<p>"Midmo. I would never mean to imply that mid-level families are not working very, very hard for their money. But I also don't believe that lower income families are not.'</p>
<p>Garland: Like I said, it is a matter of incentive. Lower income families work harder, they still qualify for financial aid. Middle income families work harder, they are suddenly too wealthy to qualify for financial aid. </p>
<p>Elite colleges would serve everyone better if they put their money, prestige and connections into fixing the lousy K-12 education available to poor kids, instead of trying to "fix" the problem of access at the post-secondary level. (Well, actually, there are people at Harvard doing exactly that, so my apologies to Peterson et al for sweeping generalizations.)</p>
<p>How does this relate to EA/ED? Only tangentially, I guess. But Harvard and other elites could spend a lot less energy worrying about how their admissions policies are perceived by the rest of society if everyone had a better chance of showing up at the door with the same qualifications.</p>
<p>BTW, on the notion that ED hinders diversity efforts:</p>
<p>Swarthmore accepted 156 of its 372 first-year students this fall ED.</p>
<p>The school also had the highest percentages of non-white first year students in the school's history - 42% American students of color:</p>
<p>12% African American
12% Latino American
17% Asian American
1% Native American</p>
<p>The yield in all minorities was high. 14% of the acceptance letters went to Af Am students; 12% enrolled. 16% of acceptances went to Latinos; 12% enrolled. 21% went to Asian Americans; 17% enrolled. The high yield rates suggest that signficant numbers of minority students are included in the ED cohort.</p>
<p>I think the notion that ED is only for wealthy white students is no longer the case. For example, all of the full-scholarship low-income Questbridge match finalists are included in the ED numbers since they make a binding commitment to a first choice school under the terms of the program.</p>
<p>
[quote]
"Elite colleges would serve everyone better if they put their money, prestige and connections into fixing the lousy K-12 education available to poor kids, instead of trying to "fix" the problem of access at the post-secondary level. (Well, actually, there are people at Harvard doing exactly that, so my apologies to Peterson et al for sweeping generalizations.)</p>
<p>How does this relate to EA/ED? Only tangentially, I guess. But Harvard and other elites could spend a lot less energy worrying about how their admissions policies are perceived by the rest of society if everyone had a better chance of showing up at the door with the same qualifications."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Reforming the K-12 education of our entire country is not exactly the role of our elite--and mostly private--schools. </p>
<p>This said, I believe that Harvard might actually do more than any other school by relentlessly researching and documenting the possibilities of new avenues. which alas are kept closed by a lethal combination of archaic policies and the out-of-control political strength of self-serving groups. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Lower income families work harder, they still qualify for financial aid. Middle income families work harder, they are suddenly too wealthy to qualify for financial aid.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, true. If you do not see you have an incentive to work more, then I think it would be a smart decision not to. Another nice choice to have. I'm not so sure, though, that you'd actually find the results more comfortable.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But Harvard and other elites could spend a lot less energy worrying about how their admissions policies are perceived by the rest of society if everyone had a better chance of showing up at the door with the same qualifications.
<p>xiggi: I'm familiar with Hoxby's work and applaud it. With all due respect, I think Harvard and many others made the reform of K-12 their "role" when they eliminated all merit money a few years ago on the grounds that the measures used to assess readiness and competence were slanted in favor of the non-poor. I must second your statement that policy change at the K-12 level is impeded by the electoral power of self-serving groups.</p>
<p>dadx,
ED is binding, isn't it? We were told not to apply ED if financial aid was of any consideration at all. Not only would the binding offer eliminate the chance to compare other offers, I believe colleges may offer less financial aid to ED applicants because such an application signals that money is not an issue.</p>
<p>Sorry, but ALL the schools my d. applied to claimed to be meeting 100% of need (and most claimed to be using the same formula), and the differences were quite astounding.</p>
<p>You do seem to be very trusting. Do you have any experiential basis for that trust?</p>
<p>Mini's experience mirrors the experience of a young man whose story I quoted. The difference between what Mini's D was offered at one school and at another was $47k--a whole year's worth of tuition, room and board, and even something left over. The young man was offered $28k less at one top school than at another top school, both working from the same financial data.</p>
<p>Marite. were the differences in total financial aid, or based solely on the cash contributions? Also, without putting Mini on the spot, isn't it fair to note that the waters regarding his family's financial aid could be a bit murky due to the presence of substantial merit aid at Smith?</p>
<p>I sound like a broken record (dated phrase, I know) when I keep repeating the word "incentive". The concept is ingrained after decades of marriage to an economist, but what possible incentive would ANY school have to offer a student the best FA package possible if that student is already committed, by contract, to attend that school? Would anyone agree to purchase any other commodity if the final price wasn't known until after the committment was made? I've already been told different things by different FA offices about how certain assets will be counted, and all of them private schools supposedly operating under the same rules. ED is a bad route for most kids, but the same is not true for EA, and maybe not even SCEA even though it limits students' options somewhat.</p>
<p>Second question first: no, the merit aid at Smith had absolutely no effect on the total offer (for the first year) because it was used to cancel out need-based aid. Its only impact was to guarantee that, as tuition prices rose in future, half the tuition scholarship rose by exactly the same percentage (which was irrelevant, because, of course, financial situations change year by year.) We actually asked about that because we wanted to make sure we weren't comparing "apples and oranges", and we didn't want it to be "murky". It could have made an impact for someone with a family income of, say, $110-$160k (but we weren't close.) The biggest difference in the offer was the paid research assistantship offered - an academic difference (a big one), not a financial one.</p>
<p>The $47k were differences in TOTAL financial aid over four years; the loan differences were as noted.</p>
<p>My recent relevant experience is as a parent of a full pay applicant, so I don't have the empirical sample-size-of-one evidence that others do. </p>
<p>Some of that evidence might be more useful if there were school names associated with the high and the low offers, or if the difference between the second highest and second lowest were noted.</p>
<p>Note I'm not saying that Colby will (or can) offer the same aid as Princeton, but if you think you're getting into Princeton, you won't apply ED to Colby anyway. But I believe that the differences in aid offers among HYP and between Colby and Bowdoin are not that great. </p>
<p>It does occur to me that it would be useful to have a chart comparing schools on the basis of average net cost to financial aid recipients, with some numbers on the shape of the distribution of the aid. I don't think I've ever seen that. </p>
<p>And after thinking about these issues for a while its hardly a revelation that schools like HYP detest merit aid.</p>
<p>PS: I hope Yale is prepared for a flood of EA applications this year.</p>
<p>I don't know the details. The parent told me the financial data submitted were the same. The schools involved were Princeton (known to be generous) and MIT (known to be less so). Both, however, claim to meet 100% of need.</p>
<p>I don't think Mini's daughter was a typical applicant. Not only was she an incredibly interesting applicant in terms of her EC activities and life experiences, she also fell squarely in the category of student most likely to get "quasi merit-aid" (i.e. taking an intentionally generous look at EFC calculations and offering extra bennies like paid research internships, foreign research funding, etc.) at top colleges. Based on the results, not applying ED did not hurt her chances of admissions at the very top LACs in the country one iota. So, I'm not sure Mini's daughter is a good example to support the argument that ED programs hurt the chances for strong applicants from moderate income families.</p>
<p>Let me cite another applicant who was/is a superstar. Her parents did not let her apply ED because they wanted to apply for finaid. She got into every school she applied to. But the offers from Princeton, Harvard and MIT, among others, differed widely. Harvard decided to match Princeton; MIT decided to only go up a little.
Had she applied ED to Princeton, she would have received the same amount of financial aid she eventually got. But she chose to negotiate with Harvard and in the end, is attending Harvard.</p>
<p>Dadx - those who want to know the schools can look through the archives. The reason I pointedly DON'T name the schools (other than the one she is attending) is that I don't think a single anecdote is a good way to judge the financial aid characteristics of a particular school. I have met other students' families with different experiences. What I have almost never seen is two schools claiming to use the same methodology and the same FASFA making the same offer.</p>
<p>I have come to view "need-based" aid as simply a form of merit aid - if they wanted my d., they'd have to pay for the privilege. I view Princeton's "no-loan" policy, for example, as a way to keep more top quintile ($100-$160k income) students from jumping ship to the Vanderbilts of the world, even as they more than make up the difference in the loan amounts through tuition increases paid by these same students over the next four years. I know enough parents who, come April 15th, go to various Ivies and top-flight LACs for more money to "match the competition", and have the schools "discover they are poorer" than originally reckoned. It is such a common experience I hardly think it worthy of comment as something particularly unusual. </p>
<p>The costs of colleges are seemingly arbitrary as well. The cost structures at say, Harvard, with its graduate faculties, federal grants, and massive facilties, and Williams with its one-on-one teaching and rural campus, and Swarthmore, that has to spread its costs among many fewer students (hence making their spending per student seem ridiculously high) are so different from each other that the odds of them coming up with a "price" within 5% of each other based on costs are close to zero. These are business enterprises in all but name, and cost and scholarship and other differentials are based on their perceived prestige as "luxury services".</p>
<p>I still think Bok did what he did because he believes it is better for Harvard, for reasons he clearly stated. Beyond that is pure speculation, to which are all well-entitled, given the price. ;)</p>
<p>I don't know the details. The parent told me the financial data submitted were the same. The schools involved were Princeton (known to be generous) and MIT (known to be less so). Both, however, claim to meet 100% of need. **</p>
<p>Marite, I agree that an identical EFC or CSS bottomline can yield different net numbers at the student level. Certain schools are indeed less generous than others, and create different results by insisting on "small" details such as summer earnings contributions or substantial work-study. I would agree that MIT seems one of the less generous schools in this regard. Other differences are created when schools such as Brown refuse to EVER waive the summer earning contributions, even when students obtain outside scholarships. All in all, a zero EFC does rapidly turn into a $5,000 minimum contribution. I know for a fact that the minimum contribution at Harvard is much smaller than that.</p>
<p>*"Second question first: no, the merit aid at Smith had absolutely no effect on the total offer (for the first year) because it was used to cancel out need-based aid." *</p>
<p>Hmmm, Mini, that seems to indicate that Smith shows quite a judicious talent in selecting its Zollman awardees. Does this mean that the much heralded merit aid awards have little value--except for inflation adjusters--to anyone with a low EFC in Northampton?</p>
<p>my question about these differences in aid--were they caused by a school offering less than the EFC, or by another school offering more? And were they at all meets-all-need schools, or some not?</p>
<p>Like ID, I believe that Mini's D was/is not in any way a typical candidate, and in fact places like Smith seemed to be deliberately over-bidding in order to get a superstar. Which is great both for Mini's D and for Smith. I didn't raise any of those (well, in my eyes they are:)), so I can't exerpolate her experiences to mean or have meant anything for my kids, or other, less outlying candidates.</p>