<p>Because they applied to and were accepted at several relatively equal schools.</p>
<p>I also would not say that money is no obect for the majority of full pay families. I think many schools are upping the merit aid ‘discount’ for many families because in times like these many will have second thoughts about shelling out $50K/yr.</p>
<p>Okay, I see the difference now.</p>
<p>I wonder how pure any of these systems is in practice. I would not be surprised if some combinations were used.</p>
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<p>This is definitely the case for us. Just because we can do it, does not mean we want to do it, nor does it mean we wouldn’t rather save some money for graduate school or maybe a down payment on D’s house in the future.</p>
<p>But the world of “need-blind” and “meets 100% of need” does not overlap so much with the world of “uses ‘merit’ discounts to attract otherwise-full-pay students”. </p>
<p>Or, if it does, it is focused on different students. You give financial discounts to the students you think may have lots of equivalent choices and may be influenced by relatively small price differences. To fill other slots, you give “admission discounts” – admitting students who would otherwise be way out of their class.</p>
<p>I think the use of discounts changed suddenly. With hurting endowments, many colleges gave more merit aid than ever last year. Enrollment managers know many will have doubts and choose state schools, so will continue to employ and increase the discounts.</p>
<p>“Read the NY Times story on Reed. It sounds like this is just what they did. Pretty horrific, but they felt they had to do it.”</p>
<p>Actually, the first sentence of the article indicates that they did not use #3:
A last-minute update from Endowment showed that because the recession had such a drastic effect on earnings, they had to recast the original admit list. </p>
<p>I believe Reed uses a straightforward #2.</p>
<p>This article was an early warning:</p>
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<p>[Economy</a> lifting college prospects of the well-heeled - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/02/24/economy_lifting_college_prospects_of_the_well_heeled/?s_campaign=8315]Economy”>http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/02/24/economy_lifting_college_prospects_of_the_well_heeled/?s_campaign=8315)</p>
<p>I love that most of those quoted are at schools that claim to be need blind for admission.</p>
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<p>Apparently you didn’t get to paragraph #2 which reads as follows:</p>
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<p>So they did exactly #3: they had a list of people they wanted to accept if they were need-blind, and finding they could no longer afford that, they went back over that list and selectively culled more than 100 students who had financial need, substituting 100 full-pays who otherwise would not have gained admission. It does not say they dropped the last or lowest-ranked 100 students-with-need. It says they went back and dropped 100 from the list. We don’t know what method they used to knock out the 100 with need; we only know that they started from a list selected strictly on merit, and then went back and made revisions to that list so as to eliminate some students with need. That sounds exactly like my method #3. We don’t know, of course, how they’ll assemble their class of 2014. That remains to be seen.</p>
<p>No, here is the problem with thinking Reed did #3:
This was not and has not become Reed’s way of selecting classes. Reed’s standard approach to selecting a class was finished in March, as the first sentence said. What then happened was not a change to the method of selecting a class, but movement of the line where aid cut-off occurred. The effect was indeed culling more than 100 students who had financial need, substituting 100 full-pays who otherwise would not have gained admission, but approach did not change:
[Letter</a> from the President of Reed College](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/president/email/june09_email_web.html]Letter”>http://www.reed.edu/president/email/june09_email_web.html).</p>
<p>^ vossron,
Could you explain to me how what Reed did is different from “going ahead and identifying your ideal group of acceptances, then working backward from that list and selectively culling” a specified number or percentage of applicants with need, and replacing them with fully-pays? That’s EXACTLY what Reed did. It’s not what they intended to do at the outset, but it’s exactly what they did after they realized they didn’t have enough money to cover the FA they’d need to offer their original list. (And no, I never suggested they “changed their financial aid policies” or “awarded less grant support to prospective and continuing students”; but they did change their admissions practices, and implicitly their admissions policy).</p>
<p>But I suppose the more relevant question is, having gone down this road in 2009, how are they going to handle admissions in 2010 and beyond?</p>
<p>Reed’s admission policy and practice was NOT to form a pre-admit list and then cull it, and that is not now the changed policy and practice. The policy was and is to admit the students they want the most, regardless of ability to pay, and when the aid budget is allocated, students without need are admitted. This year the number of needy students Reed could afford changed after policy and practice were complete, and Reed indeed had to replace about 100 needy with full-paying students. </p>
<p>For the future, President Diver was totally clear that there has been no change in “financial aid policies” and I, for one, don’t see a difference between “financial aid policies” and admission policies affected by financial aid.</p>