More Data - Estimating Commitment to Middle Class Students

Parent Cafe
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<p>It is difficult to find a good measure relating to the potential admission of, and financial aid for, middle-class students at top colleges and universities. For purposes of these data, those students will be broadly defined as those whose families cannot afford to pay $168k for four years of college (roughly the top 5% of all families, economically speaking, and hence would receive no need-based aid), and those receiving Pell Grants (roughly, those with family incomes below $40k, or lying within the bottom 35% of the American population generally speaking, and who are likely to require $32k+ per year to attend). Pell Grant percentages represent the college’s commitment to ensure economic diversity by matriculating proportions of the student body icome from the lowest third cohort. We are therefore left with those between the 35th-95th percentiles in income ($52k per family being roughly the median income in the U.S.) Obviously, there is a major upward skew here relative to the population as a whole. Not surprising at private colleges and universities.</p>

<p>There is no way to break out the Pell Grant percentage from total financial aid. What I have done is taken the Common Data Sets for 2003 at a select group of private colleges and universities, all of which have total price tags which are roughly the same. I took the total dollars of institutional grant aid to undergraduates in the latest year (both need-based and non-need-based, but note that only 4 schools – Grinnell, Oberlin, Davidson, and Washington & Lee had non-need-based aid making up more than 10% of the total), and divided by the number of undergraduates enrolled and seeking degrees. This basically represents the financial commitment in aid that colleges are willing to make per student per year (over and above the gap between actual costs and full tuition.) Note that a bunch of colleges (including Wellesley, Brown, Pomona, and Yale) do not seem to make their CDS data available to the public.)</p>

<p>Not surprising to me, the range is quite wide, even strikingly so. Since most of the schools claim to be “need-blind”, the data skew can be said secondarily to represent admissions chances for those in the bottom 95% of the population. Or not. Note that the skew doesn’t fall according to endowment size or endowment per student – this in some way does represent institutional decision-making independent of those. You can make of the data as you will – it’s just data!</p>

<li> Mount Holyoke - $12,792</li>
<li> Reed - $12,683</li>
<li> Oberlin - $12,262</li>
<li> Smith - $12,013</li>
<li> Amherst – 10,925</li>
<li> Macalester - $10,764</li>
<li> Swarthmore - $10,595</li>
<li> Grinnell - $10,020</li>
<li> Hamilton - $9,795</li>
<li>Harvard - $9,527</li>
<li>MIT - $9,316</li>
<li>Princeton - $9,164</li>
<li>Stanford - $8,660</li>
<li>Bowdoin - $8,649</li>
<li>Williams - $8,560</li>
<li>Dartmouth – 8,132</li>
<li>Middlebury - $8,085</li>
<li>Haverford - $8,079</li>
<li>Colby - $7,638</li>
<li>Bates - $7,535</li>
<li>Washington & Lee - $6,279</li>
<li>Northwestern - $6,237</li>
<li>Davidson - $6,160</li>
</ol>

<p>Sometimes the data are quite striking indeed. A college like Williams (my favorite whipping boy, as it is my alma mater) has a $1.1 billion endowment, but spends only $16,614,200 in financial aid (for 1,941 students). Smith, in contrast, with a $900 million dollar endowment, spends $32,217,801 (for 2,682 students). If the place feels different, it is because it is. (You could think of it as a “reverse preppy index” - though there are certain places where that will be skewed, notably Amherst, with a high percentage of Pell Grant students, but also a high percentage of students who receive no financial aid.)</p>

<p>What’s “fascinating”, of course, is looking at these number over a period of years. How astonishing - the numbers for all of these “needblind” schools basically don’t change! Since the adcoms are “needblind”, they must be picking something up with their Jacobsen’s organs!</p>

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<p>I guess this would represent a bi-modal distribution of Amherst's students' family incomes. I would also surmise that the mean family income of Amherst's students is still skewed to the right on the high side when compared to its peer schools. In other words, Amherst has it both ways, a higher percentage of Pell Grants students, and as well as a higher percentage of upper income students. Therefore, the only ones who are "squezzed out" are the students from the middle class. Am I correct?</p>

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<p>Interesting stuff, once again, Mini.</p>

<p>BTW, I was really surprised to see the role of merit aid and athletic scholarships at Davidson -- 15% of the students receive merit aid and a rather staggering 11% receive athletic scholarships.</p>

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<p>so I am just heading out to a meeting @ garfield where I am going over college planning for juniors and seniors</p>

<p>Oh ok tell me if this is right
you took total numbers of aid and divided it by numbers of students.
But that doesn't really tell about how many students are actually on aid?
My D f'instance gets over $22,000 in grants every year but I don't know if that is unusual or that is standard.
Any info is helpful thanks</p>

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<p>I had done the percentage of students on aid in the "entitlement' data set. What this data set more likely does is measure the admissions chances of "middle class students" (if that) as opposed to the size of their aid packages (virtually all of those schools claim to be 100% of need). </p>

<p>ID - yup. Davidson and W&L seem to use a lot of their aid explicitly for athletic purposes (Williams, Princeton, etc. do it implicitly in admissions.) Oberlin likely does it for "out-sized" musicians. So the only real anomaly to the data is Grinnell, which probably gives a bunch of smallish scholarships to fairly wealthy students, to attract them away from the eastern schools.</p>

<p>The data do pretty much follow the Pell Grant trends - which tells you that colleges seeking an economically diverse student body extend that diversity to the middle of the spectrum as well. Maybe. (again, I think Amherst is anamolous; and Reed definitely is, but in the opposite way - they have relatively few Pell Grant recipients, which means tons of middle class folks.)</p>

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<p>Too many colleges are obsessed with chasing the middle and lower class. Whether a private college wishes to supplement the tuition of certain students, whether they be lower income or athletes, is solely that college's business. If a college chooses to supplement tuition that's great; but whether the rest of us think a college can "afford" more supplements is none of our business. I cannot imagine going into the Mercedes dealership and telling the dealer he must sell me a $100,000 car for only $40,000 because that is all I can afford and he can afford to eat the extra $60,000. Public colleges are subsidized by the taxpayers and that is where the taxpayers should have input regarding how the college spends money and which students it serves.</p>

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<p>Actually, the data show the opposite. (Obsession with chasing full-fare customers - the airline ticket analogy used by the Pres. of Williams seems to be the case.) The problem is that the quality of the educational experience suffers for ALL students when they go too far overboard in that direction.</p>

<p>And then there are colleges like Amherst, whose articles of incorporation and original mission statement call for the education of "indigent youth of good Christian character." They only take rich ones out of the goodness of their hearts....</p>

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<p>
[quote]
The problem is that the quality of the educational experience suffers for ALL students when they go too far overboard in that direction.

[/quote]

Can you prove this?</p>

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<p>Mini, are schools in any way obliged to publish the financial profiles of students attending or on need-based aid? I think so, I've seen those in the CDSs. Then you could go further and look at whether people in the top 5% of income (more than 200,000?) are included in the category of need-based aid. Your first paragraph seems to imply that based on FAFSA and CSS profile top 5% was excluded automatically but I'd tend to look further.</p>

<p>And does the Common Data Sets actually say how how many received merit aid and athletic scholarship?</p>

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<p>Looking at the above (how many in higher income categories got need-based aid) would indicate how much of the 'nod-nod-wink-wink-on paper we're commited to diversity- but actually we only want the best of the best among people who otherwise could afford it but needed to be lured to our university by money' is going on.</p>

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<p>Well I didn't buy a Mercedes but I got $4,000 knocked off the price of my Jeep Liberty just by repeatedly walking away from the salesman at a lot sale.
( really didn't want it anyway- my husband wanted this kind- I did check price at lots of other places it really was $4,000 off- but I might as well given a kidney or something, negotiating took a lot out of me)</p>

<p>The counseling meeting last night was interesting, the counselor was mentioning that she was taking the Stanford adcom to task for only admitting 5 students, and she was trying to convince her, that 5 from one school was a high number. Is it?</p>

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<p>EK, if you are saying the car-buying analogy can be applied to college admissions, then I'd say, as far as getting aid, it might be as difficult in some places (like Yale) to get more need-based aid than donating a kidney but in the end a lot more relevant and worth it for the long term. It could mean the difference between having a $100,000 loan versus a $20,000 loan. But in some places it is a lot easier....not Yale or Princeton perhaps but others that want that top student a lot more.</p>

<p>And yes, 5 people to Stanford from one school is a high number!! No one from our school went to Stanford in the last few years (in recent memory).</p>

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<p>"Mini, are schools in any way obliged to publish the financial profiles of students attending or on need-based aid? I think so, I've seen those in the CDSs. Then you could go further and look at whether people in the top 5% of income (more than 200,000?) are included in the category of need-based aid. Your first paragraph seems to imply that based on FAFSA and CSS profile top 5% was excluded automatically but I'd tend to look further.</p>

<p>And does the Common Data Sets actually say how how many received merit aid and athletic scholarship?"</p>

<p>Last question first: the CDS only reports on two categories: "needbased aid" and "non-needbased aid" (actually, they report on lots of other things too, like non-resident aliens receiving aid, loans, etc. etc.) There is a listing of percentage of students receiving aid, but not a breakout as to what kind.</p>

<p>Second, I don't believe the private schools are obligated to publicly report on ANYTHING of this kind. It is a voluntary survey of the Association of Institutional Research. Wellesley explicitly says they keep the info. privately - and Yale has never made its info public (I think folks - including donating alumni - would be shocked at how little financial aid they actually give out.)</p>

<p>Third, I imagine there are a few folks in the top 5% who receive small grants. As a percentage of the total at each school, we're talking peanuts here. My attempt was not to exclude the top 5% per se, but to exclude those who can pay $168k over four years, and hence, at least in theory, would not receive "needbased" aid.</p>

<p>Fourth -- as above, the data suggest that the "nod-nod, wink-wink" most likely occurs at Grinnell in their efforts to lure folks away from eastern schools (and at Oberlin for musicians). For the rest, it is likely the size of the package which is competitive, not whether there is one. (It is amazing to me how students who are desired by the institutions all of a sudden have their families get "poorer" in April, without any changes in family circumstances.) ("Face diversity" is another issue entirely - as already noted, Williams and Princeton and Yale and Harvard have lots of "face diversity", but, relative to the population as a whole, little class diversity. This is a result of decisions made in the admissions office, not the financial aid one.)</p>

<p>Fifth, the institutions act as if the educational quality of the institutions suffer when they don't have other than full-fare customers. Williams (the one I know best) could EASILY fill up an entire class with highly qualified full-fare customers (the dean of admissions, in fact, would tell you that academically the class they would be just as good as the students who actually attend.) They choose not to do so. They have institutional memories of what the school was like when this was basically the case (a high-class finishing school), and they don't want to go there. Lest you think this is just about LACs, Conant saw the same problem at Harvard in the late 40s, and it was he who instituted a policy of relying on SATs to find qualified students outside of northeastern prep schools.</p>

<p>What the list is supposed to be suggestive of, however, is admissions, not financial aid policies. I am going to give each of the schools the benefit of the doubt and say that they do indeed meet 100% of need - even though I know, from personal, firsthand experience, that definitions of same vary very, very widely. Rather, the relative order reflects in some way the chances that someone from the bottom 95% of the population economically speaking is likely to attend. The Pell Grant data already exist showing the percentage of low-income students who attend (as a percentage of the total student population.) With the exception of Reed (and Oberlin - probably because of the recruitment of music students), there were no surprises in the data.</p>

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<p>Mini:</p>

<p>I thought the tidbit on Williams' new diversity committee in the Williams Record was interesting. Apparently, Williams now charges freshmen entry "dues" or "activity fee" of $125 per student. This came out in the discussion as an example of practice that can be exclusionary. I don't recall anything like that when I was there....just the campus-wide activities fee that was effectively a part of the tuition.</p>

<p>I am also shocked that a private political action group, MassPIRG, is STILL receiving an automatic per student fee collected by Williams and other colleges in the state. This was instituted back it the 70's. It was wrong then and it's wrong now.</p>

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<p>Oh, the diversity committees come and go - without serious institutional commitment, they don't amount to a hill of beans. I wish Morty well - the 3 racial incidents on campus over the past 6 months put egg on everyone's faces, and if it leads to good stuff, so much the better. But I read the article twice, and I don't quite understand what it is - sounds like "coordinating the coordinating", when there isn't much going on to begin with.</p>

<p>Never heard of freshman entry "dues" - what is it for, to buy alcohol for ACE? Why don't they simply put an alcohol surcharge on tuition, and have scholarship aid reflect it? (Incidentally, you did see how strong enforcement of the alcohol policy at homecoming made a huge difference, didn't you? Only one student hospitalized for alcohol poisoning! might be a modern record! You would think that tailgating was a Constitutional right!)</p>

<p>I don't have strong feelings one way or the other about MassPIRG. At Smith, the students vote on it (it isn't automatic.) The college activities fee supports the Republican Club, the "pro-life" coalition, and all kinds of stuff more conservative students might object to as well.</p>

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<p>Mini - this article from USAToday(!) discusses barriers to the financial-aid process for low- and moderate-income students. Not exactly on topic, but related.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2004-11-10-collegeapps_x.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2004-11-10-collegeapps_x.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]
An analysis of government data released last month by ACE found half of all undergraduates didn't even apply for federal aid, and 20% of the non-filers were from low- and moderate-income families. ACE estimates that perhaps 850,000 students who didn't file the FAFSA probably would have been eligible for federal Pell grants.</p>

<p>The analysis looked only at students who made it to college and didn't count those who were scared off by the process, says King, the author. </p>

<p>[........]</p>

<p>The reasons why so many low-income students don't apply for financial aid are complex, but include lack of information, misinformation and the process itself, she says.

[/quote]
</p>

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<p>Doesn't apply to any of these private colleges, though. All of them REQUIRE the FASFA, which would have put them into the pot for Pell Grants. These colleges are not dumb - and if they can get the first $4k of a $35k scholarship paid for by the feds, they are going to make sure it happens.</p>

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<p>Mini, I am sure people have asked you this many times and I wasn't paying attention before but: when you looked at the Pell Grant data, then how would many of these elite schools with a lot of money figure because supposedly they look at 100% of need, so a student who is potentially a Pell Grant recipient could be getting full need-based aid and hence the number of Pell Grant recipients would be less at the school. Is that true?</p>

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<p>For what it's worth, Yale's press release on the incoming class of '08 says that of the 1,350 incoming students, about 40% are receiving aid that averages $21,500. </p>

<p>If I understand correctly what Mini is doing, this would work out to an average of $8,600 for each of the 1,350 students.</p>

<p>I guess I just don't see the relevancy of this. Clearly, and we all know this, many Yale families don't need financial aid. Of those who do, however, it would seem that the grants are significant.</p>

<p>I will add, too, that I chuckle every time someone points out that year after year, a school's statistics are the same as the year before. The implication, being, I think, that if admission was a random event, we'd see significant variation from year to year. That, of course, is my point: admission is not a random event. And there's nothing about need blind that would suggest it should be.</p>

<p>Many of these schools take a significant number of their students from feeder schools. In my own case, my S came out of a public feeder school in NYC. Every year, Yale takes a similar number of kids, as do HPS, etc. This being a public school, you can be fairly certain that on average, the financials are going to be similar from year to year, too. The same would go for a private-school feeder as well. Sure, there may be a kid there who's received financial aid, but if you're taking six to ten of them, your average isn't going to vary much from year to year.</p>

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<p>"Mini, I am sure people have asked you this many times and I wasn't paying attention before but: when you looked at the Pell Grant data, then how would many of these elite schools with a lot of money figure because supposedly they look at 100% of need, so a student who is potentially a Pell Grant recipient could be getting full need-based aid and hence the number of Pell Grant recipients would be less at the school. Is that true?"</p>

<p>What all the schools do is figure out need what the "need" is, and how much or little they wish to offer in grants (many will try to maximize work-study, loan, or other expectations, depending on how much they really want the student -- that's why all offers are not the same.) Then with the grant portion, they take $4k off the top which will be paid for by the federal government in the form of a Pell Grant. It is all part of the package.</p>

<p>What I was trying to do was not to figure out how generous or not a school may be, but rather to find a secondary measure for the admissions chances of "middle class" kids. Once we agree that the schools aren't need-blind (we seem to agree that they are not - maybe not about individual students, but about the class as a whole), we can then begin to calculate the odds of a 35th-95th percentile student actually attending.</p>

<p>Of course, the simpler way is to take the percentage of no-aid students (at Yale, 60%), add to that the Pell Grant portion (at Yale, 8%), and subtract from 100.</p>

<p>(I suspect, but I know of no school that will release such data, the selectivity of a 35-95 applicant at Yale is probably around 1:25; for a 95-100 kid about 1:4; and for a 1-35 around 1:7).</p>