<p>I refer to all financial aid as price discounting, because that’s what it is. Colleges are like airlines. They publish a full-fare price and then offer an infinitely variable pricing structure to fill their seats. Financial aid – merit based or need based – is ultimately offered for one reason: to attract students the college wants.</p>
<p>It’s even treated as a discount to revenue on college financial statements. They even refer to their “discount rate” as a key financial indicator. IMO, customers shopping for a college product would be well served to understand that a financial aid offer is not an “award”, but a price discount. Assuming the original poster here is from Ohio, he’s getting a $9000 a year discount to encourage him to attent The OSU and Swarthmore is dangling a $39,000 blue light special to attract his business. I suspect the people at Swarthmore hate me when I put it in car buying terminology, but, bottom line, it is what it is.</p>
<p>You know that colleges hire “enrollment management” consultants to help them with their variable pricing strategies. Some places – Emory is classic example – track every contact with the school and ask for self-paid postcard responses at regular intervals during the process. Part of the very sophisticated computer modelling pricing strategy is to offer bigger merit aid discounts to students who have expressed LESS interest and less price discounting to students who have expressed massive interest and whom the college thinks it can “get” without a discount.</p>
<p>The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education does an annual survey of black student admissions at elite college and universities – the hoity toity places.</p>
<p>The highest percentage of black students in an entering freshman class ever recorded by the magazine for an elite university was 12% for the University of North Carolina at Chapell Hill. The highest percentage for an elite liberal arts college was also 12% – two times. Both times at Swarthmore in the last ten years.</p>
<p>The “functionally the same” is not the case. Swarthmore and Williams, for example, have very, very different cultures and issues surrounding diversity. For example, Swarthmore has not had to deal with a faculty member hurling the N-word in a faculty meeting.</p>
<p>A bit off topic but I wonder how seriously students who interview for a summer internship or a job and are fortunate enough to land several, consider racial diversity at the workplace in comparison to the nature of the job, salary, location, etc. I have worked in DC and in small monolithic towns, and diversity wasn’t even on the horizon for most of the employees in how they felt about their jobs.</p>
<p>I know in the CC world I’m in an absolute minority in my feelings about it, but I find this emphasis on the difference between x% black and x+2% black, etc. so overblown. In OSU or Penn State or a large state school, even if 90% are white, is it that difficult for some kid to take part in a Chinese festival, Cinco de mayo celebration, an AA event or an Indian Bangra and make several good friends among the <2% population? The irony of this is that I know a couple of kids who spouted the diversity mantra when they headed off to college and then cultivated cliques of their own ethnicity. </p>
<p>I just wish my S & Ds would experience life by hanging out with the theater kids, the outdoor kids, the paycheck-to-paycheck family kids, the nerdy kids, the sports kids, agnostics, or whatever.</p>
That’s where critical mass comes in. It’s easy enough to make friends among the <2% population–but to feel comfortable having both same-ethnicity friends and other-ethnicity friends, you need a critical mass of the former. You need to see people like you in student leadership, in the faculty, in the administration. That’s the “third wave” of diversity that interesteddad likes to talk so much about. And I agree–the ethnicity cliques are always a danger. But the (partial) solution to them is to recruit >critical mass so that students feel more comfortable and accepted as just a student rather than as an X student.</p>
<p>I’ve used race as the minority factor in this example, but it just as easily applies to other factors like being observant Jewish or being homosexual and seeking a dating life in college.</p>
This is positively wrong wrt PhD, (the quality of education as evident by actual courses taken, research done, presentations, publications, letters of recommendations, proposals, etc. are much more important than an extra decimal point on GPA). Coming from Swarthmore certainly helps PhD applicants because Swarthmore grads have a reputation for being well prepared for rigorous academics.</p>
<p>For Law schools (and med schools) the numbers are very important. But if you want to get into YLS, HLS or SLS, the numbers alone will not get you there. At that level “soft factors” count. The name of your undergraduate institution in itself is not a factor. But the rigor of your education and the support of your mentors definitely play a role.</p>
<p>I don’t think you are in the minority. I haven’t seen a lot of evidence that people on College Confidential prioritize diversity in the college selection process.</p>
<p>It’s kind of ironic, really. Among most diverse elite East coast coed colleges, in order, in 2008 were:</p>
<p>Swarthmore
Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Williams
Amherst</p>
<p>It’s pretty clear that the colleges CC folk aspire to place an enormous emphasis on recruiting a diverse student body. They also invest seriously large dollars in the effort.</p>
<p>I also wouldn’t underestimate the word of mouth that accrues from having 130 professors from other colleges and universities arrive at Swarthmore each May (for almost 90 years now) to give the written and oral exams to Swarthmore honors students. From the most recent accreditation report:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Here’s the list of visiting examiners from last May:</p>
<p>“I’m not sure what you mean by “not functionally different.” Swarthmore’s exceptional racial diversity leads to a functionally different experience.”</p>
<p>Are you seriously claiming that having 2-3% higher Hispanic/African-American enrollment significantly changes the experience at the school? Please. In fact, Wesleyan is almost certainly more diverse in the real sense than either Williams and Swarthmore, simply because it is a lot larger. But the reality is, the basic culture of all of those schools is that of elite white society. Everyone else is just a passenger.</p>
<p>In fact, no one who goes to Swarthmore (or the other two) has any real commitment to attending a truly diverse school. Yeah, some of them want the window dressing. But if diversity was truly a high priority, they would go to some place like the University of Cincinnati which is REALLY diverse in every conceivable sense (except for the fact that most of its students are from Ohio, a very diverse state). And you can get anywhere you want to if you really excel at a school like that.</p>
<p>Please understand, I am not criticizing anyone for choosing a school like Swarthmore. But spare me the platitudes about diversity, unless you’re willing to walk the walk and give up something in order to attend a truly diverse school.</p>
<p>With all due respect, you really don’t have a clue about diversity at Swarthmore. I think you would change your tune very quickly if you spent some time on the campus or attending Swarthmore events. I can assure you that attending any large Swarthmore event, such as graduation weekend most assuredly does not look like “white culture”. The student body is barely white majority. Over 60% of the acceptance letters go to US non-white or international students. So tell a white kid trying to get accepted that the diversity is “just window dressing”.</p>
<p>I follow Williams pretty closely. I’ve read the administration diversity reports. I’ve read the consultants’ summaries. I know the Bernard Moore story. Williams and Swarthmore are not even remotely similar in this regard.</p>
<p>In my opinion …Swat is not diverse. You have half the student body coming from upper middle, or upper class backgrounds. The color of a person’s skin tells only part of the story when considering diversity.</p>
<p>You have half the class coming from the top 5% of the population in wealth.</p>
<p>You also have very few students on Pell Grants at Swat.</p>
<p>Here is some more data on socioeconomic diversity… I don’t know how it compares to OSU. However, I think it would be interesting to compare OSU’s Honors program kids to the overall university in terms of socioeconomic diversity–if this kind of data is available, it might support (or contradict) ID’s contention that merit aid is meant to “buy” honors-level students.</p>
<p>If learning is for learning sake, I would agree. If it is however, a stepping stone to some other objective, it can be a cautionary tale. </p>
<p>Going to a top prep school or top public high school can provide a student with “rigorous academics.” Simply know that if you are in the top 20 percent of the class, the opportunities presented are outstanding. And simply know that if you are in the bottom 80 percent of your class you will be at a disadvantage against some other kid in the top 20 percent of a school that does not have the same “rigorous academics” or internal competition. In some situations, you could even say it’s limited to the top 10 percent of the class regarding opportunities (e.g. scholarships). </p>
<p>Same thing applies to college. Going to a top school and being in the top 20 percent of the class will present a lot of wonderful options. Being in the bottom 80 percent is not going to get you in the top PH.D. programs, no matter where you went to school. Sure I’m generalizing, but it’s funny how schools don’t share this reality with prospective students. </p>
<p>A kid in a class of 500 at a top LAC at the 80 percentile has 1 to 100 kids in his own class that potentially will out-perform him for spots in grad school or the job market. Now, add on all the other top LAC programs and top national universities. Now add on all the middle level LAC programs and middle level national universities (for discussion purposes) with grades at the 90 percentile level. Where/what does that leave even an above average student at his “rigorous” LAC - other than a rigorous education?</p>
<p>It still comes down to what you do in college that matters, not where you go.</p>
<p>I agree, ctyankee. In the OP’s circumstance, only one of 1) intellectual satisfaction, 2) high GPA can be maximized. He might be able to find both at either school, but the highest chances of one or the other clearly lean toward different sides.</p>
<p>To put it another way: would you be happier with a 3.6 and an elite intellectual environment, or a 3.9 and challenging classes/close professor interaction but intellectually disappointing peers? (Before anyone flames me, this is a simplification.)</p>
<p>How are you defining “upper middle class,” dstark? I find it implausible simply because so many people calling themselves “upper middle class” come to CC complaining that they can’t get need-based aid at elite schools.</p>
<p>On a different topic altogether: dstark, you might consider using the “Edit” link to consolidate very short posts.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure you can find intellectual peers at OSU. You only have to find a few hundred or so for each class to reach Swarthmore’s numbers.</p>