<p>@gibby Lookit, I really don’t want to argue details, but I don’t want to be portrayed as being anything other than fact-based and forthright, either. If my posts are unhelpful, I can cease posting. Many lurkers read, and I don’t want to be smeared and just let it go. The information that I gave is NOT wrong. The information in post #38 is how ALL universities operate, INCLUDING Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Dartmouth, and Amherst (and Colby, too). What universities CAN do and what they DO <em>may</em> be different, no? The US government DOES NOT write individual checks and mail them to Pell Grant awardees. The need-blind schools are very competitive in admissions. For less-competitive schools, going need-blind would attract a flood of internationals (since there are so few need-blind choices) with limited means- the schools would have to put some kind of limit to admissions whether it is flexible or fixed, to keep from being the ‘sink’ to internationals with need.</p>
<p>Princeton meets full need without loans. What about the others? Why don’t they? They have HUGE endowments and don’t need to deal with petty loans. Why do only 60% of Harvard students receive Harvard financial aid? Is there truly no limit? No reporting, checks or balances to trustees on how the money is being spent? How did this get to be about Harvard anyway.</p>
<p>This is really so off-topic. I promise, I will not post to this thread anymore.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what your point is. Harvard does this, too. Full need, no loans. For families that wish to borrow part or all of their EFC or their student contribution (which, of course, is beyond full need), Harvard actually makes private loans at a modest interest rate, and holds the notes itself.</p>
<p>Only 60% of Harvard students receive aid because the median family income for students at Harvard is somewhere around $200K per year. Financial aid phases out completely for a family with one child in college at a little under $250K in income.</p>
<p>There’s no reason for you to walk away from the discussion. Also, please don’t take offense from lookingforward’s post #31; to me it seemed like a fairly innocuous comment. </p>
<p>The fact is that HYP are fabulously wealthy and can afford to meet the full need of as many poor students, foreign or domestic, as they choose.</p>
<p>With annual returns on their endowments well in excess of their sticker price tuitions, do you really think that the loss of $5,500 Pell Grants factors into their decisions?</p>
<p>As I wrote upthread, I agree with gibby that they have soft quotas on internationals, but I don’t think money has anything to do with it.</p>
<p>At over $36 billion in endowment funds, if Harvard chose to totally give away all undergraduate education, the total cost as against the list price of tuition, room and board, and other costs of attendance, would come to slightly more than 1% of the entire endowment. @sherpa is correct - I’m not sure that the school is overly worried about folks’ Pell Grants. Only a minority of students likely even qualify for Pell Grants. Even if it’s a thousand students, that’s somewhere around $5 million or so in a university that has an overall budget of over $4 billion.</p>
<p>HYP are perfectly willing to take Pell Grant money, and that factors into their financial aid. I don’t know what gibby is so up in arms about.</p>
<p>As for need-blindness: yes, Harvard et al. are need-blind, but that’s something of a term of art. I don’t think there’s any question that Harvard’s administrators have an excellent idea what kind of a mix of poor and wealthy students its holistic admissions practices produce, and how that translates into financial aid. Harvard budgets for that mix and aid level, and it would be pretty surprising if the admissions office didn’t hit the mark pretty closely year after year. The aid figures certainly don’t fluctuate much year by year, except to reflect inflation and policy changes.</p>
<p>It would be perfectly possible to adopt different admissions criteria, and to admit a class that was meaningfully wealthier or meaningfully poorer. That doesn’t happen. “Need blind” doesn’t mean that there’s any danger that Harvard admits 180 full-aid international students in any class.</p>
<p>I think people over-value the difference between the six need-blind schools and their academic peers who are need-aware for international applicants, but who commit to meet full need of the students they accept. In theory, it’s entirely possible that a need-aware college would admit more impoverished students, and give more aid, than a need-blind college – it all depends on their budgets and admissions policies. As a practical matter, I don’t think that happens; HYP, MIT, Dartmouth and Amherst almost certainly give more average aid to international applicants than, say, Penn, Stanford, Columbia, Chicago, Williams. But how much more? I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s 100% more, or anything close to that. All of those other colleges are willing to admit a limited number of international applicants with full or near-full aid, and they do, and the number they admit is not necessarily so much lower than Harvard’s on a relative basis.</p>
<p>^^^ While I agree that HYP are willing to take Pell Grant money, their decision to admit or decline a student is not based upon enrolling a specific number of Pell Grant students, which is what @Itsjustschool I think was suggesting. </p>
<p>I did not mean to suggest that Harvard did not have great financial aid – it does. I did mean to suggest that Harvard retains control over its aid budget, notwithstanding its “need blindness.”</p>
<p>I believe the increase in Harvard’s financial aid since 2007 reflects two, maybe three things: 1. Increases in tuition and costs (which I think has been around 35%). 2. The massive change in 2008, basically eliminating family contributions for families with less than $60,000/year income, and subsequent expansions of the no-loan zone. 3. To a much lesser extent, a push to increase the percentage of low-income students admitted.</p>
<p>I tried to compare Harvard’s performance in this regard to that of a similar institution with similar general aid policies (Stanford) that is not need-blind for international applicants. I couldn’t find historical undergraduate-only financial aid numbers for either college. I did see, however, that the increase in both institutions’ overall financial aid numbers from FY 2007 to FY 2013 was almost the same (57% for Harvard, 56% for Stanford).</p>
<p>Okay, so if I do apply to Harvard + Johns Hopkins wanting financial aid, will my chances of getting in decrease? (I’d like a concise answer please!) x</p>