I can agree that there will be significant differences in accomplishment - or merit or desirability or whatever you want to call it - among the members of an entering class. I even like the idea of modestly acknowledging this with scholarships of a few thousand dollars. However, shellling out the amounts you’re describing really gets my goat in moral terms and is pretty weak of the school doing it. If that’s actually happening, though, I can see why parents in the otherwise full pay range at the desired school would be tempted. Do you agree with me, however, that this amounts to yet another way to reward the very rich not so unlike the ones we’ve so often discussed and generally deplore?
Merit money is a tiny fraction of need-based money. And as long as most financial aid is need-based, I think it’s absolutely fine for colleges to compete for the strongest students by offering merit scholarships.
But these are kids who have already maxed out their needs-based scholarships - or have no need whatever. The sums you’re referring to, which appear to amount to $40-50 thousand per year, are going to those without need. You would admit, wouldn’t you, that the benefit of such scholarships - whatever their rationale - belongs entirely to the children of wealth. Why would we not deplore this for the same reason we deplore these Harvard shenanigans that favour the rich?
I suspect this is a common reaction. This all started with a question about why there was not more competition among certain “prestige” colleges for the highest-qualification upper-middle-class students. But if the “harm” to such a lack of competition is ultimately just more such applicants ending up at colleges like WUSTL as opposed to Dartmouth, most people are unlikely to find that to be a really significant issue in the greater scheme.
The problem with this is that if most seats at Harvard (or any Ivy) were for sale at ~$250K+, then the demand for such seats would be greatly diminished, because it would soon become established that students going to that school are not so strong academically and just bought their way in (or their parents did it for them).
Yes, I know there are some development admits at most such schools. It works when its a quite small #. It would not work so well if it were >50% of students…
Yes, it is obviously up to an individual family how to evaluate these things. But my personal feeling is there is way more in common than different among most of the private liberal arts colleges at R1 universities that are so well-represented at, say, the top of the USNews “national universities” list. So while I think it is fine to develop non-monetary preferences across that group, I also think it is fine for families to take into account significant merit scholarships.
Indeed, to the extent part of the “value” of attending a highly selective college is just to signal in a concise way that you could get admitted to a highly selective college, then it seems to me adding to that “signal” the fact you got, say, a named merit scholarship is rationally part of the same game. Not to be overly cynical, but if you are worried about people wondering why you “didn’t do better” (in a very limited sense of doing better) in the future, your resume listing a named scholarship could be a handy quick answer that requires no further explanation.
Of course I get why some people would not want to think about this so crassly, but to be blunt, the Chetty study we are discussing has really already framed all this in precisely that way. And in fact, to the extent any of this is interesting, I’d be interested in seeing how people who got merit scholarships from schools like WUSTL and Vanderbilt and such ended up doing in the competition for future “top 1%” placements and outcomes, as defined in the Chetty study, controlling for everything else including family socioeconomic status, test scores, and so on.
I would be open to learning differently, but I think it is at least plausible they might do quite well, maybe as well or even better than peers who went to no-merit-available colleges.
I just looked up tuition at Vanderbilt, and that’s $60K per year. The Duke scholarships cover full cost of attendance, and that’s about $90K per year.
I have two issues with your view:
First, you seem to readily accept that the college’s definition of need are correct. Yet, the numerous discussion of “donut hole” families on this site indicate that the requested fees are really not affordable for many families.
Second, you don’t acknowledge that some admitted students bring much more to the college than others. You are in effect prohibiting them from realizing their value, and in fact setting their additional value as zero.
Putting a full-tuition Cornelius Vanderbilt scholarship on your resume, or an AB Duke scholarship, carries huge weight. Plus at least in Duke’s case, you have a huge amount of college support going along with it. You become one of the rock stars there.
I am a little lost in this discussion. Are we still talking about the Chetty study? I don’t see the connection --not that I mind a conversation that wanders.
In any case, I don’t understand why these schools would want to offer merit scholarships if they are already pleased with the student body that matriculated. Are you suggesting that Ivy+ admissions offices are frequently frustrated because they’ve lost full pay students that they wanted to other colleges that offer merit scholarships? I always assumed that when a kid RSVP’s “no” to their offer, the college just moves on to the next great kid on the waiting list --likely a kid that they really wanted as well, and they were disappointed not to have the available space for that kid. My guess is that they’d have to dig pretty deep into their waiting lists before they are admitting kids about whom they felt merely lukewarm.
If the concern is for the kids who end up turning down a meets-need college in favor of a merit scholarship college, I would think the best solution would be if more organizations to fund scholarships like the Coke Scholars or the Coolidge Scholars? As I understand it, those scholarships are open to everyone based on achievement with no attention to need. The advantage is the recipients can use the money to go to pretty much any college they wish so presumably the winners aren’t “forced” to attend a fantastic university that offered them a merit scholarship over a fantastic university that calculates financial aid based on need only. It makes sense to me for wealthy individuals and organizations to help other wealthy (or at least upper middle class) students attend the college of their dreams. Elon Musk, I’m looking at you! Is there a Musk foundation scholars program?
I’m sure there is an upward family income skew in merit scholarships at the colleges we are talking about, both because higher income families would be more likely to qualify for merit, and because lower income families are potentially able to qualify for a decisive amount of need aid anyway. So yes in that sense.
On the other hand, I would think the REALLY top income families would be least likely to be swayed. Like, I have a hard time seeing a billionaire family being among the families that might turn down Harvard for WUSTL for this reason. Some of those people might prefer WUSTL anyway, and get merit scholarships anyway that made no real difference to them aside from the resume line, but I suspect more of them would just end up in the majority who pick Harvard.
So at a guess, the main beneficiaries of these programs would fit in the range between people who can get decisive amounts of need-based aid, and the people for whom even mid-six-figure amounts are rounding errors. Loosely speaking the upper middle class.
And while that still might seem very unsavory to some, at least at many of these colleges that is in fact coupled with a lot of need-based aid too.
So who are the losers, then? I guess it would be applicants who: (a) can get admitted; (b) don’t get merit scholarships at this level (but maybe could at another level); and (c) are in the area where they qualify for some but not a lot of need aid, and if this merit money was redirected to need money they could maybe get a bit more need aid.
And I suspect you will again find it is hard to drum up too much sympathy for such people.
At $250k they’re not “for sale.” That’s now just “tuition.” Of the 45% who are currently full pay, I’m positive that there are “a lot” who could pay more than $85k/year. And would, happily. IMO e.g. 25% paying $250k/year FP is no different, to the rest of the world (i.e. everyone who wants to go to Harvard) than 45% paying $85k/year. But for Harvard there’s a not-meaningless amount of incremental revenue for FA.
The “for sale” seats are 1% which are up for auction each year to the highest bidder. A different thing for a different pool.
Obviously the tattoo should be somewhere typically visible in college wear, but not in business wear, as you don’t want to ruin the eventual point . . . .
The Ivies are happy with the status quo. It is colleges like Duke, Rice, and Vanderbilt, which quality wise belong in the same discussion as the Ivies, that would like to attract some students who might otherwise attend a HYPSM.
Vanderbilt has used these scholarships as part of an overall strategy to rise in the USNWR rankings over the past 30 years ago from being in the mid 20s to consistently being ranked in the teens. The other part is paying real attention to the GPA and SAT scores of its students. It’s worked for them, and it’s worked for the students that take the scholarships.
I know one in real life, although it was a few decades ago. Tippy top student. Middle class family during a time when Ivys still routinely (and collusively) gapped middle class families (now they give partial financial aid to families making as high as $250+k, but then they didn’t.) Family had a financial downturn during kid’s senior year (dad lost job), Ivy didn’t care. Family had to tell kid they couldn’t afford Yale, what with kids #2 and #3 close behind. Kid was mature, and went to his state’s public liberal arts college on a full tuition scholarship for being NMF, Presidential Scholar etc.
Wouldn’t the above give the L/D students the equivalent of “URM admission stigma” (i.e. the assumption by others that the student was admitted with lesser qualifications)?