<p>Well, ime, it’s not to attract them; the kids don’t know they exist, til they get them. Finaid is need based. </p>
<p>For admits- first they run you through the determination of “need.” After that, they try to see if there is some fund you match. So, Jane could need 10k and get the x scholarship for female engineers. Maybe that’s 5k and the rest is from general FA funds. Fritz might get the y, for a first-gen STEM from Minnesota. Maybe he also needs 10k and the fund offers 12k. He only gets up to his need. If a kid can’t be “matched” to some fund, fine, he gets monies from the general pool. If there are no takers, the money stays in the pool. (A problem with many old funds, for majors that no longer exist or specifications no kid matches- hence the reviews.)</p>
<p>One incentive to assign named funds is donor satisfaction- the U updates them annually (stewardship.) In some cases, they get kids to send notes. The machine. </p>
<p>So, some kid gets a named fund- not much impact on the other kid who gets FA, with or without this label attached to the aid.</p>
<p>Oh, and if Jane drops out of STEM, she doesn’t get the x the next year.</p>
<p>I guess there’s a philosophical thing here … Is it “ok” for elite colleges to decide they want more of / less of a certain type of student in general without it being discriminatory? Or, in the opinion of some here, it shouldn’t be for colleges to decide the make-up of who they want; they should pick based on strictly academic selection criteria?</p>
<p>I was thinking about BYU–would it give people heartburn if BYU decided it didn’t want to be viewed as overwhelmingly Mormon, and decided to offer some scholarship money reserved for non-Mormons? What if Vanderbilt, which reportedly would like to have more Jews, offered scholarships for Jews only? What if a HBC offered some whites-only scholarships? I confess that different situations make me react differently. I think it also matters who pays for the scholarship. I wouldn’t bat an eyelash if, say, the Hillel Foundation (if there is such a thing) offered scholarships for Jewish kids to go to Vanderbilt. But if Vanderbilt used some of its own scholarship money to lure more Jews? They could do it, but somehow it seems problematic.</p>
<p>And again, I generally feel differently about a desire to have more of some group than I do about a desire to have less of another group.</p>
<p>"Well, ime, it’s not to attract them; the kids don’t know they exist, til they get them. Finaid is need based. "</p>
<p>In apply texas, each college lists all the scholarships available to apply for at the time of application. UT lists some 15-20 different ones. I would think most state colleges do the same.</p>
<p>These scholarships are very specific in nature which means one has to check the requirements to see if they can apply. When my kid applied last year, only one or two were available to her.</p>
<p>Oops, yes, now see you said state. And perhaps that includes merit awards. I was referring to privates with need-only FA. In that case, I think I can agree with you that those can have an impact on prospective applicants. (I see this same thing when looking at certain types of internships D1 may be interested in- and clearly won’t get. Hmmm.)</p>
<p>There are tons more Harvard-deserving students than Harvard can accommodate. (Insert HYP, insert HYPSM, insert the Ivies, insert the top 20, whatever.) I don’t know why some people find it so hard to come to grips with that, and with the fact that disappointment is inevitable.</p>
<p>“if a women’s college decided to go co-ed and decided to " go easy” on male applicants and / or offer merit aid to male applicants, wouldn’t they have that right?"</p>
<p>You don’t have to speculate. This is what’s going on at places like Goucher, Connecticut College, etc. Even LACs that were never single-sex are giving a leg up to male candidates.</p>
<p>“If Brown broke out the admissions rates conditional on SAT scores further by race, so that we could see what fraction of white, black, Hispanic, and Asian students with SAT Critical Reading scores of 750-790 were admitted, do people doubt that the admissions rates by race controlling for SAT scores would look very different?”</p>
<p>Brown is an interesting case in point. It often gets close to the top of the Ivies in terms of applications and I assume it could fill its class with 750-+ across the board. Yet, brown’s medias SAT range is lower than the rest. They also have at least 7 or 8 short answer/essay questions on their supplement. I think a lot is going on at Brown in terms of admissions other than SAT scores for all groups.</p>
<p>“But if Vanderbilt used some of its own scholarship money to lure more Jews? They could do it, but somehow it seems problematic.”</p>
<p>Sometimes they have named scholarships and people donate money for specific purpose. You do see some of these schools fighting lawsuits with legal heirs trying to prove that the school mispent money and hence should give it back. I am certain a benefactor can set up a scholarship at a school for anyone including short Asian/Jew/Irish American under 5 feet coming from Laramie, Wyoming. It is whatever they say the person needs to be.</p>
<p>Detroit Lions player Suh set up a scholarship at Nebraska to cover OOS tuition for someone from his county/school ditrict/school (not sure how fine a distinction he made) from Oregon.</p>
<p>Brown has an open curriculum without distribution requirements. The individuals most likely to benefit from such a system are those who already have shown themselves to be self-directed and who don’t expect or desire much handholding. By extension, that would likely include a fair number of rebels who may not much have cared about succeeding in the SAT but have shown great focus and passion elsewhere, be it with winning robotics competitions or founding a local charity.</p>
<p>"I don’t object to charities such as the UNCF giving scholarships, but
looking at Diversity Award | Student Financial Aid | University of Missouri there is no mention of private outside funding for the $2500 annual scholarships that are open to “member[s] of an ethnic group that is under-represented at the University when compared to the total population of the state of Missouri”. </p>
<p>For a university to give scholarships based on race is financially equivalent to imposing a surcharge on the non-preferred, which I assume you would oppose."</p>
<p>Ok that is one of the 34 scholarships you mentioned (no need to look for the other 33). Do you agree that a lot of those 34 scholarships at from Missouri are from private donors (after all why would a U set up more than one since they can award it to as many URMs as they want, but I digress? Do you have a problem if a private donor wishes to fund a URM scholarship or should the school refuse to honor the donor’s wishes and turn it down?</p>
<p>Re the $2500 scholarship at Missouri, I can understand why Missouri, like many public colleges would wish to attract more URMs. Students almost unanimously support diversity programs at the top college sin the country. Indeed, I would go further and say that having a diverse student body is one measure of prestige for a state university and the ones with the best reputations (factoring in area of the country) tend to have higher URM numbers than others (at least until the ballot initiative passed in CA). </p>
<p>Re the surcharge, I think almost every selective university is doing that (ie full pay students subsidize needy ones). That does not bother me much either because if someone does not like the price of a school they are admitted to they are always free to go to another school. To me, the Asian issue is different because it deals with admissions (ie, not giving many of these super-talented kids a chance to get in the door or, looked at another way, having a cap on the number of such students who can be admitted).</p>
<p>Texas- sometimes, the drive to win the money overrides common sense. Development reps are more cautious today to avoid potential legal issues. I personally don’t think that guarantees all is on the up and up. But the funds are run through legal staff, for approval. There’s supposed to be some viability consideration. </p>
<p>BUT, usually- for whatever Suh donated, after the fund starts producing its own income, only a small % is allocated to FA. So, it could be x % of the growth, whatever the school is pulling from the endowment that year. Guess where the rest stays and what it does? [Let me see if I can validate this from some reputable source.]</p>
<p>I’m curious what you mean by Vanderbilt’s “own scholarship money,” Hunt. Schools get the money from somewhere or someone, and though most development officers prefer gifts allocated to “the area of greatest need,” they are absolutely not going to look askance at earmarked scholarships for students of a certain group, whether that’s Jewish students or students from a particular ZIP code or whatever. Development officers, IME, are pretty savvy and spend a lot of time working with donors so that gifts align with institutional goals, and they are generally careful (again IME) to take PR considerations into account. In any case, there are a fair number of scholarships for Jewish students listed on FastWeb. Here’s one at Washington and Lee: [The</a> Weinstein Scholarship :: Washington and Lee University](<a href=“http://www.wlu.edu/x33771.xml]The”>http://www.wlu.edu/x33771.xml).</p>
<p>Edited to comment:</p>
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<p>Has this really been your experience? I’ve worked alongside development officers of major nonprofits for 30 years. I’ve never observed this. The fundraisers I know are very professional in their efforts to part people from their money.</p>
<p>During the Bush Administration the Education Department challenged race-specific scholarships awarded by colleges, as described in the article below. The Obama Administration may be taking a different approach.</p>
<p>Facing threats of litigation and pressure from Washington, colleges and universities nationwide are opening to white students hundreds of thousands of dollars in fellowships, scholarships and other programs previously created for minorities.</p>
<p>Southern Illinois University reached a consent decree last month with the Justice Department to allow nonminorities and men access to graduate fellowships originally created for minorities and women.</p>
<p>The article is interesting, Beliavsky. However, it would not be appropriate for a school to change the way it awards certain scholarships if, for instance, the school took money from a donor or group of donors and established a fund for a very specific purpose in accordance with the donor’s or donors’ specifications. (It may also not be legal, depending on how an agreement is set up.) Could the fed really say a private university can’t set up a scholarship fund based on the wishes of private donors?</p>
<p>A private institution can do whatever it wants to form the community that it deems most desirable. However, once Harvard starts accepting government funding, it would be considered a “public good”. And by definition, they should not discriminate based race, religion, gender, age, sexuality, gender identification, or physical ability.</p>
<p>“Harvards research community seeks and receives funding from a variety of sources that vary depending on the Harvard school and discipline. Sources of research funding include the federal government, state and municipal organizations, foundations, international agencies, corporations, foreign entities, and individual donors. Harvards largest single source for research funding is the federal government, with more than $612 million of federally sponsored research in FY2010, and of that funding, more than 80% came from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).”</p>
<p>Consider the Asian makeup, which some may find unsettling, of some of the best public high schools in the country: TJHSST - 46%, Stuy - 72%. I would be surprised if these hallways are overrun by “textureless drones”; instead, I would imagine that they are vibrant communities filled with overachieving, ambitious students. So the disparity of these numbers compared to the Asian makeup of Harvard, et al. just does not jibe with me.</p>
I mean money that isn’t earmarked by a donor for any particular kind of scholarship. As I said, I see no problem if Vanderbilt administers a Hillel (or whatever) scholarship. And I don’t even see anything wrong with Vanderbilt saying that it has noticed an underrepresentation among Jews, and trying to reach out. But somehow paying Jews to go seems different from paying URMs, or even athletes. Is it because it’s religion–is that what’s making me think it’s different? I don’t know. Perhaps I’d also think it problematic if, say, Stanford used non-earmarked funds to offer scholarships to people living east of the Mississippi.</p>
<p>Suppose the owner of an apartment complex with 50% white residents and 50% black residents faced a pool of new renters that was majority black, and he decided to discriminate against black renters to keep a 50-50 balance, since “white flight” may occur when the demographics of a community tip. He would soon be sued for discrimination. So no, private institutions are <em>not</em> allowed to racially discriminate to form the communities they deem desirable. If landlords cannot, I don’t think colleges should either.</p>