Did Emory Revamp their FA program? Or is the NPC effed up or misleading?

collegestu816
Mon, 12 Oct 2015 19:32:18 +0000

@CrispyBullet Emory’s peer schools and Ivies have revamped up both their need and merit based aid in recent years, and unless these top students have personal reasons to go to Emory (eg being close to home) they may opt for the peer schools that are perceived to have a higher overall reputation at the undergrad level (mainly from US News rankings) and also a wider arrary of academic and research offerings since the financial incentives may now even out. The top schools in the country (think HYPSM) have always offered only need based and no merit based aid, but since the need based aid at these schools has expanded in recent years they may be paying similar amounts to go to the HYPSM school than to Emory w/ Emory Scholars. This is often the case since many students who want to pursue pure PhDs do not tend to come from the upper middle class income brackets (around $250k+) that you typically see at Emory but from families with more modest means, so an expansion in need-based financial aid will significant help these students.

If anything, I would find it most productive for Emory to expand their merit based offerings (assuming they are going to put more of their endowment money towards financial aid) so that not just ~5% of the incoming class is getting Emory Scholars (and thus the academic and EC competitiveness to get Emory Scholars will be lower). This way very good students (even though they may not be Emory Scholars caliber under the current standards) who financially fall into the “donut hole” range I mentioned in the above post are able to reasonably attend.