<p>The 10% factor is applied to the tuition not to the entire cost of attending Harvard. Again if your income is between 120 - 180 k don’t expect that this policy applies for all cases - it doesn’t. Financial aid will be determined based on need as it always has with two changes - more money is available and home equity isn’t counted.</p>
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<p>Hi, DocT, where do you see an explicit statement from Harvard to that effect? Rereading the Harvard Gazette announcement, </p>
<p>[Harvard</a> announces sweeping middle-income initiative — The Harvard University Gazette](<a href=“http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/12.13/99-finaid.html]Harvard”>http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/12.13/99-finaid.html) </p>
<p>my conclusion is that The “Zero to 10 Percent Standard” applies to the total cost of attendance. As you saw, there is reader interest in that issue in this thread, and if there is a more explicit statement from Harvard somewhere to which you could link, I’m sure I’m not the only reader who would appreciate seeing it.</p>
<p>Hmm. The Harvard announcement says that “For a typical family with $180,000 of income, the payment would be approximately $18,000, compared with more than $30,000 today.” Yet total cost to attend is $45,000. Does this mean that the typical family with a $180k income is currently receiving $15k in financial aid? It’s also odd that the paragraph then points out that this change is “making the price of a Harvard education for students on financial aid comparable to the cost of in-state tuition and fees at the nations leading public universities.” A year at a UC (my personal yardstick) is $20-25k when one includes living expenses, so if the total cost for a year at H is truly only $18k it’s obviously an enormous bargain. But “tuition and fees” is not generally construed to include living expenses, so I am still confused. </p>
<p>Now I’m laughing over the final line in that particular paragraph from the announcement: “The new initiative also establishes a standard that students and their families can easily understand.”</p>
<p>This whole thread has been a repeated reading-comprehension exercise, like many long CC threads. We parents all ought to be able to ace our SAT critical reading sections after all this practice.</p>
<p>Token,</p>
<p>the ambiguity regarding what Harvard will really do is quite consistent with a marketing related move as I mentioned previously. Think of it this way: If this plan were carefully thought out and just happened to have an announcement date of December 10 (long planned, remember, and nothing to do with the admissions cycle 
), wouldn’t it make sense for H to have been a bit clearer about exactly what they were going to do?</p>
<p>OTOH, if the real goal were to prompt more applicants, wouldn’t it make sense to be just a bit ambiguous so that as many folks as possible would “interpret” the announcement in a favorable way and get that application in the mail?</p>
<p>In other words, either these folks are pretty bad at clear communication, which I doubt, or the ambiguities are there by design. If the latter, the only thing that makes sense of the action is a marketing move. It was not an effective “communication” announcement, because to be effective, it would have needed to be concise and unambiguous. This was neither.</p>
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<p>Having browsed Harvard’s website quite a lot, I vote for “pretty bad at clear communication.” A lot of the stuff on the webpages for prospective students is written for an internal audience and evidently has not been subjected to usability testing. This year the admission office was passing out brochures with a web address that led NOWHERE for prospective students. </p>
<p>More generally, Harvard has been continually noting that it is surprised that prospective students don’t understand how generous Harvard’s financial aid has long been. The road show this school year </p>
<p>[University</a> of Virginia, Harvard, & Princeton Admission Presentations](<a href=“http://www.harvardprincetonuva.org/]University”>http://www.harvardprincetonuva.org/) </p>
<p>was designed to get that word out to a group of lower-income students, but as bluebayou pointed out, some of the locations for the meetings were not particularly accessible to low-income students (some were, in some other parts of the country). What I see when I look at the website I link to is four young people with PERFECT teeth and a rather fit, preppy look to them, which may send a message about who shouldn’t even bother applying to Harvard that Harvard doesn’t really want to send. I give Harvard credit for trying, but it still needs to analyze how well it’s communicating with people who aren’t already in the Harvard alumni association.</p>
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Accident? or by design? Note the messaging, press releases and such regarding such efforts. FWIW, IMHO (not bad start, eh? ) none of this stuff is accidental. If one assumes H wants the favorable publicity of its generous aid to poor folks, but is not too anxious to have too many of them apply or worse, actually take them up on the offer, then these things start to make more sense. But, please don’t assume I oppose such efforts, or I think H is not well intentioned to some degree. I think they are, but they must also guard their image and eliteness. Too many kids from the wrong side of the tracks could harm their elite image.
As said above, maybe this IS the message they want to send? After all, this is Harvard’s image, and why it is as exclusive and sought after as it is. </p>
<p>So, tokenadult, you may well be correct. But a simpler explanation than ineptitude (which I don’t believe in a moment. I used to work there, and know its internal processes well. They vet everything!) is that they work hard to send a variety of messages to a number of different audiences for different reasons. And some of these reasons are not explicitly stated, maybe even misleading.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that this “confusion” from mixed or even misleading messages is not new. Look at the facts behind early admissions, exposed a few years ago, or legacy admissions. Or athletes. Why would financial aid policies and intent be any different?</p>
<p>Please do keep in mind that I personally think these changes are a great thing in the sense that they will help some folks.</p>
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<p>Out of four roommates, one is a full ride, the other 3 are full freight. Guess which one has perfect teeth and fit, and the preppiest look? Yup. The one with the full ride. Of the full freighters, one managed to spend the whole of last year in shorts and flip-flops, one has hair into his T-shirt collars (never seen wearing a collar with a shirt) and half-way down his nose and the other’s fashion sense is quite similar. I would not choose any of those 3 as poster boys for the Harvard brand! On top of that, the preppy full ride is the only one among the four who is a URM.</p>
<p>One the more substantial issue, I hesitate between the two readings of Harvard’s announcement–actually three readings. It’s possible that Harvard is leaving itself a lot of leeway for interpretation; it’s possible that it decided to influence applications; it is equally possible that it’s not great at communication. I, for one, find it weird that the class profile is to be found in the section for guidance counselors instead of the one for parents and/or prospective students.</p>
<p>I’ll give an example of current miscommunication by Harvard. My son and I attended the Minnesota National College Fair this fall. That appears to be the only NACAC National College Fair event regularly visited by Harvard. My son picked up a Harvard brochure there (identified on the back as Official Register of Harvard University ISSN 0199-1787). On the front cover, that brochure has a URL, </p>
<p>www**.college.**harvard.edu </p>
<p>and the admission officer at the college fair (a very experienced admission officer) told students to go to that website if they wanted more information about Harvard. But if you enter that website address in your favorite browser and go that page </p>
<p>[Harvard</a> College](<a href=“http://www.college.harvard.edu/]Harvard”>http://www.college.harvard.edu/) </p>
<p>you will see a website that is all but useless to prospective students still in high school, who would be better served by visiting </p>
<p>[Harvard</a> College Admissions Office: prospective students](<a href=“http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/prospective/index.html]Harvard”>http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/prospective/index.html) </p>
<p>I have no doubt that Harvard publications are vetted by multiple Harvard insiders, but they evidently aren’t always usability tested with inquirers about Harvard. (Other aspects of the admissions website make clear that it has been YEARS since some pages have been evaluated for how clearly they communicate to prospective students.) This is a huge issue in general in online communication </p>
<p>[useit.com:</a> Jakob Nielsen on Usability and Web Design](<a href=“http://www.useit.com/]useit.com:”>http://www.useit.com/) </p>
<p>and I am not by any means saying that Harvard does as poorly as a lot of other colleges, but it doesn’t do as well as one might reasonably expect from Harvard. So props to Harvard for expanding financial aid, telling the world about it, and nudging other colleges to follow Princeton’s lead. Keep up the good work and be sure to check what a prospective student would see when browsing and drilling down on various Harvard websites looking for information.</p>
<p>Not sure if anyone cross this link. Another disscussion</p>
<p>[Harvard</a> U. Announces Financial-Aid Plan for Middle-Income Families - Chronicle.com](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/news/article/3591/harvard-u-announces-financial-aid-plan-for-middle-income-families]Harvard”>http://chronicle.com/news/article/3591/harvard-u-announces-financial-aid-plan-for-middle-income-families)</p>
<p>To its credit Harvard (and Yale and Princeton) have a marvelously streamlined supplement to the common application. My D really appreciated how easy those were compared to several other prestigious public and private schools that had horrific applications. In that sense Harvard is very user friendly.</p>
<p>BTW, xjayz on the Harvard Forum confirms that Harvard’s new announcement refers to the total cost of attendance at Harvard, not just tuition.</p>
<p>token,</p>
<p>There is a huge difference between the implementation of activities, where lots of “stuff” happens, and the announcement of major policy initiatives. The latter gets a lot more high level attention. </p>
<p>At the same time, all the “mistakes” you mention could be interpreted as a lack of concern regarding certain channels and audiences. Perhaps they know by experience that casual visitors to their websites don’t lead to anything. In fact, I suspect their prime prospecting tool is their mass mailings, not their website, not college fairs and such. </p>
<p>So I still don’t think any of these things are accidental. </p>
<p>But heck, what do I know? You may well be right. I never worked in their admissions office. I’m just a humble skeptic. :)</p>
<p>token:</p>
<p>As a prospie parent, I found your first link extremely useful. Been on H’s website before, and never found that one. (Perhaps that just shows my parental “lameness.”)</p>
<p>As a big time cynic, particularly when it comes to the multimillion dollar spin machines (cough-H, cough-P, cough-WashU), I’m with newmasdad. These schools have the means to hire the best and the brightest…and they DO.</p>
<p>I agree with newmassdad and bluebayou that Harvard means to hire the best people it can to communicate with the outside world. And I agree with whoever in this thread thinks that Harvard’s communication still needs more work. Communication with prospective college students is one of many domains in which there is an “expert problem,” that is, in which it is not clear that the people with the best resumes always turn in the best performance. The way to get good performance in communicating with high school students is not to talk to all the other college graduates in the office, but to go out in the field and talk to high school students.</p>
<p>Last year DD was accepted at HYP and so we attended all of the accepted students days. The contrast between the schools was remarkable. One example. At H there wasn’t even room for all of the students and parents to attend the President’s welcome address. Almost half had to watch it in another room on a screen. Needless to say, the question and answer portion wasn’t quite the same </p>
<p>I’m with tokenadult - their communication needs more work, unless of course they feel that since they are Harvard they really don’t have to try as hard.</p>
<p>“unless of course they feel that since they are Harvard they really don’t have to try as hard.”</p>
<p>I’ve worked in the admissions office, too, and I can promise you that this is not the case there. They won’t be happy until the yield is 100%.</p>
<p>I suspect that what’s going on is a symptom of Harvard’s decentralized organization. Concepts like “Harvard wants X” and “Harvard believes Y” don’t have a lot of meaning except as shorthand for a particular office or department. There isn’t any one entity making these decisions. For example, I can just about guarantee you that the people who are responsible for the web page are not the same people who allocate space for the president’s speech during pre-frosh weekend. Furthermore, it’s likely that neither group is answerable to any higher authority that’s interested in controlling it. So you’ll see inconsistent priorities (and abilities) depending on who’s in charge of what kind of communication.</p>
<p>I also think it’s a mistake to suppose that <em>Harvard</em> chose a picture on a website run by three schools in tandem. I promise you that Princeton and UVA aren’t giving Harvard more than one vote! (I don’t see what’s so terrible about the picture, anyway; if you can find me a college web site with buck teeth on the front page, please let me know.)</p>
<p>"I think they are, but they must also guard their image and eliteness. Too many kids from the wrong side of the tracks could harm their elite image. "</p>
<p>I don’t buy this at all. Harvard’s brand presently connotes two very different types of eliteness. Type 1 is “it’s hard to get in and we’re all brilliant future leaders.” Harvard (here meaning admissions) wants to hang onto this connotation. Type 2 is “we’re all a bunch of rich white prep school snobs.” Harvard wants to obliterate this connotation, because it turns off a lot of applicants, including brilliant future leaders, and their job is to attract, admit, and enroll brilliant future leaders. It wants the next president of the Navajo Nation just as it wants the next president of Goldman Sachs.</p>
<p>Put another way, I’d guess that about 5 kids a year decide not to apply to Harvard because they think it isn’t rich and snobby enough, and 50,000 kids a year decide not to apply to Harvard because they think it’s too rich and snobby. So admitting and enrolling kids from the wrong side of the tracks does not harm the image of eliteness that Harvard wants to retain. It hurts the image of eliteness that it would like to get rid of.</p>
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<p>Bluebayou, bluebayou, how lame is that! </p>
<p>Fwiw, I am not certain I can agree that getting a direct link to the “prospie” page [Harvard</a> College Admissions Office: prospective students](<a href=“http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/prospective/index.html]Harvard”>http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/prospective/index.html) is much better than the generic site available at [Harvard</a> College](<a href=“http://www.college.harvard.edu/]Harvard”>http://www.college.harvard.edu/)</p>
<p>For starters, the only step needed to go from the generic to the prospie one is clicking on the little admission button on the top right corner or type something into the search window. After clicking admissions, one can see the prospective students, parents, and guidance counselor links. I think that all three are equally important. </p>
<p>Further, how important are the links to Student Life and Service (available on the general page) to develop a better feel for the school. I think that digging deeper in the websites and finding the “unsweetened” information is extremely important. For instance, to find the real scoop about work-study, expected summer earnings, and other “details,” I’d rather try to find out the financial aid tools for ADMITTED students rather than for Prospies – especially if I want to find out how much of my outside scholarships might be swallowed by internal policies. </p>
<p>Lastly, BB, please remember that the search tools of Google are your best friend, especially when searching WITHIN a site.</p>
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<p>That’s about the way I look at the image of Harvard as I knew it in my region when I was in high school. There was a girl from my school district who was admitted to Harvard the year after I graduated, and she was not a snobby elitist, and not plutocrat rich, but just a smart girl from a family who valued education. It was meeting other Harvard graduates over the years that dispelled the rich and snobby image for me, as the graduates I met were generally quite down to earth and friendly and not outrageously rich. But, yeah, more work needs to be done. I think your point, Hanna, about fragmentation of departments is very well taken. Some of those same coordination issues afflict MY alma mater, which runs many usability studies on its website (I have participated in two) but doesn’t run enough, it would appear, on its admissions website. That’s why I don’t conclude that there is a hidden Harvard agenda to keep out students from the wrong side of the tracks. The evidence I see as an outsider suggests that Harvard is in earnest about having applicants from both sides of the tracks, but just hasn’t had a lot of staff members walk along the tracks recently to make sure what Harvard looks like from both sides all along the tracks.</p>
<p>Hi, xiggi, I know you’re a youngster compared to me, and I know most readers of the general Harvard College page are youngsters too, so I suppose neither you nor they have presbyopia, as I do. BELIEVE ME that I never saw that “little admission button on the top right corner” until you mentioned it, because it’s, um, little. I see by trying it now that that link leads to the same admission page I recommend as the first stop for prospective students. (Reading the Harvard website thoroughly answers a lot of Frequently Asked Questions on CC’s Harvard Forum, once one gets used to browsing through all the pages.) It’s odd indeed that that admission link is not in the drop-down list on the page, which is much more eye-catching and readable to persons with presbyopia.</p>