<p>But note the article was NOT comparing two kids who were academically equal.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The “middle class that won’t receive financial aid anywhere” is probably in the 95th or higher percentile of household income, based on seeing net price calculator results for various income levels (Harvard’s NPC makes it convenient to do “what if?” scenarios).</p>
<p>
True. However, this article points out
Because
</p>
<p>It’s unfortunate that the author decided she had to devalue Bosma’s achievement in order to illustrate Russell’s plight.</p>
<p>It’s not a “luxury” for high schoolers in this country to not have to help support their families. Most teens can focus primarily on school if they want to. It’s pretty normal. It might be a “luxury” by world historical standards. Painting Bosma as uber-privileged because he didn’t have to work 25 hours a week in high school seems dishonest to me.</p>
<p>Not only dishonest, but really very sad in terms of what we are deciding to aspire to as a country. Expectations do have an effect on outcomes.</p>
<p>Thanks for the heads up on the scholie, I tried searching for it yesterday but to no avail. So it will cover med school if he gets in to a specific medical school @ Indiana University…that makes more sense.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>Bosma got better grades and higher test scores than the article’s primary subject person. Bosma’s stats were apparently so good that he managed to get into a combined undergrad/med school program, which was no doubt very competitive and difficult to get into. Even the other student in the article says “Bosma studied much harder (than me) in high school. He was unusually driven”.</p>
<p>Scoreboard Bosma — better grades; better test scores; selected into specialty program over no doubt lots of other stellar students. So congrats to him that in turn he got great merit aid!</p>
<p>All of our kids should aspire to reach that level I’d hope. </p>
<p>The title of the article, “Freebies for the Rich”, is ridiculous and misleading. Merit aid for Bosma, and for ANYBODY ELSE, is available to them regardless of how high or low a family’s income is, as long as the student posts the stats and stands out more so than the other applicants. The article, properly titled, should read “Freebies available for any student”…but that wouldn’t sell papers.</p>
<p>^^^I don’t think it’s a combined program. Rather he has the option of applying for a MS, Phd, MBA or Md at the end of his undergrad studies and expenses will be covered at either Purdue for graduate work or Indiana University for medical school. Seems to be the Beering Scholarship is structured like some other scholie’s that will cover both expenses depending on program or restricted by a specific school attendance. So for example he gets into HMS or HBS his MBA or MD would NOT be covered.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>Again thanks for the lead on the scholie, one I had not heard of.</p>
<p>And I call BS on this part of the article + would love to see the actual numbers: “The share of state aid that’s not based on need (ie, STATE-BASED MERIT aid) has nearly tripled in the last two decades, to 29 percent per full-time student in 2010-11”.</p>
<p>If I read this above full quote slowly 2-3 times it sure sounds like it says “Merit aid from the (each?) state as a whole, on average, covers 29% of every full time students’ college costs”.</p>
<p>How can that possibly be?</p>
<p>For what it is worth, Purdue’s net price calculator indicates that the net price for a low income Indiana resident without merit scholarships $12,568. List price is $23,468, federal (Pell + SEOG) grants are $5,950, and state/school grants are $4,950.</p>
<p>Other offers include $2,500 in federal work study and $7,500 in loans ($5,500 direct, $2,000 from school) to apply against the $12,568 net price.</p>
<p>I.e. it does offer need-based aid, but is not quite enough to bring the cost down to what the student can do with just direct loans and a typical reasonable amount of work earnings.</p>
<p>“the net price for a low income Indiana resident without merit scholarships $12,568.”</p>
<p>This makes me so sad for low-income students in Illinois. There’s no reason UIUC can’t be priced that low. Purdue is a great engineering school, too.</p>
<p>Re post #16, in what universe does $150 K qualify as a salary level that gets no aid but can’t pay full freight? H and I make roughly half that much and qualify for squat at our in-state publics, beyond the “boilerplate” federal loans, in part because our in-state tuition is rock-bottom to begin with. S1 did get some additional aid when I was unemployed for 18 months but now that I am back to work (making $10,000 per year less) he gets only merit aid and loans. And S2 isn’t even really looking at in-state publics - he’s a decent athlete who will probably get more aid from a small LAC.</p>
<p>
+1
Which of those potential students is what college is supposed to be about? Uh, oh yeah, the scholar.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>UIUC’s net price calculator gives a net price of $13,318 to $15,532 (depending on major) for a dependent Illinois resident student with FAFSA EFC = $0. However, that is after subtracting “estimated grant and/or scholarship aid” from the list price. Since the net price calculator does not have any places to enter information that may be relevant to scholarships (and UIUC does not seem to have stats-only-based scholarships), it is hard to tell what the financial aid and net price would be in the absence of any merit scholarships.</p>
<p>Some people don’t think it’s OK to give free money to athletes with no financial need. Me, for example. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually, that’s not necessarily true. Colleges discount tuition because they want the sale price to entice families to pay the rest of the cost. A kid who gets merit of $20,000 is still going to be writing a pretty hefty check to the college. A low-income family probably can’t pay the difference. Colleges know that. They target zip codes and affluent families with their merit aid. </p>
<p>I think the article’s author makes some valid points.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My son was offered one specific to the College of Engineering (for CS): $15,000/year for 4 years, stacked with two other smaller scholarships as sweetners. Silverturtle was offered one, too, outside of engineering.</p>
<p>But were the scholarships ones where the student would know whether s/he would get them before applying? If not, then relying on them would be a risky proposition. It is also misleading for net price calculators to include merit scholarships, except for those which are assured for stats that the net price calculator asks for (the UIUC net price calculator does not ask for any academic stats).</p>
<p>“it is hard to tell what the financial aid and net price would be in the absence of any merit scholarships.”</p>
<p>In my experience, which is admittedly not that broad, it is rare for low-income students to get merit grants because their stats are just good enough to get admitted, not above average for UIUC.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Exactly. And this is acknowledged in the NY Times article:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Full-ride merit scholarships like the one earned by Mr. Bosma (and I have no doubt he earned it) are a “loss-leader” for schools like Purdue. They get lots of high-stats (and not coincidentally, on average pretty affluent) students to apply, hoping to grab that brass ring. Many will be offered smaller merit awards that still have them paying a larger fraction of full tuition than low- or zero-EFC students.</p>
<p>I think the motives of schools for offering merit awards vary somewhat, however. Many of the most selective schools offer only need-based FA, or meet full need while offering a token number of merit awards. Slightly below that level, schools jockeying for rankings use need-based aid primarily to buy high test scores, seeking to boost their SAT/ACT medians and thereby their US News rankings. And many less selective schools use merit aid as a revenue-enhancing device to get more affluent students in the door and paying a substantial part of the freight. </p>
<p>Very few schools can afford both to meet full need and award merit money in substantial total amounts. Most need to make a choice; in fact, most can’t meet full need, and it becomes a question of whether they’re even going to try to make a big dent into need, or instead devote most of their aid budget to merit. The latter is often a sounder fiscal strategy because it can bring in a lot of partial-pay students, and as the NYT article points out, you can often buy 3 or 4 such students for the same price to the school as a single zero-EFC kid getting need-based FA. Examples:</p>
<p>• Notre Dame, a highly selective and well-off private school, spends $110 million of its own funds annually on need-based FA and meets 100% of need for 100% of its students with need. It spends about $9 million of its own funds on merit aid, a token amount.</p>
<p>• Purdue, a moderately selective public university, splits its money more evenly between need-based aid ($33 million in institutional funds) and merit aid ($24 million), meeting on average 84% of need while meeting full need for fewer than half of those determined to have need. For Purdue this is probably more about buying test scores than a fiscal question, though Purdue might also be better off financially with this strategy than if it put its entire $59 million institutional aid budget into meeting need.</p>
<p>• Another rung down in selectivity, Ball State University spends almost 6 times as much of its institutional funds on merit aid ($22 million) as on need-based aid ($3.8 million), meeting on average only 65% of need with most of the need-based funds coming from state and federal sources rather than institutional funds. Ball State meets full need for fewer than a third of its students with need. For Ball State the fiscal side might predominate, producing more net tuition revenue than if that same amount of money wend into meeting need.</p>
<p>I think it’s too facile to say, “Don’t worry about the merit money, let’s focus on making college affordable for lower-income kids.” At most schools, it’s all really part of the same question; there is a clear trade-off between how much they devote to need and how much to merit.</p>
<p>bclintonk, you’re right, and it’s particularly troubling with a directional school like Ball State that ought to serve as an accessible local option. If the Ball States of the world are unaffordable, that’s a giant barrier to joining the middle class for kids who want to be teachers, nurses, etc.</p>