<p>Any buzz from Princeton? Time to step it up, Princeton!</p>
<p>All I can say is that if Yale can provide this level of detail, why didn’t Harvard? (because at the time there was no need to do so, since the whole purpose of Harvard’s announcement was not to inform, but to influence decisions [to apply])</p>
<p>My hypothesis will be supported or weakened depending on how quickly Harvard adds more detail. If my supposition is correct, then Harvard is under no pressure to respond soon, since any decision regarding where to attend will depend on the actual financial aid offers for those that have already applied. So I expect we’ll see dribbles of more information, but no real clarity for quite a while, as the audience H is NOW playing to is the group of next year’s applicants. </p>
<p>I also predict we won’t see a quick reply from Pton. They have time on their side, too.</p>
<p>Rather, H and P are spending their time with spreadsheets trying to figure out how to beat Y and each other without spending more than necessary.</p>
<p>Secondary prediction: Financial aid awards from H, Y, P and perhaps others will be truly negotiable this year! Stay tuned.</p>
<p>NMD, they just added the details on the site. </p>
<p>Yale’s press release did include a misleading (by omission) statement. </p>
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<p>In fact, with all the press and commentaries that followed H’s announcement, one could expect Yale’s statement to be complete, truthful, and accurate. </p>
<p>It wasn’t. </p>
<p>Will the additional details provided by Yale prompt Harvard to clarify their examples? I am afraid they be looking at MIT first. :)</p>
<p>Gotta say so proud today that D is accepted at Yale. Even though we still won’t be helped by these changes I think Yale is going to be the big, big winner going forward. Better strategic thinking. Watch and then make your move. So simple, so smart, so easy to overlook. What a darn smart school. And I’ve said it before but will say it once more: EA advantages the exceptional disadvantaged student. Not the opposite. I really think H and P got this wrong.</p>
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<p>Mammall, with all due respect, I’d rather have evidence of LEADERSHIP than “strategic thinking cum watch and then make your move.” In this case, Princeton and Harvard paved the way to changes that benefit a great number of families. Inasmuch as those schools are ABLE to take risks (and can afford small mistakes,) we ought to applaud the early actions (pun intended) versus the waiters and seers. </p>
<p>This, however, does not make a school better or worse. They all do what is in their best interest. Sometimes what is in their best interest happens to please the “customer.”</p>
<p>I stand corrected. Absolutely do applaud all the schools involved here – H,Y and P – for their pioneering efforts, especially P (which I understand was the actual first) and H. But if we are going to buy into the value of these schools then we are buying into rankings and competition, not necessarilly good will and I think Yale has played this the smartest. When one is looking at paying full freight, one does like to see that the institutions one is about to write a $48,000 check to is intelligently run.</p>
<p>Sorry to sound cliche, but ya gotta love good ole’ American capitalistic competition! Nothing like a price war to make American consumers happy.</p>
<p>“one does like to see that the institutions one is about to write a $48,000 check to is intelligently run.”</p>
<p>Of course, but opinions will vary on whether it’s more intelligent in a given situation to be conservative or to be in the vanguard.</p>
<p>NYT on Yale: <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/education/15yale.html?ref=us[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/education/15yale.html?ref=us</a></p>
<p>…not adding too much more</p>
<p>intro
</p>
<p>[Big</a> boost to college aid unlikely despite moves by Yale and Harvard | csmonitor.com](<a href=“http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0117/p03s01-usgn.html]Big”>Big boost to college aid unlikely despite moves by Yale and Harvard - CSMonitor.com) </p>
<p>More follow-up on the Yale and Harvard announcements.</p>
<p>New York Times opinion piece about the new policies at Harvard and Yale: </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/opinion/22lehecka.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/opinion/22lehecka.html</a></p>
<p>Re the NYTimes piece:</p>
<p>Their argument boils down to: “Harvard and Yale can afford to undertake a very expensive and generous aid program. Since other schools can’t afford to compete with that, and those other schools will screw over their own applicants in trying to compete anyway, Harvard and Yale shouldn’t do it.”</p>
<p>What dross. If Georgetown/Northwestern/Wash U/etc. start screwing over low-income applicants trying to keep up with H & Y, then the problem lies with Georgetown/Northwestern/Wash U. It’s not Harvard’s job to keep the bids for top students low across the market. It has upped the ante, yes, but if other schools respond by moving financial aid money from poor applicants to rich ones, that’s a choice for which THEY are responsible. They have another choice, which is saying: “Harvard and Yale combined enroll about 3000 freshmen each year, out of 2 million SAT takers. We’ll compete for the rest, and we’ll continue to spend our limited fin aid budget on need-based aid.”</p>
<p>I read the NY Times piece this morning and found it idiotic on a number of levels.</p>
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<p>Not surprising, considering the source. :)</p>
<p>I thought the NYT op ed piece was a bit strange, too. If universities think the congressional pressure is bad now, regarding endowment spend rate, just think of what it would be like if they started favoring middle class even more!</p>
<p>I think the bigger story, one I have not yet seen in print is that we are already seeing a further balkanization of higher ed: an uber-elite tier of fabulously wealthy colleges and universities where no one must spend a painful amount to attend. Every strong student will pull out all stops to get into these places. But how many can afford to be in this group? 6? !2? probably not more. Heck, if one looks for colleges having at least 500K per student endowment, all I can come up with is Princeton, Yale, Rice, Harvard, Grinnell, Stanford, Pomona, Swarthmore, MIT, Amherst, Williams, Cal tech, Wellesley, 13 colleges. And this is probably stretching it, since H has easily twice the endowment per student of Wellesley. </p>
<p>Now, is this stratification a bad thing? Certainly not for those that get into one of these uber-elites (sorry about the missing umlaut…). Are others hurt, that don’t get in? Economically, they are no worse off than anyone is now, so I’d say not.</p>
<p>What we can say is that the competition to get into these places can only increase. After all, cost does matter. I may be a Duke grad and my kid may be a double legacy, but I’d have my kid take a shot at getting into an equally good place where we as a family could save 10s of thousands.</p>
<p>To me the interesting thing will be to see (say in 20 years or so?) whether increasing the selectivity of these places will result in a better “product”, as measured by the performance of the grads. Or will they hit the noise level in admissions decisions?</p>
<p>I had to take on the challenge of posting the umlaut. 
I wonder if über-elite colleges being more selective than ever will result in the next tier of colleges also being better than ever (in terms of what students they enroll) so that those colleges will gain wealthy alumni who build up their endowments. Beats me. But anyway I don’t think most colleges have to resolve to be forever behind.</p>
<p>It does feel as if we have ring side seats watching something very new and dramatic unfurl in the world of selective colleges. Not sure quite where it’s all headed but it does feel as if a new paradigm is emerging.</p>
<p>okay, token, what is the umlaut secret? Share the code with the rest of us…</p>
<p>I don’t know what is worse, having an elite tier behind the ubers, or having the less wealthy colleges trying to keep up. Personally, I’d settle for having a second tier of elites that focus on what they currently do. After all, they really can’t compete financially with these new tuition initiatives without compromising somewhere else. </p>
<p>Some will be behind. But they already are - note the gripes about financial aid at places like UofC already. Students and parents do NOT like loans!. But does being “behind” hurt them now? I don’t think so. Instead, it motivates those behind to emphasize something else.</p>
<p>The umlaut secret is that CC, like most online software these days, recognizes Unicode, so if you can copy an umlaut character from any program you have that generates one (perhaps your word-processing program), you can just copy and paste it into your reply form when you compose a reply on CC.</p>
<p>Token is such an *</p>