<p>NSM, I agree with Mattmom - I definitely got the feel that merit money at Davidson was either relatively small in amount, tied to athletics, or you had to fit the niche they were looking for. I did not expect my daughter to get any merit money from them, even though her stats would put her in the pool. I'm pretty sure URM status would help in this arena, they might even have designated awards, most of the Southern schools do, to help attract minority candidates.
Again, if you become familiar with the base of their applicant pool (made up families just like us), splitting the non-earmarked money up into little pots makes a lot of sense - these are folks who by and large can afford the tuition, although it may be a sacrifice; they value education highly, so they are willing to make whatever sacrifice, otherwise, like a lot of their peers, their children would go to State U; and that little bit of merit money just sweetens the pot, and helps justify the decision. For a school like Davidson, not only do they get more return on their "investment", they also improve the stats of the admitted class, because they don't have to go so deeply into the pool to get students happy to trade the small discount for a better education.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Hmmmm....so frat life is big on campus, but sororities are banned? I can see banning greek life or not.....but not okaying it for one sex and not the other.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I suspect that most elite college presidents would ban fraternities if they could get away with it. However, the alumni ruckus would be enormous. </p>
<p>Davidson's Pres. could get away with banning sororities because there isn't much female alum pressure to worry about. Like many elite colleges, women have only been enrolled at Davidson for about 30 years, so they don't have much of an institutional presence. There is even less alum support for soroties since every female Davidson alum chose a college without sororities.</p>
<p>Here's his letter to the campus:</p>
<p>Keep in mind that there are four all-female eating houses, which women join via self-selection, essentially a lottery. Like the fraternities, they are nonresidential. (There are no male eating houses.) The key difference is that they are not nationally affiliated and, of coure, the self-selection process as opposed to conventional rush. Perhaps as a result, a considerably higher proportion of female students are members of eating houses than male students are members of fraternities. (As an aside, I also must note that I don't think there is much difference in the fabric of socializing in the Davidson context and, say, that at Princeton, where there are sororities as well as the legendary eating houses, or at Dartmouth, where there are both sororities and fraternities. At all these schools, "Greek" life is just part of student life, perhaps a significatn part, but not the only part and not the only way to socialize.).</p>