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[quote]
....do you have any information on why, amongst the elite schools, Swarthmore is the only one to deny need-blind admissions to Canadians and Mexicans
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<p>Swarthmore accepted an endowment gift earmarked for financial aid way back in its history with a stipulation that aid for non-US students not exceed a fixed percentage (10%) of the entire aid budget. At the time, the percentage was so unthinkably high that nobody even gave it a second thought. It is still a high number. Swarthmore has 7% internationals and the percentage of internationals receiving financial aid is higher than for domestic students. However, that provision does put a limit on their international aid, they spend to the limit, and they are honest about it.</p>
<p>Technically, saying that you are need-blind and meet 100% of need REQUIRES authorization from the board of directors to let the financial aid budget increase as necessary to cover those commitments. In other words, you can't have a hard cap on financial aid dollars and be "need-blind" or "100% need". Swarthmore's financial aid office has that authorization to spend what is necessary for domestic students (although, obviously they still have budgeted targets). Because of the hard percentage cap on international aid, they can't claim to be "need-blind" for internationals.</p>
<p>There has been some intermittent discussion of jumping the legal hurdles to change the provision of that endowment bequest. However, at this point, it really hasn't prevented Swarthmore from having market-competitive percentages of international students or market-competitive levels of aid for those students.</p>
<p>If the market evolves to the point where the high-end colleges typically have 10% or more international students, then Swarthmore would have to consider going to court to change the provision. At 6% or 7%, they are OK. </p>
<p>In fall 2004, Swarthmore had 154 students who were either non-US citizens or who had dual citizenship (US and at least one other country). That's 10.4% of the student body. I don't think anyone has ever spent time at Swarthmore and come away thinking there is a shortage of international or multicultural perspective. Some think that it's tilted too far in that direction.</p>
<p>Complete data on citizenship here:</p>