My Dinner With An Admissions Officer

wisteria · December 1, 2005, 9:05pm

[quote]
My father the former college administrator and professor confirms that even the best and richest private universities are not and cannot be fully need-blind.

[/quote]

As for "are not," I'm not prepared to disagree.

As for "cannot be," that's just untrue.

It's a matter of priorities.

They can be need-blind if they choose to make it a priority.

The richest universities and colleges have endowment income and annual giving more than sufficient to provide an excellent education to an entire entering class of full-need students.

Of course, if they wound up with full classes of full-need students every year, they might have to readjust some priorities to keep doing this on a long-term basis---possibly restrain the growth of faculty salaries, cut back on things like sabbaticals, increase teaching loads, increase average class sizes by getting rid of the really tiny classes, more pressure on faculty to bring in sponsored research with generous overhead, more fundraising effort specifically directed at financial aid (instead of the athletic program or new buildings or whatever), etc.

But even with the necessary cutbacks factored in, the richest universities and colleges could still provide an excellent education to a study body full of full-need students, let alone the mixed bag of students they'd likely get if they admitted totally need-blind.

If those richest universities are not need-blind, it's not because they "cannot be" need-blind, it's because they choose to put their priorities elsewhere.

Alumother · December 1, 2005, 9:09pm

Well, I will be more precise. They cannot be need-blind and stay the same institution with the same identity, culture, value proposition, faculty composition, as they have now.

And if any institution changes radically, it will lose its donor population and that annual giving you refer to will dry up. And then they are chasing the same non-family donor dollars as everyone else. And so on.

wisteria · December 1, 2005, 9:21pm

[quote]
They cannot be need-blind and stay the same institution with the same identity, culture, value proposition, faculty composition, as they have now.

[/quote]

If President Summers would abandon the very costly new Allston initiative (something that seems to be alienating a lot of the FAS faculty), Harvard would have more than enough money to fund a student body full of full-need students and continue existing operations.

Universities with large endowments and large annual giving are constantly embarking on new initiatives and new priorities--if they choose to make need-blind admissions their next new priority, they could easily do so.

EDIT: Of course, the school's ** identity ** would change, because the composition of the student body would be different. Many would think that change would be for the better.

Alumother · December 1, 2005, 9:29pm

If they have to cut back on faculty salaries and modernization of facilities, cutting-edge science facilities in particular, the composition of the faculty would change. That change would not be for the better.

University administrators agonize over this stuff. The ones I know are highly socially conscious and are committed to serving students without reference to ability to pay. But the world is what it is. You gotta pay for stuff. And the top people mostly want to be paid more than people who aren't as good.

wisteria · December 1, 2005, 9:49pm

[quote]
If they have to cut back on faculty salaries and modernization of facilities, cutting-edge science facilities in particular, the composition of the faculty would change. That change would not be for the better.

[/quote]

The Allston initiative at Harvard isn't just about modernizing facilities, it's about a large campus expansion (with a lot of potential political repercussions) and accommodating a substantial increase in the size of the student body (with presumably, a corresponding increase in the size of financial aid budget, of course!.)

Many of the existing faculty seem rather unhappy about the vast amount of money going into the Allston initiative. If Harvard is, in fact, not need-blind, I'm sure the existing faculty would prefer that the money currently allocated for the Allston expansion be redirected to financial aid to make need-blind admissions a reality.

Let's do some math.

Harvard's endowment increased by $4 billion last year alone (from 22 billion to 26 billion.) There are roughly 6400 undergraduates.

6400 full-pay undergraduates at 40K each would yield roughly $250 million in revenue. If they were replaced by 6400 zero-pay full-need undergraduates, the drop in revenue would have been only 1/16 of the GROWTH in the endowment.

So they would have slightly less money to redirect to projects like Allston--instead of the endowment growing by 4 billion, it would have grown by 3.75 billion.

It's hard to argue that the consequences of the endowment usable for other purposes growing by only 3.75 billion would significantly diminish the quality of the faculty.

(And my example above is extreme---it deals with a very hypothetical extreme worst-case scenario in which Harvard's existing student body is assumed to be full-pay and their "need-blind" student body is assumed to be zero-pay. In fact, their need-blind student body would include some students who could pay varying amounts plus a number of students who would bring outside scholarship money with them. And their existing student body does not actually bring in $250 million in student revenue because many already receive institutional financial aid.)

Alumother · December 1, 2005, 9:55pm

I actually wasn't referring to Harvard. Sounds like they are in essence choosing to change themselves by growing at that rate, so the question of whether they ought to make other transformational choices instead is valid here.

wisteria · December 1, 2005, 10:04pm

[quote]
I actually wasn't referring to Harvard. Sounds like they are in essence choosing to change themselves by growing at that rate, so the question of whether they ought to make other transformational choices instead is valid here.

[/quote]

Princeton has also recently embarked on a major expansion of its student body. If they were not already need-blind, they could have chosen to redirect the money devoted to expansion into financial-aid without impacting their existing program.

hoedown · December 1, 2005, 10:09pm

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To play the devil's advocate here, why would this be any more distasteful than admitting a certain number of 'name your URMs'?

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Ah, I wasn't clear. It isn't more or less distasteful--it's the quota that offends me (or more accurately, the suggestion that a quota is what the school goes by), not so much the subject of it.

[quote]
Only one has been offered a full ride scholarship: a student with a surname that identifies a URM group and who has no better stats than the rest. The student's background is upper class, both parents professionals, no financial need, never even spoke the native language at home since the student is 3rd generation American, and certainly is not going to offer diversity to the campus. But I'm sure fills the not-named quota for this URM.

[/quote]

Let me get back to "diversity offered" in a minute.

I have me be perfectly clear lest anyone be confused by this: There aren't URM quotas at Michigan. I can't speak with certainly at the grad level (although I suspect not, given the seriousness of the quota issue) but I know about undergrads.

Do students of certain ethnic groups and SES groups get extra consideration? Yes. Michigan is completely upfront up that.

Is there concern on campus when the numbers of URMs go down, as they did in Fall 2004 when apps also went down? Absolutely. Mucho hand-wringing, plenty of articles in the paper, the works.

In addition to the consideration race plays in holistic review, does Michigan make special efforts to recruit more minority apps, and up the yield of the ones that they do admit? Yes.

But there is not a quota.

There is no "target number" for minorities.

The fact that a minoirty applicant appears to have had an easier time getting in than a non-minority candidate is not evidence of a quota. It is evidence that Michigan is doing what it said it would do and has been speaking about publicly before, during and after the lawsuit: considering race and ethnicity and other factors in its efforts to recruit a diverse class.

As for "diversity offered," not everyone agrees with my take on this, but frankly I think a wealthy, privileged minority student has as much power to break down incorrect stereotypes as a disadvantaged minority student. A school truly committed to diversity would be pretty short-sighted to only go after one profile of minority. I look at myself, raised in a small town in the midwest. I wanted to be open-minded, but my picture of what black families were like was pretty limited. It was as important for me to meet wealthy black kids as it was to meet poor black kids. I think it's not fair to suggest that this student offers nothing, but you know the student better than I do--maybe s/he is pretty vapid. LOL

Alumother · December 1, 2005, 10:18pm

I think the Princeton decision to stop requiring loans happened right about when they also decided to expand the population and build the new residential college. And also let in more blue-haired people. It coincided with a new President. So they are choosing to transform in some ways. But you can bet they will keep faculty salaries where they are or raise them, and you can bet they will manage any change or perception very carefully to keep their loyal and generous alumni happy over time.

A university needs money to stay world class. They can get only so much from endowments. Then they need donations - which means they need happy alumni which usually means transformation has to go slowly. Then they need tuition - at least for the undergraduate program where they don't get mondo grants for research.

To move to a possible no-tuition universe (100% need-blind) would be a big change. At least as I've had it explained to me.

hoedown · December 1, 2005, 10:26pm

Also, FWIW, I think interesteddad and calmom have it largely right when they most recently postulated about "decisions on the fly" and attention to the budget, especially towards the end of the process when colleges have an idea how their remaining aid dollars are looking.

That is more in keeping with how I have seen decisions being made and issues being discussed on campuses

wisteria · December 1, 2005, 10:44pm

[quote]
To move to a possible no-tuition universe (100% need-blind) would be a big change.

[/quote]

Realistically, 100% need-blind is not going to lead to a no-tuition situation for a place like Princeton or Harvard.

As long as they give alumni preferences and athlete preferences (including at least some sports not generally available to low-income students), they are going to get a number of students who can pay much or all of the sticker-price.

As long as they look at standardized test scores as an indicator of student ability to succeed at Princeton, they are going to get a number of students from wealthy families, because there is a very strong correlation between test scores and family income.

So the fact is that schools like Harvard and Princeton can afford to be "need-blind" in the sense of not DIRECTLY considering need itself as a factor, simply because other attributes they value in the student body (like test scores, grades, writing ability, ability to play certain sports, alumni kids) happen to be correlated with income.

There is an interesting difference between Harvard and Princeton. As I understand it, Princeton has a very large portion of its endowment specifically dedicated to financial aid. I recall reading that about 80% of Princeton's institional aid comes endowment income specifically dedicated for that purpose. Harvard has much less of its financial aid coming from endowment income specifically dedicated for that purpose, so Harvard has to use unrestricted endowment income to cover a much more significant portion of its financial aid budget.

The fact is that Harvard could change the focus of its fundraising drives if it chose to do so. I would guess that many alumni (especially wealthy alums who themselves benefited from financial aid when they were students) would be happier to donate money earmarked for financial aid than money for the increasingly unpopular Allston program.

The Harvard Financial Aid Initiative (HFAI) cost Harvard relatively little money but it is a great PR rallying point for them. A concerted fundraising drive could easily cover far more than the cost of that HFAI program.

interesteddad · December 1, 2005, 10:55pm

Harvard is a really bad example to use because it is impossible to isolate undergrad-related endowment and expenditures. Although it is lumped together for reporting purposes, the Harvard endowment actually consists of separate endowments for many different subsidiaries: the law school, the business school, the med school, etc. Even the Faculty of Arts and Sciences endowment that includes undergrads is muddied by the amount of resources that go to the grad schools in those fields. Also, my sense is that the brouhaha over the Alston expansion has more to do with the proposed enrollment increase. It can be (and is) legitimately argued that 6500 undergrads is already too large. Expanding it to 8000 puts Harvard into state university territory.

Initially, the university wanted to relocate one or more of the grad schools to the new campus to free up some real estate in Cambridge. The grad schools all said, "go to hades", leaving the undergrad college as the only candidate lacking the institutional political clout to resist the move.

As for tuition-free: Both Swarthmore and Williams could go 100% tuition-free if they could cut their per student expenditures to the level of Oberlin's. However, that would radically change the educational product at both schools, requiring an immediate reduction in student/faculty ratio from 8:1 to the 12:1 figure for non-conservatory students at Oberlin.

I'm not sure what it would accomplish other than giving a $40,000 a year gift to the students who are currently willing and able to pay full-fare. Going tuition-free would not change the student bodies that much unless it were also accompanied by additional changes to the admission profile -- such as lower median SATs.

After discounts, Swarthmore currently charges the average student $26,500 per year for tuition, fees, room, and board and spends an average of $68,304 in per student operating expenses. So, it's not a bad value. Even students paying the full $41,000 sticker price are getting a $27,000 merit aid discount.

wisteria · December 1, 2005, 11:16pm

[quote]
As for tuition-free: Both Swarthmore and Williams could go 100% tuition-free if they could cut their per student expenditures to the level of Oberlin's. However, that would radically change the educational product at both schools, requiring an immediate reduction in student/faculty ratio from 8:1 to the 12:1 figure for non-conservatory students at Oberlin.

I'm not sure what it would accomplish other than giving a $40,000 a year gift to the students who are currently willing and able to pay full-fare. Going tuition-free would not change the student bodies that much unless it were also accompanied by additional changes to the admission profile -- such as lower median SATs.

[/quote]

Interesteddad, I don't think anyone in this current thread is advocating tuition-free for wealthy students.

In this thread, I'm certainly NOT advocating zero-tuition for all students.

I was just doing some back-of-the-envelope worst-case calculations of the MOST that a need-blind policy could POSSIBLY cost a school like Harvard. And that bottom-line figure---if Harvard currently had all full-pay students, they'd collect a quarter of a billion dollars a year. If a switch to need-blind policies resulted (by some strange alignment of the stars) in a totally impecunious class requiring full financial aid, they'd get 0. (Well actually, they'd still get something, since many of these students would bring some outside scholarships and grants, particularly Pell grants. But let's just say zero to keep this a worst-case scenario.)

So, the absolute MOST it could possibly cost Harvard to go to need-blind (if it isn't already) is a quarter-billion a year. (In fact, it's much less than that, since 50% of the student body is already on financial aid, with an average of 20K per student in institutional grant aid.)

I agree that it's difficult to break down how much of Harvard's endowment is actually usable for undergraduate purposes, but the fact is that Harvard apparently thinks it has vast amounts of money that could be committed for expanding the size of their undergraduate student body (requiring expenditures for new dorms, new faculty, new office and lab space for the new faculty, etc., etc.) If Harvard needed more money for financial aid in order to be "need-blind," they could certainly redirect the expansion funds to financial aid instead.

FrenchBaroque · December 1, 2005, 11:41pm

Harvard is trying to "expand the size of its undergraduate student body"? Who knew?

interesteddad · December 1, 2005, 11:56pm

Xiggi:

To answer your survey, I can vouch for Swarthmore meeting 100% of demonstrated need. The only time they lose a student over the financial aid package is when they are asked to bid against an explicit or implicit merit aid package -- as frequently happens with URM students. They won't do it.

Cynical though I may be, I also believe that they are functionally "need-blind" in admissions. The financial aid department has standing authorization from the Board to spend what it takes and I don't believe that financial aid considerations would ever prevent them from accepting a student they want (early decision, regular decision, or waitlist).

Having said that, I recognize that they have the luxury of being "need-blind" because they know they'll fill 50% of the class with full-pay students as a natural consequence of their applicant pool, median SATs, etc. In fact, their efforts really go into making sure they get half the class that needs aid.

Here's a recent article featuring the Dean of Admissions, Jim Bock. When he applied to Swarthmore as first-generation college applicant in 1986, Swat was the most expensive college on his list and he didn't think his family could afford it. When he received all of his financial aid packages, Swarthmore was the only school his family could afford. So, I don't really question where his heart is on the issue of need-blind. It's real for him.

Nor is the issue of diversity an academic exercise. He is the only white male on the admissions staff (and he's from Texas, listens to Lyle Lovett, and likes Tex-Mex food, which makes him an under-represented minority at Swarthmore!). His staff is 60% non-white and 30% first-generation college grads. He has a policy that one quarter to one third of the high schools his staff visits must be under-represented in the Swat admissions pool or have a high percentage of under-represented students.

<a href="http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/daily/index.php?year=2005&month=11&day=10#n1%5B/url%5D">http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/daily/index.php?year=2005&month=11&day=10#n1</a>

xiggi · December 2, 2005, 12:31am

Thanks I-Dad. I hope we can develop a list of the schools under discussion.

I also hope that we can get closer to what is the true story and then reach individual conclusions. For instance, I think there are two ways to look at a school having 50% of aided students. It is the old half full or half empty glass. My view is that it is remarkable that a school that could probably fill its class with full tuition kids does end up with a 50-50% ratio. I have heard all the "reasons" behind such diversity, but it still takes determination to navigate the ups and downs of admission's cycles.

wisteria · December 2, 2005, 12:49am

[quote]
Cynical though I may be, I also believe that they are functionally "need-blind" in admissions. The financial aid department has standing authorization from the Board to spend what it takes and I don't believe that financial aid considerations would ever prevent them from accepting a student they want (early decision, regular decision, or waitlist).

Having said that, I recognize that they have the luxury of being "need-blind" because they know they'll fill 50% of the class with full-pay students as a natural consequence of their applicant pool, median SATs, etc. In fact, their efforts really go into making sure they get half the class that needs aid.

Here's a recent article featuring the Dean of Admissions, Jim Bock. When he applied to Swarthmore as first-generation college applicant in 1986, Swat was the most expensive college on his list and he didn't think his family could afford it. When he received all of his financial aid packages, Swarthmore was the only school his family could afford. So, I don't really question where his heart is on the issue of need-blind. It's real for him.

[/quote]

Realistically, I think the same is true of a number of other schools that claim to be need-blind. I think they can afford to be need-blind because (A) they are well-endowed and (B) many of the attributes they value in admissions happen to be highly correlated with income.

Harvard's dean of admissions & financial aid, William Fitzsimmons, was also a student from a modest working-class background who attended Harvard on scholarship.

I find it hard to believe that Harvard could get away with anything other than its stated need-blind policy in evaluating applications, even if they wanted to. With the Crimson lurking about, many student employees hovering around, it's pretty inconceivable that Harvard could pull off anything other than need-blind admissions. Many on their admissions staff are young and idealistic and not terribly well-paid. If they thought they were part of a deceitful system, the temptation to leave and write a whistle-blowing tell-all book (a la Rachel Toor) would be overwhelming. (Ms. Toor, btw, is from Duke, which does not claim to be need-blind--further EDIT--after looking at xiggi's post, I guess I was wrong about that--Duke is apparently need-blind now.)

(Again, the caveat that many of the attributes they value are correlated with income, yada, yada, yada.... but I do believe that when the admissions committee considers each individual application, the student's inability to pay will not be a negative factor in the admissions decision.)

xiggi · December 2, 2005, 12:50am

This is based on 2000 information, but it is a start. I believe that some schools have changed their policies since 2000. for instance, I think Macalester is no longer Need Blind. I would not be surprised if there are several errors or omissions.

Universities
Boston College
Brown
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Emory University
Georgetown University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Harvard University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Northwestern University
Princeton University
Rice University
Stanford University
Tufts starting ???
University of Chicago
University of Notre Dame
University of Pennsylvania
Vanderbilt University
Wake Forest University
Yale University

LAC
Amherst College
Bowdoin College
Claremont McKenna College
Davidson College
Grinnell ???
Haverford College
Macalester College
Middlebury College
Pomona College
Swarthmore College
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Williams College

See Macalaster Letter at
<a href="http://www.macalester.edu/qualityaccess/letter.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.macalester.edu/qualityaccess/letter.html</a>

interesteddad · December 2, 2005, 12:56am

Xiggi:

There is not a doubt in my mind that colleges are indeed determined to achieve diversity, even when it costs them serious chunks of revenue.

What complicates the equation is that it can't be viewed without considering the median SATs of the schools. There is break-point between schools that could enroll more full-pay students while maintaining or even improving their same "stats" and schools that couldn't enroll more full-pay students with the same stats. I don't know exactly where that break-point occurs, but it's pretty high up the USNEWS charts -- somewhere around the break point between schools that offer merit aid and those that don't.

ariesathena · December 2, 2005, 12:59am

"A school like Harvard" in terms of endowment is ridiculous. You cannot maintain intellectual integrity and use Harvard as an example of a school that can go tuition-free.

First of all, if Harvard stopped receiving any outside funding (tuition, grants, research, etc) it would be bankrupt in 10 years.

Second, "like Harvard" is... um, Harvard. Hate to break it to the club of y'all who think that universities are loaded, but they aren't. There are only a handful (about a dozen, out of over 3,000 in the country -> oh, about 1/3 of 1% of colleges) schools with endowments at or above a billion dollars. Sounds like a lot, right? Let's do some math:
*Assume 5,000 students and a billion-dollar endowment.
*If you don't want to be bankrupt eventually, you need to recycle a lot of the money you make from your investments back into the fund - as $10 now is worth more than $10 in the future, after inflation has hit.
*The stock market has historically made 7% annually. Inflation is about 4% annually, historically. You need to recycle 4% back into the endowment so that it has the same net present value next year as it does this year.
*Ergo, let's assume that about 3% of the annual endowment will be used for tuition.
*3% of a billion - and this is for the richest fraction of 1% of universities in America - is $30,000,000. Sounds like a lot? Divide that by your 5,000 students -> $6,000 per student.

Yeah, if you wanted to use up the entire endowment in one year, you could pretend that universities could subsidize everyone out of their endowments. But in reality, that can't happen, even more the wealthiest of colleges.

As for non-need blind colleges... my understanding is that (at least the way my alma mater works) is that they admit the people they want to admit, then send the names over to Financial Aid. Fin. aid will tell them who they can afford - and towards the end of the admissions cycle, they will have to admit only full payers. Not too bad, considering that most of the applications are determined on merit - and then they don't have to resort to all sorts of contortions in the admissions process to be "need blind." (Such contortions include giving extra weight to "wealthy" ECs, such as skiing or sailing; not giving much weight to an after-school job; putting extra emphasis on SAT scores; selecting based on parent's job and marital status; and selecting geographically and by high school - as prep students can probably pay full fare.)

Just my two cents.

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