" with wake.

thatguy2016 said:
I am comparing the cost of (in my opinion) the three best-known/most selective universities in the U.S. to WF; WF has chosen to price itself above those three (or two, if you prefer)
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The question then becomes, as you've asked above, who are our peers? I used the USNW rankings here as a convenient list to point to the fact that private national research universities like us generally cost about the same. And, crucially, that pointing to a $1500 annual difference between wake and Stanford (one of your original three examples) is silly.

I may have misunderstood you or reduced your point unfairly, but I took from your posts a general argument that "lesser" schools should cost less than "better" schools.

My point is that things are way more complicated than this. And that using Harvard or MIT as examples in a discussion about wake's reputation hurts your arguments about cost of attendance.
 
BiffTannen said:
I mean, Elon is $53K. Not sure we what people are complaining about. Wakes not the only expensive school in the world.

Davidson is $55K.
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Different conversation, but I would add Davidson and Williams to that list and take UNC off of it.
 
1976Deac said:
Different conversation, but I would add Davidson and Williams to that list and take UNC off of it.
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To my list?

Williams and Davidson are superb schools, as are Amherst, Pomona, Middlebury, etc. These are small liberal arts colleges, and are usually evaluated using different criteria than national research universities.

Many of these schools will have stronger undergraduate teaching (and more satisfied students) than schools on the national research list.

I mentioned above that wake is virtually unique in the way it combines big research production and SLAC teaching. In my opinion, a list that took into account only undergraduate teaching would exclude from its top rankings many major research universities, especially the big publics.

(NB: the big publics will absolutely count among their faculty superb teachers and diverse programs but also a high percentage of faculty that either don't do undergraduate teaching at all or think of it as a necessary burden to the "real" work of research)

All this to say that you're absolutely right that a list of "peer schools" targeted at a parent interested in the best undergraduate teaching would include schools like Williams and Davidson and Dartmouth alongside wake
 
thatguy2016 said:
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a WF graduate who has kids to be interested in the WF total cost of attendance relative to what are consensus top schools
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wakephan09 said:
I don't think this conversation, or your interest in discussing wake's cost of attendance, is unreasonable at all, so don't put those words in my mouth.

using Harvard or MIT as examples in a discussion about wake's reputation hurts your arguments about cost of attendance.
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cool. never change. the fact that WF's cost of attendance is higher than Harvard and MIT (consensus top schools) is an interesting data point to me. YMMV.
 
thatguy2016 said:
cool. never change. the fact that WF's cost of attendance is higher than Harvard and MIT (consensus top schools) is an interesting data point to me. YMMV.
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I don't really love that someone stole "thatguy" from me, but this is spot on. Wake should never cost what those schools cost. I know this won't be popular here but when reading a resume, Wake doesn't pop at all. Revised to say in the real world, around DC. May be very different when applying for law/biz/grad school somewhere.
 
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DeaconCav06 said:
Ah yes, the noted “real world” of DC.
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It appears you took that as a slight, but my point was in job searches Wake is not an important credential especially compared to the schools the OP and others were discussing.
 
Toogs said:
I don't really love that someone stole "thatguy" from me, but this is spot on. Wake should never cost what those schools cost. I know this won't be popular here but when reading a resume, Wake doesn't pop at all. Revised to say in the real world, around DC. May be very different when applying for law/biz/grad school somewhere.
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There are lesser-regarded schools than Wake that cost just as much or more. Wake is not having problems finding people to pay its price.
 
BiffTannen said:
There are lesser-regarded schools than Wake that cost just as much or more. Wake is not having problems finding people to pay its price.
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And that is a fine argument, not related to the one I am making. Like all purveyors, Wake should get what they can from those who will pay.
 
No, I'm saying college pricing is based on supply and demand, while you're saying price should be based on what you subjectively think when you look at a resume for hiring positions in whatever segment of whatever industry you work in.
 
BiffTannen said:
No, I'm saying college pricing is based on supply and demand, while you're saying price should be based on what you subjectively think when you look at a resume for hiring positions in whatever segment of whatever industry you work in.
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I don't disagree with you, thus me saying "like all purveyors, Wake should get what they can from those who will pay."

That doesn't change my point that as an undergrad degree in a job search (not an academic search--I have no data on that) paying that much for Wake is a waste of money. You are tossed in the same pile as anything outside of Ivy and Duke. And in a lot of sectors losing to a vippy sue or ncstate or even (GASP) a terp, esp in cities other than Charlotte.
 
thatguy2016 said:
cool. never change. the fact that WF's cost of attendance is higher than Harvard and MIT (consensus top schools) is an interesting data point to me. YMMV.
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I'm trying to work out where we agree and disagree so we can have a productive discussion about a topic we ultimately agree about.

My point, which I've repeated over and over again, is that your "consensus top schools" do not offer students the same education and therefore it doesn't make sense to compare their costs of attendance to each other or to wake.
 
For me it comes down to the fact that there probably is not a single student each year choosing between wake and Harvard that would make their decision based on a $2k difference in costs.

Put in another way, if students are not, in fact, choosing between your "consensus top schools" and Wake why should the difference in cost matter?
 
Toogs said:
when reading a resume, Wake doesn't pop at all. Revised to say in the real world, around DC. May be very different when applying for law/biz/grad school somewhere.
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This is a useful post (though I'm reframing it a bit). I also don't know what the "real world, around DC" means exactly, but I'll take it to mean "business" or something general like that.

Although 18 year olds, myself included, are not usually this forward-thinking, it makes a lot of sense to think about what you're looking to get out of a college education. If you want your resume to "pop", to use toogs' phrase, it makes sense to go to a big public with a large alumni base in your desired area or to a school with an elite name.

If you want to go to "law/biz/grad school" (thanks, toogs, for differentiating between professional schools and graduate schools), then academic preparation, academic performance, and academic networking and should be important considerations. In the contexts I know best (grad school) it *does* matter, for better or for worse, where you go and who is writing on your behalf. Medical schools, for example, also take into account "academic rigor" which does not necessarily accord with "consensus top schools" or USNW rankings.
 
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