@doubleeternity : You guys got screwed because y’all unfortunately came in when Emory restructured its financial aid . Before 2011 or so, I am pretty sure it was much more generous…the budget issues they had from spending over 2 x the amount of need-based aid as previous years hurt them and unfortunately hurt parents and students.
I never had problems with the housing office, but even when on Emory Advantage, the fin. aid folks could be kind of douchey. When I went to Essence, a lady in there tried to claim that I wouldn’t get the best EA package because I was right below the cut-off. Better believe I ended up getting it.
I understand why people are upset, but I don’t know if I feel comfortable with Emory or any school employing and then continuing an unsustainable model for aid if it, over time, will limit what the school’s of its level are known, for, high quality academics. To sacrifice in that way is essentially inviting excellent students to come and take up space at school that could and should be providing them a better education than it can at the time of invitation. Emory is trying to fix the aid thing, but is one of the few that is serious about the latter part (needed money to establish new programs, innovate curricula, things kind of on the back of the list at many of Emory’s peers who like it was, are still are in the “build pretty amenities and dorms and buy the students” phase regardless of budget constraints). Emory is worried about stifling the ability to be even more serious academically. When I went, Emory tried to make all the spending on fin. aid and construction look effortless (as did and do other places now), but obviously it wasn’t and I can tell you, as a STEM major, the academics paid a noticeable price during the recession in their initial attempt to stretch the need-based aid budget, grow enrollment, etc to grow revenue again. Today , there are even classes that have gotten larger to essentially save money and space…and usually in STEM, that correlates with more MC or “easy to grade” assignments and exams…which I correlate with a decline in quality. Such pressures have also been applied to the social sciences such as polisci and economics. Purposes are to save money and to offer more advanced and intermediate courses. I think the sections are still smaller than peer schools and perhaps run better, but certainly lesser so than before. Emory is just fortunate, that, like most schools, elite or not, students usually don’t care enough (or know how to judge) about academic quality to notice any changes. If anything, I’m sure some said “whoohoo, this class seems easier than my SA or RA was telling me it was” which explains why no one sees complaints at other schools suffering similar issues. Students are easily convinced that they have academic gold when they attend these schools whether it is true or not (especially if they have a great financial aid package at a name-brand school). I’m not so easily fooled.
I am not suprised that in 2011-2012, when there was much more talk and media describing how academic environment and programming would be further improved (than before), that financial aid started getting worse, a scholarship endowment started (because they new the aid issue was a problem), some departments closed (to reallocate monies to “stronger” depts), and some new ones created. There is definitely a correlation. Other schools are just better at hiding this issues and selling a perfect image, but they are experiencing them (most peers that aren’t super rich like HYPS actually handled the recession much worse regardless of how their rank in the USNews looks. There are weaknesses that their rank nicely distracts outsiders from investigating).