<p>"I don't think there are any colleges that win a substantial number of cross admits with Harvard."</p>
<p>Last I heard, the college that does best going head to head with Harvard -- usually getting in the neighborhood of 40-45% of the cross-admits -- is MIT.</p>
<p>I don't know how big that group is in a typical year.</p>
<p>Well, we know that ALL the cases in which Harvard is beat in a cross-admit battle amount to no more than 20 percent of all Harvard admittees, because Harvard has an 80 percent yield. I've related before that I know one Harvard admittee who preferred Notre Dame. I know a few more who preferred MIT.</p>
<p>If Harvard and other schools do not change their views on assets (beyond excluding home equity) this could all amount to a whole lot of puff. I imagine that most families with incomes of $180k per year have savings that would disqualify them from more than token aid regardless of the schools' policies on income. Anyone have any information on this front.</p>
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I imagine that most families with incomes of $180k per year have savings that would disqualify them from more than token aid regardless of the schools' policies on income. Anyone have any information on this front.
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<p>I'm glad you asked for information. One thing to look at right away is where families with that level of income stand in the family income percentiles in the United States. It's plain that under Harvard's PREVIOUS financial aid policies that families with a family income of $180,000 were already getting financial aid. (Read the Harvard Gazette announcement carefully to see the before and after figures for aid at that level of income.) </p>
<p>Beyond that, what's the problem? If a family with that level of income has an above-typical level of family assets, that family CAN AFFORD HARVARD (or Bennington, or any other expensive list price college). There are still plenty of families deemed able to pay full list price who are glad to have their kids apply to Harvard and glad to pay the bills if Harvard admits their kids, so Harvard is probably doing enough already for people at the highest end of the income distribution.</p>
<p>HYP are all essentially free already to families with 60k or lower incomes, no loans required either. Y and P have about 60%-70% yields and other Ivies are about 50%-60% depending on year. Even if this newest action were to push H yield from its nearly 80% to around 90%, it would only mean an additional 200 students or so who would choose Harvard over all other schools in the country.</p>
<p>token, if Harvard were giving fin aid to 180K families, it was not the families I know. I do know that in the past their institutional formula included as an allowable expense such things as prep school fees for younger siblings. so it seems to me the only way one of these high income families could have received aid is if they had more than one in college or one in college with one in prep school, thereby sucking up all the available $$. </p>
<p>What will Harvard really do now? Will it expect that any family, no matter how many in college, that makes 180K to pay the same? or will it decide that the maximum EFC at this income is 18K? Dunno.</p>
<p>BTW, meeting this challenge may not be as tough as I initially thought. Yesterday's NYT said it will cost Harvard $22 million a year to implement this program. That's not cheap, but not overwhelming when they already spend $98 million a year.</p>
<p>One interesting wrinkle to this is the other Ivies remaining competitive with Harvard athletically as well as in admissions. The Ivies have a highly-structured code of athletic practices that ensure that they're all operating under the same principles. One of those practices is the agreement to not offer athletic scholarships, so they either need to recruit students who qualify for maximum need-based aid or students who are willing to pay what it costs to attend an Ivy rather than take a full scholarship at another college. Paying what it costs at Harvard just got a lot cheaper than paying what it costs elsewhere in the Ivy League. It's one thing to ask an athlete to justify turning down a full ride and paying $20,000 a year to get an Ivy degree; it quite another to justify paying $5,000 a year for it.</p>
<p>Does anyone know which of the Ivy's exclude home equity in their financial aid calculations?</p>
<p>"
I'm willing to conjecture that Brown will not be, given the size of their endowment. Poor bastards.
"</p>
<p>Then they just have to 'sell' more spots to rich endorsements' kids. Got money pay for lower income kids.</p>
<p>Either way you view, the mid or up mid classes got big ripped off.</p>
<p>"Afford" is a funny word in this context. The issue is not whether in someone's point of view a given family can "afford" a Harvard education but rather what the cost of that education (after taking aid into account) creates incentives for an income and wealth distribution that Harvard finds unattractive (a dearth of middle and upper-middle class kids) and whether many of the most talented of these kids go elsewhere because of the financial incentives. The rule of thumb on assets, as I understand it, is that a family is expected to contribute 6% of its net worth each year toward the costs of a college education. This means that at asset levels over $750k the income level is irrelevant. My observation is just that the typical 45-50+ year old parent with an income of $180k probably has that much in assets, if not more, so the change in Harvard's policy with respect to aid will have little effect on this group, in terms of their financial incentives to attend Harvard. To make a change that would materially affect this group they will also have to change their policies with respect to assets. My question was (apart from home equity) was there any mention of this issue in any of the Harvard announcements or is everything couched in terms of just income?</p>
<p>The Harvard announcement </p>
<p>Harvard</a> announces sweeping middle-income initiative — The Harvard University Gazette </p>
<p>refers to "assets typical for these income levels," which where I come from suggests that Harvard still looks at both income levels and assets, as all institutional methodology colleges do. Again, plenty of high-income families (or should I say high-asset families?) think that Harvard is a good deal at full list price (even if that means borrowing money to meet current cost of attendance payments), so Harvard will have an adequate number of applicants from the highest income echelons to build a great class. People who pay for products and services respond to price incentives, surely, because can't spend money they have neither through income nor assets nor creditworthiness, but people also respond to value incentives, paying more for things that they think are worth more, sometimes up to the very limit of their means.</p>
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Does anyone know which of the Ivy's exclude home equity in their financial aid calculations?
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<p>Princeton, for several years already. Two of the three elements of Harvard's recent announcement of new financial aid policies (no consideration of home equity, and all aid as grants rather than loans) were actually pioneered by Princeton. Princeton's financial aid estimator </p>
<p>Princeton</a> University | Princeton Financial Aid Estimator </p>
<p>is a great help for seeing what policies like that do for your family. Put in your actual numbers, following the rather easy instructions carefully, and get an estimate of what your family contribution would be for enrollment at Princeton.</p>
<p>I hate to say it, but this affects students who are admitted to Harvard - we're talking about, oh, 2,000 students a year out of a college-going population of 3,000,000? </p>
<p>It just seems like not a big deal honestly in the grand scheme of things - it's great for them for sure but overall, doesn't change the landscape. Most kids are not going to apply there, and most students that do aren't going to be admitted.</p>
<p>This is like changing the engine on an Astin Martin vehicle and everybody gets super excited - now who here is really looking to buy an Astin Martin. . .</p>
<p>"Will it expect that any family, no matter how many in college, that makes 180K to pay the same?"</p>
<p>If the $180,000 is all capital gains from the family's massive investments, I'm sure they'll be expected to pay the full tab.</p>
<p>WealthOfInformation: This is important because many students who don't apply to Harvard aren't applying because of financial issues. Being more generous, and advertising it, could hopefully encourage more low-income students to apply, increasing the amount of poorer/middle-class students that can get in and afford to go.</p>
<p>WealthOfInformation...
There is a knock-on effect of announcements like these.
Amherst decided to eliminate student loans this year, and in very short order Williams, Swarthmore and Pomona followed suit.
Changes like these work their way down the academic food chain in schools adding to financial support to schools well below the level of Amherst.</p>
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My guess is that the lesser 5 will eventually split from HYP and start offering merit aid. Less expensive than an across the board change in policy on need based aid.
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<p>Seems like Dartmouth already does. "Need based endowed scholarships"?</p>
<p>unregistered, this is just a mechanism to match a donor with the need based recipient. My son at Dartmouth wrote a thank you letter to his donor. My daughter at Princeton was asked this month to do the same with hers.
Still completely need based.
This is a way to reward donors and encourage more giving.</p>
<p>Once again, I hear what people are saying but it doesn't change the fact that most schools (less than 1%) can afford to eliminate loans as they are so tuition dependent. So, simply for schools like Harvard, Princeton, Amhrest etc., it doesn't effect much of anyone in the grand scheme of things.</p>
<p>While I agree that this may encourage low-income students to enroll at Harvard, the highly selective schools aren't looking for low-income students... they are looking for highly-talented, admissable low-income students. It just in the grand scheme, is not a large bunch of students.</p>
<p>This thread is about "other Ivies," and of course the issue for an Ivy League college is deciding how the cost of maintaining affiliation with that athletic conference, </p>
<p>Ivy</a> League - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia </p>
<p>for example not being able to offer "merit scholarships" or athletic scholarships, compares to the benefits of that affiliation, namely being considered (possibly) more elite and prestigious than other colleges in other athletic conferences that are equally selective. Each college has to make its own call in that regard. If some college can't afford to keep up with Ivy League commitments, I suppose it could always drop out (colleges do change their athletic conference affiliations every once in a while) and then possibly another college might apply to join. </p>
<p>See also </p>
<p>Ivy</a> Plus 2007 Alumni Relations Conference at Stanford University, June 25-27 </p>