<p>These schools always look at the details of your financial picture. There aren’t any hard and fast rules contrary to the impression that has been given. If one family makes 180k a year without any assets while another makes 180k a year with millions in assets, guess who will get financial aid and who won’t?</p>
<p>Completely true!</p>
<p>It is interesting to note the timing of all of this. </p>
<p>Harvard announced their new program just as the regular admission season was ending. Remember that they had no early admission program this year. </p>
<p>I wonder if they were not getting the application numbers (or quality?) they wanted, so they announced this program partly to boost their numbers? Far fetched? Probably, but interesting to think about, since by Thanksgiving there was not much else they could do to boost the application numbers.</p>
<p>Also of interest is an article today in the Wash Post that had Grassley claiming credit for these moves by Harvard and Yale.</p>
<p>NMD:</p>
<p>The idea that Harvard released its news to influence the application numbers is reasonable. But the move was a proactive rather than retroactive one since even the early deadline for applications was Dec. 1, i.e, after Thanksgiving and the real one was Dec. 31. I don’t see how they could have gotten any applications by Thanksgiving and come to the conclusion that “they were not getting the application numbers (or quality?) they wanted” though they might have feared that this would be the case come Dec. 31.</p>
<p>One could make a case that other universities then sought to protect their yield by announcing measures to compete with Harvard.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if there is a Harvard or Yale calculator web site available to get a sense of what the changes might mean for an individual family? Also, if an applicant has indicated that she is not a candidate for aid on the application, can she change that and still apply for aid? What would be the right etiquette for finding this out? </p>
<p>Pretty sure this won’t help us but I’d like to give it the old college try.</p>
<p>NMD make sense about the timing.
If my memory serves me right, H’s original announcement around Dec. 11 or 12? Right before the EA desitions.
On H’s web site they encourage candidates apply ASAP by Dec. 1st. Either they might not see enough applications come in before and/or after Dec. 1st. Or they have planned all along to announce the change close to the EA desitions. This way those colleges (Yale, Standford, MIT, etc.), who have cross admission with H, probably would have no time to reaction to H’s anouncement, for example addmit more than usual in EA. But seems all above colleges did admitted more in EA.</p>
<p>I am sure adcoms don’t expect applications to come flooding in before the deadline. Every year, there are posts asking how to beat the deadline of 11:59pm; so the Dec. 1 “pre-deadline” was just an encouragement.</p>
<p>Honestly, I cannot see how a decision as momentous as spending an extra $22 millions (and even with Harvard’s endowment, it is not pocket change) can be made in only 12 days. That is why Yale, having announced that something was in the works, has not yet released the details. They have still to be worked out.</p>
<p>I do think it is possible, however, that having announced the end of SCEA, Harvard was nervous about the number and quality of applications.</p>
<p>marite, </p>
<p>to add to anotherNJmom’s comments, they should have had a pretty good idea in early November how applications were tracking compared to historic norms - plenty of time to meet and decide on a response. In fact, I suspect they had decided well in advance what their target application numbers were and given some thought to tactics to take if they were falling short. Such advance planning is just sound business management, and admissions is a business!</p>
<p>How do you track applications that have not yet come in?</p>
<p>Historic norms don’t apply when the nature of the admission cycle has changed. Not only did Harvard change its admission cycle this year, by eliminating its early action round entirely, Princeton, certainly a “peer” college for yield management at Harvard, eliminated its early decision program. Everybody is guessing this year what will happen. MIT has announced </p>
<p>[MIT</a> Admissions | Blog Entry: “Odds & Ends”](<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/misc/miscellaneous/odds_ends_2.shtml]MIT”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/misc/miscellaneous/odds_ends_2.shtml) </p>
<p>that it increased its number of early round admittees, guessing that it will lose some of those to peer institutions during the regular round. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think marite’s analysis of when Harvard made its announcement, and why, makes sense.</p>
<p>So one might infer that Harvard developed its policy in light of the reaction by other schools to its abandonment of SCEA. That’s a reasonable inference. But these schools’ stragegy also increases the advantage of applying EA/ED at those schools and disadvantages those that, for whatever reasons, are not prepared or savvy enough to apply EA/ED.</p>
<p>To me, that would be a sad unintended consequence of Harvard’s policy.</p>
<p>Aside from Yale’s announcement that it will make an annoucement, are there any other indications that other schools will be following Harvard’s lead in redefining “middle class” for financial aid purposes? I haven’t seen anything in the news recently regarding Princeton’s, Stanford’s or MIT’s reaction.</p>
<p>I would think Princeton, in particular, would be peeved that they followed Harvard’s lead in eliminating ED/EA, then Harvard dropped the “no more than 10% of income for up to $180,000” announcement to trump Princeton’s no-loan policy.</p>
<p>Could it be that Harvard simply wanted to finish the process it started last year? At first they eliminate Early Action, and later increase the flexibility of financial aid for their expanding target market. All of that points to a pretty decent reply to the criticisms that their admissions policies were too elitist and “Low SES discriminatory.”</p>
<p>One has to wonder if Harvard is really concerned about maintaining a single digit admit rate and inching towards 25,000 applicants. At the end of the day, there will ALWAYS be plenty of people fighting for the elusive and hard to get 1600 seats. If they pick them from 20,000 or from 28,000 applicants makes little difference, except for some bragging rights.</p>
<p>marite:</p>
<p>I see the ED impact just the opposite. Why would a close-to-full payor, who has the stats for an non-H Ivy/Duke/JHU, apply ED when they could spin the H roulette wheel and attend for less than half the price? Of course, the roulette means getting in, but an education with Harvard’s brand for ~$72k (4 x $18k) is a whole lot better than one at any ED school for ~$180-200k, no? Even the opportunity to hang with the Cameron Crazies would not be worth the extra $$.</p>
<p>Instead, the ED pool at those colleges might change to nearly all wealthy families, since even H would cost those wealthies $200k.</p>
<p>bluebayou:</p>
<p>My concern is that the HYPS student body is finite (although slated to increase slightly over the next few years) so expanding the pool of applicants will not result in more of them being able to take advantage of the expanded finaid. Meanwhile, other schools are already trying to hang on to their own pool by expanding the number of those admitted EA. If abandoning EA and ED by Harvard and Princeton was intended to make admission for low SES applicants more possible, the MIT blog makes it sound like it will backfire; not at HYPS, but at those other institutions which I (and I am sure others) deem equally excellent and desirable.</p>
<p>Are we really talking about a total maximum cost of $18k a year under the program? The announcement language seemed to imply that the cost cap applied to tuition, in which case there’s still an additional $15k a year for non-tuition costs. $33k for Harvard vs. $45k for Harvard is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but, sadly, $33k is significantly more than 10% of our annual income. The Harvard announcement seems to be rather coy about this. Or am I ignoring something blindingly obvious?</p>
<p>Slithey-- I understood the policy to be about the cost of attending and that would include room and board. I re-read a press release and still think that way, but it is not completely clear.</p>
<p>I want to know what are “assets typical for these income levels.” Maybe I’ll call the financial aid office and ask.</p>
<p>WSJ has article, Jan 08, 2008. See initiative by Senator Chuck Grassley, (R-Iowa) on getting colleges to spend just 5% of their endowments. There some spendthrifts that should be slapped around.</p>
<p>Timing, Timing, the time H chose to anounce the FA. Yes, they sure had the new FA planned all along together with drop SCEA. The key is when to anounce it, yes I agree with NMD, it is bussiness decision all together to increase the quality/quantity of their applicants pool. From what I heard students have HYP stats and don’t want to giveup a shot on HP, either do an SCEA to Yale, or other EAs, they won’t do ED. FA or not.</p>
<p>I doubt MIT had had plan to increase number of EA all along before hand. I remember read Ben Jones or another guy (matt)'s earlier blogs said this year they planned < 400 EA. My guess they increase the number EA after H’s anounce.</p>
<p>Please pardon me for throwing some other schools in the mix, but some context might be useful:
Duke made their announcement of expanded FA on Dec. 8.
Then came Harvard on Dec. 10.
Heard a Duke FA counselor say tonight (Jan. 8, 2008) that Duke might reevaluate over time and increase their plans announced Dec. 8, after referring to Yale’s impending announcement. The counselor also specifically mentioned increasing aid for international students.
Seems to me that those schools would have quickly been able to tally how many early applications did NOT check the “Yes, I will be applying for financial aid,” box, and then extrapolate and put in place planned strategies.
It looks a bit like a war. Hard to believe Grassley is the only reason. But hey, it’s an election year. Let the money flow.</p>