Dear Wandlmink, do such students with outstanding academic records and the “hooks” you refer to also receive merit awards even if they are from wealthy families?
Last year S was offered a total of $96,000 merit award.
@Maximilias If it is a Merit scholarship, it is based on student merit and not based on parents wealth! But it appears from the response that Rice uses so called ‘holistic’ process to identify the merit students unlike lot of other schools which uses ‘academic’ criteria to identify the merit students. In fact lot of schools call this merit awards as academic awards/scholarship. So it is going to be unpredictable until student gets the admission letter and the award details in 3-4 weeks time.
Let me post this to the other ED thread for this year and see what they got for this year.
Thanks @bordertexan and @wandlmink for your response.
Thanks @4beardolls for your response.
GoldenRock, I’m aware what merit scholarships are, thank you. I simply wanted to know if Rice believes that students from wealthy families who have had every advantage in the world should actually receive them.
@Maximilias Rice gives need aid to about 40% of the incoming classes. The school is need blind and meets all demonstrated need according to the formula on their website. For that reason, merit aid is not given to that group. Merit aid is given to the other 60%. I believe they give the aid as a competitive device to attract the top students. Since people who will not qualify for aid – and may be middle to upper middle class - do not file a FAFSA, Rice won’t know if they are kids of two working spouses squeaking by in a high cost area, or Donald Trump’s kids.
Agree with wandlmink. My son is a senior now. He was awarded merit scholarship based on his academic record, EC and essays. We never filled out a FAFSA so Rice had no idea what our financial status was/is.
@maxmillion, as I said in post #98, DS14 didn’t even fill out FAFSA since we knew we would not qualify for any need based financial aid. He was awarded the highest merit scholarship from Rice that year. So it was 100% merit based without any consideration of his family’s financial background.
Dear wandlmink, RedYellowBlue, 4bearddolls, thanks for your clarification of who exactly is given financial merit awards at Rice. I have no problem with students from the middle class or those from the lower upper middle class range receiving financial merit awards, as the cost of a private education is exceedingly high. However, I do not find it all reassuring or inspiring to know that the children of Trump-like wealth also receive financial merit awards. I am disappointed that people on this site, and perhaps you are among them, seem to find this fair, equitable, decent or even tolerable. Though you may be a mother of a daughter who has been accepted early admission—and congratulations to her—I suspect that you are a Rice insider, perhaps even in their employ, for how else would you know the things you know with such authority and specificity. I would hope those with a strong liberal arts education, the kind one gets at Rice, would see the failing in offering financial merit awards to students of very wealthy families. I am not suggesting in any way that students from wealthy families do not deserve recognition for their academic and other accomplishments, but I am suggesting, even asserting, there are many exceptional students from families in need who are as intellectually gifted as wealthy students and would greatly benefit from attending a top elite college. Such students in need not only lack the opportunities of wealthy students in prepping for elite colleges, they obviously do not have the means to pay for such a college education. And yet wealthy kids, I now learn, also receive financial merit awards from Rice. As a student from a solidly middle class family who has made sacrifices so I can receive an outstanding education, I personally don’t consider the practice of giving financial merit awards to wealthy students compatible with creating a fair playing field in our society.
I am not alone in this belief. Recent reports based on federal-based data by the Century Foundation and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation points to the fact that college admissions at highly selective colleges is not only rigged in favor of high income students but so is the financing of such elite colleges. According to Harold O. Levy, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation executive director, elite colleges who make the claim that they are committed to economic diversity are, in his words, espousing a lot of “blather.” As he and the report states: “Students from households in the bottom income quartile make up just three percent of enrollment at the nation’s most competitive colleges. But 72 percent [on average] of enrollment at these colleges is comprised of students from the wealthiest quartile.” Three percent? Is anyone bothered by that three percent figure?
Please see the related article and the reports for yourself:
http://www.jkcf.org/assets/1/7/JKCF_True_Merit_Report.pdf
http://www.tcf.org/assets/downloads/tcf-leftbehindrc.pdf
I suppose Rice can brag that “only” 60 percent of its enrollment is comprised of the wealthiest quartile. Nonetheless, based on the statistics in these reports, one might well ask if the percentage of wealthy students at Rice who receive financial merit awards exceeds the actual percentage of students at Rice from the bottom economic quartile. I would hope this is not the case, but If it is so, Rice apparently is more than happy to embrace a world that is far more accommodating to the highly advantaged wealthy than it is to those from the disadvantaged bottom economic quartile—a world not only incompatible with economic diversity but a world I find rather sinister.
When I originally posted my response, it was directed to wandlmink, but then I noticed that RedYellowBlue and 4beardolls (sorry about misspelling your user name above) had also weighed in on the matter of financial merit awards so I included them. However, the comment in my above email in which I state, “I suspect that you are a Rice insider, perhaps even in their employ, for how else would you know the things you know with such authority and specificity,” is directed to wanlmink. And I should say that having followed many posts on this site, all I meant by this comment is that wandlmink is enormously well-informed about every aspect of Rice, to such a degree that one could easily believe that wandlmink is in some way closely associated with the university. However presumptive, no offense intended. Sorry for any confusion.
@Maximilias, I understand your frustration. It is very hard these days for middle class families to afford college. That is a problem that our country has to address. I don’t have a problem with Rice’s policy of not looking at need when it comes to merit scholarships, however. Rice is a private university using merit awards as a way to lure students who might otherwise not choose to attend. It’s purely a business decision, just like a law firm might award starting bonuses to attract the best law school graduates to accept an employment offer. If a poorer student were more attractive on this basis than that student would win such an award. I don’t think Rice is prioritizing the wealthy, they are just not prioritizing the disadvantaged.
pittsburghscribe, that’s a really good way of stating it. And you’re right: by awarding wealthy students financial merit awards, Rice isn’t prioritizing the disadvantaged. But I believe they should because in his will William Marsh Rice stated his desire to found an institute of higher learning for “boys and girls, struggling for a place in the sun.” Granted the charter stipulated “white boys and girls,” but the board of trustees corrected that injustice in 1964. Obviously, giving financial merit awards to students from very wealthy families runs contrary to William Marsh Rice’s wishes. Students from wealthy families already have “a place in the sun” and they certainly are not “struggling.” Didn’t the trustees and senior administrators who made the decision to offer financial merit awards to rich students not consider that? I was disappointed to learn that Rice gives financial merit awards to very wealthy students, but it’s my hope that Rice will eventually change that policy. In the end, Rice still does much to help students with financial need, but they need to do more. And like all elite colleges, Rice needs to do much more to attract talented and bright students from the bottom quartile of the economic strata, especially if Rice truly seeks an economically diverse student body. Nonetheless, of all of the colleges I’ve learned about and studied, Rice remains the one I admire the most and want to attend because more than any other university it speaks to my own ideals and expectations of what I think the college experience should be. So I’ll get over it.
I want to point out also that Rice is one of a number of schools (only about 20 in the country) that have eliminated loans for low income students. If your family earns less than $80,000 for example, they cover full tuition, room and board. About 18% of incoming Rice students fit this criteria. Only 2 other universities have higher threshold (Brown and Dartmouth at $100,000). I wish more universities did this.
http://thecollegematchmaker.com/63-colleges-committed-student-loans/
RedYellowBlue, I was excited when I learned about that and thanks for pointing that out here. Programs like that are a huge help.
When do Rice RD decisions come out?
I applaud Rice for giving rewards based on solely on merit. A wallet biopsy should not be done giving a merit scholarship. Rice should be able to recruit the truly outstanding applicants that they really want to attend their university. Kids from upper class families don’t have everything given to them. You can’t buy good grades, test scores, extra-curriculars… the applicant worked for them regardless of how much money his or her parents had. The truth is that an education at Rice is expensive (over $200,000 for 4 years) and most families don’t have that kind of money lying around. How fair is it that a child whose parents didn’t work hard to succeed in life get that $200,000 education for their child paid for while those of us who have worked hard and saved are expected to pay that $200,000?
And to pay $250,000 parents have to earn $350,000, because $250,000 is after taxes.
Um, @m22boys , I think it’s ridiculous to insinuate that people who can’t afford full price of tuition “didn’t work hard in life”. Come on. Do janitors not work hard? Do mailmen not work hard? You might look down on low-paying positions, but someone has to do them. The janitors at my school works hard and I’m thankful for it. My mailman is consistent and likable. And to imply that everyone who can afford full price worked hard just isn’t true either. Most did, probably. But not all. Some people are born into it.
That 250k is for 4 years. Our income is just above 100k but will have to full pay if son gets in.
That seems ridiculous. Is Rice’s FA really that bad? My parents make ~200k and at other schools we’re looking at paying 40k a year – out of 65ish. Granted we have other kids in college and everything but still.
And that doesn’t make the argument better. 250k in one year or 4 years, lots of hardworking people won’t be able to afford that. The notion that all or even most poor people are lazy is misguided and sad.