<p>Though its influence is noted “incidentally”, you can’t help but think that the pursuit of rankings-boosting is having broad, pernicious and troubling effects on state college admissions and, by extension according to the article, state demographics and long-range economic health.</p>
<p>I wonder what “prestigious” scholarship the second student mentioned received that covers both undergrad and medical school costs. </p>
<p>Anybody have any idea? Son is a curent med student and med school monies are awarded by the actual med school themselves AFTER acceptance. So again I wonder what scholarship awards monies for both tuition(s) since he was still only an undergrad?</p>
<p>Maybe he was accepted to a combined BS/MD program and was granted a tuition scholie for both? At Purdue?</p>
<p>I would expect that many colleges skew their “merit” money to favor some minority students from disadvantaged backgrounds who are at the top of their rural or city high school class, but who would not be at the top of the college’s applicant pool in terms of standardized test scores.</p>
<p>Taking some tuition income and calling it “financial aid” is really just a shell game to increase the total tuition income. If not for that increased income from the 4 rich students there would be no such aid to give. It’s really just accounting.</p>
<p>While you may find it appalling, it appears that many posters on this forum favor that, given all of the complaints about “being middle class but not getting financial aid anywhere” or the complaints about how some states like California still have a predominantly need-based financial aid system.</p>
<p>The title is incendiary. It represents one of the biggest problems we have today. It is also misleading. </p>
<p>Don’t focus on this. Focus on what needs to be done to make state schools affordable to begin with. Lets all advocate for a system on which Pell students cannot be charged more than Pell.</p>
<p>I don’t think this is usually the case. Do you have any evidence?</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen, schools that are known to meet full need of poor students often admit via Questbridge or Posse or similar programs. The students they take that way are real stars.</p>
<p>Pity the kid from a poor family (like family income of $20k or $30k) who is not a star. S/he will wind up borrowing a lot of money and/or taking a long time (if ever) to get through school because his/her parents can’t give any money at all, not a bus ticket, nothing, and anything less than a full ride is impossible. Working one’s way through community college can be very difficult.</p>
<p>If colleges are offering merit money to attract those with high stats…especially to boost rankings, this assumption makes no logical sense.</p>
<p>If their goal is to boost rankings, they need as many top stats kids as possible as those rankings don’t make allowances for URMs/lower SES/underrepresented regions.</p>
<p>It may depend on how you define “merit” scholarship. If it is anything which is not “financial aid”, then I have seen a lot of scholarships which are “race based” (where that is allowed) where academic performance is one of the principal attributes necessary to get the scholarship. Most of these were probably not full rides.</p>
<p>“I would expect that many colleges skew their “merit” money to favor some minority students from disadvantaged backgrounds who are at the top of their rural or city high school class, but who would not be at the top of the college’s applicant pool in terms of standardized test scores.”</p>
<p>I have not observed this at all. These high ranking, low score students may get in, but they’re not getting merit money. Test scores are critical to merit money.</p>
<p>Look, merit money serves exactly one purpose: to entice students to attend a college when they would otherwise go to a more prestigious or desirable school. If we’re talking about a state flagship like Purdue, it’s able to enroll all of the high-GPA, low-score underprivileged in-staters it can handle without offering any extra discount. They’re not going out of state, or to private school. So why would it throw money at them?</p>
<p>Why do people think it’s OK to give athletes with “no financial need” a full ride but not OK to give a scholar with “no financial need” a full ride or even a partial scholarship?</p>
<p>For example, $150K (yes, it is a good salary, high percentile, etc) is often cited as a salary level that gets no aid, but can’t pay full freight. Merit aid for these families can be crucial. Even four years at a state flagship (tuition, room, board) can run 100-120K.</p>
<p>The article also makes it seem that there are no aid options for low income students if they don’t get merit aid. Of course not all schools meet need, but there are aid options outside of loans and merit aid.</p>
<p>I think we need both merit aid and financial aid.</p>
<p>However, many colleges do not have the budget to do both good need-based financial aid and offer more than a few merit scholarships that are large enough to make a significant impact on many students. So the colleges have to make policy decisions – either way, there will be people disagreeing with the decision made. Some colleges may not have the budget to do significant amounts of either need-based financial aid or merit scholarships.</p>
<p>The maximum Pell grant is $5,645. And that’s the total amount of federal grants.</p>
<p>The maximum federal student loan amount (subsidized and unsubsidized) is $5500 for freshman year, $6500 for sophomore year, and $7500 for junior and senior year. And that’s the total amount of federal loans. (This increases somewhat if parents are turned down for Parent Plus loans because of bad credit records or inadequate income.)</p>
<p>Some colleges and universities give additional funds based on need but not as many or as much as you would think, beyond the tippy-top tier of schools.</p>
<p>I think it’s a myth among middle-class parents that students from poor families get such a great deal for college.</p>
<p>Further adding to the confusion is that most Americans regard themselves as middle class. </p>
<p>One survey I recalled reading in an American Ideology politics course is that over 80% of surveyed Americans nationwide labeled themselves as such even if their incomes placed them well above the 80th percentile in terms of annual incomes.</p>