<p>Another way to look at it would be to compare the proportion of students who receive no need-based financial aid to the proportion of applicants who would not have received financial aid if admitted.</p>
<p>If it turns out that a larger proportion of applicants than students had no financial need, then in one sense, such students might actually be underrepresented in the college’s student population.</p>
<p>Realistically, though, we’re never going to know the numbers because colleges aren’t going to go to the trouble of determining whether students they don’t admit are eligible for financial aid.</p>
<p>About that 45% of students not receiving financial aid: I bet there were countless students who were accepted but didn’t receive enough aid to make it economically feasible to attend. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t disagree with that. One of my son’s friends was accepted ED at Swarthmore and had to decline his acceptance because he didn’t get enough financial aid.</p>
<p>No matter how well qualified you are, you have to realize that there are always going to be people with even better stat’s that also did not get admitted. </p>
<p>In situations like this I often wonder what the rec’s were like. I’m sure there are many students that got a lukewarm rec. from their counselor or a teacher without knowing this.</p>
<p>Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that people growing up in top 3% income families can much more easily achieve the necessary base-level academic qualifications to even be in the running for admission to super-selective colleges (or any given level of selectivity in colleges), compared to people of similar innate ability growing up in middle or lower income families.</p>
There is also an issue of whether the academically qualified lower income students choose to apply to or to attend selective colleges. A study last year by Hoxby and Avery found that about half of the high achieving low income students in the study that applied to colleges only applied to non-selective ones. Only ~10% of high achieving low income students applied to a college whose median test scores were similar or higher than their own. High achieving lower income students showed a strong preference towards colleges that were less than 10 miles from their home (close enough to live at home). The abstract is quoted below:</p>
<p>“We show that the vast majority of low-income high achievers
do not apply to any selective college. This is despite the fact that selective
institutions typically cost them less, owing to generous financial aid, than the
two-year and nonselective four-year institutions to which they actually apply.
Moreover, low-income high achievers have no reason to believe they will
fail at selective institutions since those who do apply are admitted and gradu-
ate at high rates. We demonstrate that low-income high achievers’ applica-
tion behavior differs greatly from that of their high-income counterparts with
similar achievement. The latter generally follow experts’ advice to apply to
several “peer,” a few “reach,” and a couple of “safety” colleges. We separate
low-income high achievers into those whose application behavior is similar
to that of their high-income counterparts (“achievement-typical”) and those
who apply to no selective institutions (“income-typical”). We show that
income-typical students are not more disadvantaged than the achievement-
typical students. However, in contrast to the achievement-typical students,
income-typical students come from districts too small to support selective
public high schools, are not in a critical mass of fellow high achievers,
and are unlikely to encounter a teacher who attended a selective college.
We demonstrate that widely used policies—college admissions recruiting,
campus visits, college mentoring programs—are likely to be ineffective with
income-typical students. We suggest that effective policies must depend less
on geographic concentration of high achievers.”</p>
<p>But the financial aid stats reported are generally for enrolled students. So yes you are right that the colleges admit a greater percentage of financially needy students, but a lower proportion of them actually enroll – but for those who need funds, part of the process is finding a college they can afford.</p>
<p>I don’t recall reading very many “shut out” complaints from financially needy students and their parents. Perhaps when those of us who need financial aid see a rejection letter or waitlist notice, our first thought is, “well, we probably couldn’t have afforded to attend anyway” – rather than worrying about the fairness of the admission process. I know that’s what I told my daughter about the schools that waitlisted her-- I’m not sure that the “waitlist” offer was functionally any different from the admit-deny results my kids saw from their top choice colleges. </p>
<p>I guess in a sense we’re “shut out” from the start – it’s a financial shut-out, and if we are very fortunate, a door might open somewhere that comes with the right funds… but there’s no point stressing about the ones that didn’t work out. </p>
<p>Probably because many of the financially needy students and parents who do post here seem willing to take on risky amounts of debt to afford the “dream school”. Of course, many of the students and parents posting here are from the “middle class who won’t receive financial aid” (i.e. top 3% household income or so), so there may not be many high need students and parents to begin with.</p>
<p>But it is entirely possible to financially shut out. Perhaps the local universities (even the state ones) within commuting distance are still too expensive. Or the one in commute range does not have the academic offerings for the student’s goals. Or the one in commute range is the flagship that is too selective to get admitted to. Or the family lives in a rural area where commuting to any university is impractical and there are not even community colleges within reasonable commuting range. And if the student is not at the top end academically, s/he may have no chance at getting into the residential schools elsewhere with good financial aid or merit scholarships.</p>
<p>A generation ago, the high school graduate probably could have moved somewhere, found a job, and lived on his/her own, and still had enough money left over to pay the trivial tuition at a local state university (working his/her way through college). Now, the high school graduate job market is worse, and the local state universities are more expensive.</p>
<p>Re: Vanderbilt. How many of you remember the time, a little more than a decade ago, when someone at Vanderbilt decided that the school should aggressively court Jewish students from the Northeast, on the premise – possibly quite accurate – that there is a high correlation between “academic prestige” and “popularity among Jewish students in the Northeast.” The idea was that Vanderbilt was a great university, but people weren’t taking it seriously enough because it didn’t have enough Northeastern Jews. What chutzpah! But I think it worked as a radical marketing strategy: (a) It bumped up its percentage of Northeastern Jews considerably, and (b) a lot of people looked at the university and thought, “Yes, it is pretty terrific. Have we really been discounting it because it didn’t have Jews?”</p>
<p>We tried to get out daughter to apply, but she turned up her nose at it. A few years later, though, she visited Nashville, and she completely loved Nashville and Vanderbilt. She was happy where she was, but she said, “It was silly of me not to apply to Vanderbilt. I would have loved it if I had gone there. The frats with their Confederate flags were disgusting, of course, but that was just a corner of the place. I could have ignored that.”</p>
<p>I do remember, JHS. Vanderbilt had an active Hillel group at the time and opened the Schulman Center for Jewish Life, a wonderful building on campus, in 2002. As the mom of a Vandy alum who didn’t fit whatever the stereotypical Vandy woman profile was thought to be at the time, I’m delighted to see the school so successfully reaching students of all backgrounds. Those confederate flag frat boys have really been a pain in the sides of Vandy administrators, and fortunately they are few.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt, having upped its presence among Northeastern Jews, is now doing the same with Asians. Surprisingly, given the glut of Asians almost anywhere on campus, Vanderbilt is only in the single digits. It has embarked on getting more – Asian kids who routinely get dinged at Duke, Harvard, etc. get into Vandy with ease.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus - It is quite a stretch to say that high need kids don’t feel “shut out” of top tier schools because of a crazy willingness to assume debt. Why not consider that many higher need kids don’t feel as if they are entitled to attend those institutions at all costs? How about the idea that their parents DID immunize them against that expectation with realistic discussions about the need for the FA packages to pencil out? Maybe higher need families do a better job of identifying financial safeties because they have to. Just a thought.</p>
<p>The Vandy demographics have really changed. Only a third of the freshman class is from the south. Hillel puts the Jewish demo at 17%. (The kosher veggie dining hall is incredibly popular among the student population in general.) The freshman class is 10% Asian. I think they are really hoping to increase the Asian presence. Their minority recruitment includes Asians as URM. It’s really shifted from being a southern school to being a national one with a southern flavor. But I think the “dna” is the same–meaning it still fits best for kids who are not only very bright but also care about being social. There is a real emphasis on community (whether or not you “go Greek”). Most students live on-campus all four years. </p>
<p>To that end, just as you can “sort” other elite colleges by their DNA (Penn and Cornell go with Northwestern and Wash U, Columbia goes with Chicago, etc.), Vanderbilt goes with Princeton – the social part of the DNA. </p>
<p>^^
Brown and Tufts.<br>
Good advice I found on CC…if you like an Ivy, find similar schools like that Ivy to apply to rather to than applying to multiple Ivies. </p>
<p>My neighbor boy is going through a tough admissions season and had a list full of lottery and low admit percentage reaches followed by a seemingly random collection of schools that have little in common, he never visited and is now in a scramble to check out. Come to think of it, there was very little continuity in his list all the way through. (and they worked with a paid professional!)</p>
<p>I’d love to see a separate DNA thread, sort of a “If you love (insert ridiculously hard-to-get into school), you’ll probably also love (slightly less out-of-range school) and should get to know (maybe-a-match school that you hadn’t even considered).”</p>