<p>IMO they are being honest with the applying students. I think that’s better than need blind places that are perfectly happy gapping a student.</p>
<p>I don’t see the problem. No college is obligated to be able to enable everyone to afford it. I had a similar discussion with someone at an LAC (in a position to know) in which he indicated that the college had made a conscious decision to not go need-blind, because so many kids needed more financial aid after the recession (parents losing jobs, etc.) and they found it more important to ensure kids already there could continue to stay there versus admitting new students who needed financial aid. That’s perfectly reasonable IMO.</p>
<p>Of course it is financially reasonable but it marks a major shift in policy among elite colleges that have always touted their need blind admissions.</p>
<p>I know Brandeis and Tufts already went down this road–I’m sure others have, as well.</p>
<p>News Flash: Brown has only been need-blind for the last ten years:
[Brown</a> Adopts Need-Blind Admissions Rule - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/24/us/brown-adopts-need-blind-admissions-rule.html]Brown”>Brown Adopts Need-Blind Admissions Rule - The New York Times)</p>
<p>Certainly they have every right to do this, and they have a responsibility to themselves, their students, and the entire university community to act in a financially responsible way, which for a college with a relatively modest endowment may mean paring back some previous commitments to a generous need-blind admission policy and meeting full financial need.</p>
<p>But let’s be clear: this is no minor change. It has consequences. It’s going to dramatically affect the social composition at Wesleyan. Currently Wes is just about exactly 50% full-pay and 50% students on need-based FA. It’s not clear exactly how they’re going to implement this change in policy, but the article suggests they might continue to admit on a need-blind basis until the available FA funds are committed, and at that point go need-aware for the last 10% of the class (for example). Sounds trivial, but it’s not; if you do the math it means Wes goes from 50% full pay to 55% full-pay, and from 50% on FA to 45% on FA, so suddenly, there are 22% more full-pays than kids on FA. That’s a big change.</p>
<p>It’s also going to strongly improve a full-pay’s chances of admission, and diminish the chances of a kid with financial need. Wes gets about 10,000 applicants a year. I know it doesn’t work this way, but suppose for the sake of argument they’re able to rank order their preferences among applicants, so that every applicant is assigned a unique rank between 1 and 10,000. In order to fill a class of 748, they currently accept about 2,200; so let’s say they accept numbers 1-2,200 on their rank order list, all on a need-blind basis. Notice they’re making almost 3 times as many offers as they have places to fill (actually, 2.94 times as many); but let’s assume for both full pays and kids on FA, it’s a 22% acceptance rate, and a comparable yield.</p>
<p>Let’s further suppose (for the sake of simplicity) that all the even-numbered kids in this rank order are full-pays, and all the odd numbered kids will need FA (that way we get equal numbers of full-pays and FA, evenly distributed). That means currently they’re accepting the top 1,100 full-pays (the evens) and the top 1,100 FA kids (the odds) by accepting everyone numbered 1-2,200.</p>
<p>Now suppose they make the switch, and the last 75 places in the class are going to be reserved for full-pays. That means they have 673 places to fill on a need-blind basis, which they get by accepting numbers 1 through 1,979 on their ranked preference list (748 seats - 75 reserved for full -pays = 673, X 2.94 acceptances/seat = 1,979 acceptances). That means now only 990 FA kids get accepted (numbers 1 through 1,979, odds only), down from 1,100. But now 1,210 full-pay kids get accepted (990 on a need-blind basis, plus 75 in the last 10% of the class reserved for full-pays); that’s up from 1,100. That means where previously they were accepting equal numbers of full-pay and FA kids randomly in a need-blind way, now they’re accepting 22.2% more full-pay than FA kids. To get that many full-pays, they’ll need to accept all the even-numbered (full-pay) kids all the way down to #2,420 on their rank ordered list (again assuming a constant yield). So to be admitted, a FA kid needs to be in the top 19.8% of applicants, while a full-pay only needs to be in the top 24.2% of applicants. And now the acceptance rate for FA kids is suddenly down to 19.8%, while for full-pays it’s shot up to 24.2%. That’s a very substantial advantage for full-pays, and a pretty significant shrinkage of opportunities for kids with financial need—more significant relative to the suddenly expanded opportunities for full-pays, granted, but a rather yawning gap of inequality on top of all the other advantages enjoyed by the affluent.</p>
<p>I don’t dispute Wes’s right to do it, nor the necessity, but it dramatically changes who they are, and as a matter of social policy I think it’s an extremely unfortunate development that this is the way our society is going: more privileges for the privileged.</p>
<p>Great analysis, bclintonk. I also don’t see why they cannot forgo the full need aspect to maintain the need blind policy instead, the stance that’s taken by public universities. Admit all students based solely on their ability, then leave it to the families to decide whether the school is worth the money. As a student depending on financial aid, I would rather make my own choice as to whether I can afford a school, instead of being rejected by the school because of my inability to pay.</p>
<p>Also, this new policy has the potential to dissuade high achieving, desirable low income students from applying to Wesleyan in the first place, which will hurt the college in the long run.</p>
<p>Of equal significance in the article is the university’s cancellation of some significant capital expenditure projects, reduction in staff of non-academic positions and a pledge to keep tuition to rise no faster than the rate of inflation. Finally, some recognition that the bubble in tuition costs is not sustainable and someone is doing something about it!</p>
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<p>Agreed, yet staying with entirely need-blind admissions would have similar consequences. The school could rejigger their definition of need, spreading out the butter in a thinner layer, so to speak. Less poetically, people would be gapped. Some would be able to manage with external scholarships or greater family sacrifice, but others would take on greater debt or matriculate elsewhere. That still changes the social composition, possibly not as much while still allowing free choice.</p>
<p>Or, the school could preferentially package FA, awarding nothing to those in the “lower” 10% of admitted students. The FA gap would be larger, and students would know immediately that they’d been admitted by the skin of their teeth.</p>
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<p>Perhaps they do not want to get the reputation that New York University has?</p>
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<p>Of course, public universities may have different policies for resident and non-resident students. For example, they may be significantly more generous for resident students (given their historical mission) than non-resident students (who may be seen more as supplemental tuition income).</p>
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<p>What if it does, though? Let’s play this out. Even go to the extreme - that Wesleyan offers no financial aid and thus becomes the playground of the rich (100% full-pays), so to speak. What would happen? With all due respect to Wesleyan, it’s not “important” enough that it will make a difference. If there is a school that is the playground of the rich - well, then let the market figure out how desirable such a school is.</p>
<p>bc:</p>
<p>you missed one other possible impact – something near and dear to JohnWesley’s heart: increase in test scores (and with it, USNews rankings), since, on average, the wealthy have higher test scores than the non-wealthy. :)</p>
<p>Don’t get wrong…I do not think Wes even considered the impact on test scores, at least in the financial discussion of the endowment. But the fact is an impact will exist…what say you JohnW?</p>
<p>This just reflects the economics of higher for schools that are not Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, etc. Full pay students are needed to subsidize the rest of the student body. Is this sustainable? No. </p>
<p>In any case, you are kidding yourselves if you don’t think being a full pay student is seen as an asset in the admissions process.</p>
<p>This change will probably knock Wesleyan out of the most elite group of LACs. If you have to count on rich but less qualified kids to sustain yourself, you are offering a less compelling value proposition, and you are on a slippery lope downward. My son will not apply to this college in two years even if we have the money.</p>
<p>This is a duplicate thread. Started it in the FA forum <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1347626-wesleyan-no-longer-need-blind.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1347626-wesleyan-no-longer-need-blind.html</a></p>
<p>The fact that there are a lot of wealthy students is not unique to Wesleyan. Furthermore, this change will probably not change the composition of the student body as much as you think. </p>
<p>For example:</p>
<p>Swarthmore: 48% of the students (in 2011-2012) were full pay students who did not receive need-based aid.
<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/cds2011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/cds2011.pdf</a></p>
<p>Williams: 47% of the students (in 2011-2012) were full pay students who did not receive need-based aid.
<a href=“http://provost.williams.edu/files/11_12_common_data_set_final.pdf[/url]”>http://provost.williams.edu/files/11_12_common_data_set_final.pdf</a></p>
<p>Wesleyan: 55.4% of the students (in 2011-2012) were full pay students who did not receive need-based aid.
<a href=“http://www.wesleyan.edu/ir/data-sets/cds2011-12.pdf[/url]”>http://www.wesleyan.edu/ir/data-sets/cds2011-12.pdf</a></p>
<p>Middlebury: 59% of the students were full pay in 2011-2012
<a href=“http://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/292348/original/middlebury_cds_2011-2012.pdf[/url]”>http://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/292348/original/middlebury_cds_2011-2012.pdf</a></p>
<p>Bates: 56% of the students were full pay in 2011-2012
<a href=“http://www.bates.edu/research/files/2010/03/cds.1112.bates_.pdf[/url]”>http://www.bates.edu/research/files/2010/03/cds.1112.bates_.pdf</a></p>
<p>Point being, ALL OF THESE SCHOOLS CLAIM TO BE NEED-BLIND ([Need-blind</a> admission - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-blind_admission]Need-blind”>Need-blind admission - Wikipedia)), but obviously there are a LARGE NUMBER of students who have the means to pay the full boatload. </p>
<p>There are going to be a lot of very well-off students at any elite institution and I think Wesleyan deserves some recognition for at least being upfront about their admissions process.</p>
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<p>Why do you assume that “rich kids” are less qualified than their counterparts?</p>
<p>Given their rigorous preparatory work at private schools and in SAT programs, “rich kids” will more likely improve Wesleyan’s graduation rates and SAT ranges–and, naturally, its endowment.</p>
<p>[Mission</a> Statement - About - Wesleyan University](<a href=“http://www.wesleyan.edu/about/mission.html]Mission”>http://www.wesleyan.edu/about/mission.html)</p>
<p>Nowhere in its mission statement does Wesleyan claim to serve a particular community. How would a higher percentage of full-pay students diminish Wesleyan’s capacity to provide a “bold,” “rigorous,” “practical,” “idealistic” liberal arts education? Are full-pay students less “diverse” and “energetic,” less capable of “critical” and “creative” thinking? Do they value less “independence of mind?” Are they less inclined toward “generosity of spirit?”</p>
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<p>Full pay students at expensive private schools are probably from the top 5% of household income. For schools with much higher percentages of full pay students, increasing that percentage even more would reduce economic-background diversity of the students.</p>
<p>I am not saying rich kids are less qualified. I am only saying this change will necessitate an increase of rich but less qualified kids.</p>