Is it true about colleges are adding more FA and ending merit scholarships because this way they can fill up as much class as they want with ED decisions and increase their yield?
It depends on the college. Some offer merit to ED. Suggest you either look through ED acceptances for your colleges of interest here on CC or ask the college if they offer merit to ED.
I’m questioning about colleges with no merit offers like ivies and top LACs?
Most of the Ivies and top LACs are need blind for admission and they never offered merit so I’m not sure what the question is?
If colleges don’t offer merit now, they have no merit scholarships to drop. Some colleges don’t offer merit because so many of their students have tippy top stats. Everyone would qualify.
I don’t understand why the Ivies or top LACs would need to change anything to increase their yield in the ED round. The ED agreement says the student will attend if accepted (unless it’s unaffordable), so it seems like the yield from ED should already be fairly good.
With full or generous financial aid, students have no problem applying or commitng ED. Students not eligible for free or almost free education are the ones looking for merit money, they can’t apply and commit ED. Even with RD, who is more likely to accept, one who can afford (through financial aid or parental finance), ones who can’t are more likely to back off and go somewhere else where merit makes it possible for them to attend. By the way, even need blind aren’t completely need blind, applications have enough clues. Wealthy and poor are more likely to improve yield. ED are more likely to improve yield. Middle class looking for combo of aid and merit are the picky shoppers who can’t ED or can’t randomly say yes to expensive schools in RD. At state schools offering full merit, yield for honors programs is usually very high because students who cant afford top colleges and don’t get aid there are stuck with these programs.
Top schools are missing out on middle class tippy top students and they don’t really care. They are better off accepting big percentage of poor or rich ED and increase yield instead of playing guessing game with middle class students counting dollars to see if they have enough to buy what they like or not, nobody cares if they are tippy top 1% students, schools can do as fine with next 10%.
IMO poor families don’t really do ED either. “If you get in we will meet need” just isn’t enough of a guarantee for many poor families. A couple thousand here or there can be a deal breaker.
“Top schools are missing out on middle class tippy top students and they don’t really care. They are better off accepting big percentage of poor or rich ED and increase yield instead of playing guessing game with middle class students counting dollars to see if they have enough to buy what they like or not, nobody cares if they are tippy top 1% students, schools can do as fine with next 10%.”
You’re assuming they need to go down to the next 10% if they miss out on middle class students. They don’t. There are plenty of tippy top 1% students in the very rich and very poor to fill the classes of the top selectives.
If your argument is that the admissions process is resulting in a less economically diverse campus and that’s a problem, that’s something to consider. If your argument is that top schools need to compromise on quality of students if they’re only accepting either end of the socioeconomic spectrum, that’s an incorrect assumption. It’s a big country. Plenty of tippy top super rich and tippy top super poor students to fill up the selectives.
@milee30 There are only so many students who are creme de la creme and its a safe guess that a significant percentage of those students are middle class and top colleges are not tapping that pool of talent. I’m sure they get good numbers of similar students from rich and poor but they certainly dip lower for rest of the seats so yes they do compromise but obviously rich and poor have access to opportunities through parental money, connections, grants and special programs so end results aren’t significant enough for colleges to change their business model. Its fine because after all they are businesses but pretending to be fair is deceitful.
Universities are looking to fill a balanced and diversity class from everything from majors, geographic location, ses, ethnicity, ECs, athletics, etc… I’m not sure what is deceitful or “not fair”. US higher education is not just about GPA and standardized test scores and schools are very upfront with their wholistic approaches.
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Its fine because after all they are businesses but pretending to be fair is deceitful. <<
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Just like all businesses, they sell their product. Those who can afford it get to purchase it. I don’t see what is unfair about it.
What is your real question?
I sincerely wish people would get over the attitude that colleges are falling all over themselves to provide free college educations to low income students.
Most low income students commute to their local cc or colleges that middle class students with tippy top stats turn their noses up at and refer to dismissively when they complain they didn’t get in “anywhere” when they really mean nowhere they consider good enough.
Students from upper income families aren’t getting financial aid, so your issue is with low income students. The poor aren’t taking spots from middle class students. Colleges have determined they would like some percentage of students from lower income families. The ones who offer “free or almost free” educations to low income students but don’t offer merit generally have fairly high threshholds for income compared to the national median US income. If you’re ineligible for aid at those colleges, your problem isn’t that the colleges are excluding you. It’s that you’re misclassifying your level of income. If you can’t afford $60k/year schools, do what low income families do. Find the schools in the price range your family can afford to pay.
@CupCakeMuffins you wrote these two posts upstream.
If a school offers no merit aid…how can they reduce merit aid?
It is true that some colleges take a pretty high percentage of their students ED. This has less to do with financial aid, and more to do with actual yield…because when you apply ED, you are supposed to attend if accepted…oh…and do you “will this be affordable for me” homework before you apply ED.
My issue is not with individuals but with yield protection games and disadvantage of middle class. Individuals, wealthy or poor or legacy or athletes or whoever is at advantage, they are doing nothing wrong.
ED is definitely about yield, and it does disadvantage the middle class if they need to compare offers, as most do.
But I don’t think “more FA and less merit” has any relationship to ED. Colleges tend to offer more need-based FA and less/no merit when they’ve determined they no longer need to offer discounts to attract high stats kids. Not too many schools are there, but many of the most popular ones are.
Another way of looking at ending merit aid and increasing need-based aid is that more aid will go to students who truly need it, making it possible for students to attend who otherwise would not be able to afford to attend.
The goal of need-based financial aid thus is, at least in part, progressive and altruistic.
The goal of merit-based aid is to attract top applicants who may be able to pay full tuition/room/board, but otherwise might choose more selective colleges. Offering merit aid thus will allow colleges to rise in the rankings by increasing the number of students with higher scores, etc.
So the most desirable colleges in the nation never will need to offer merit aid, because they will have no trouble attracting top students without it.
That is why few of the top colleges offer merit aid, and some that do offer it in targeted areas to attract students to departments that they are trying to build up more (e.g., a college that tends to attract more humanities/social science types may offer a merit scholarship to top science students).
Top colleges also are pretty generous with need-based aid, which does not go only to the poorest of the poor but also to middle class students. Yes, sending one’s child to college involves some financial sacrifice for almost any family. Need-based aid is designed to make college attendance possible without putting a family in a situation where they cannot afford rent/mortgage/transportation/food at home, not to make it completely sacrifice-free.
My point is about middle class kids being punished by colleges, families, loan agencies. What option a middle class student has if he gets into all 8 ivies and want to attend one? Parents say no, colleges say no and loan agencies say no. These teen get no sympathy, just asked to compromise and handover that spot to next poor or rich teen.They can go attend “lesser” colleges but so can rich and poor smart kids.
Even in admissions, admission counselors know these pattrens, they can tell wich income range is less likely to attend even if offered. I doubt it doesnt play into yield protection at some level. If they can offer free FA ride or know student is wealthy enough to worry about expenses, why would they pick a middle class student who is more likely to say no as he can’t pay.
Middle class kids get near full rides, or at least free tuition, at Ivies/elites, unless by “middle class” you mean something other than incomes near the median family income in the US:
https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2017/comm/income-map.html
Rich kids can, poor ones generally cannot. The paradox is that “lesser colleges” generally have little financial aid to give and are thus unaffordable for poor families. Community college, if one is close enough to commute can work, but there isn’t too much else in most states.
Students not eligible for free or almost free education are the ones looking for merit money, they can’t apply and commit ED
- No, they won’t get merit from schools that don’t offer it. 2. Yes, you can get an adequate FA package from ED or other Early apps. Of course.
But you run NPCs and comb the colleges’ info to see how need aid and merit works for them. Some merit is automatic, some competitive. Some is paltry, others are generous. The advantage is in beng properly inforrmed, not just angry.
There are only so many students who are creme de la creme and its a safe guess that a significant percentage of those students are middle class and top colleges are not tapping that pool of talent.
How would you know who’s a top contender and who’s being tapped? Nothing says the middle class applicants are superior.
Sure, ED has a good yield. But saying policies are all about “yield protection?” How would you know? Why asume the most generous colleges aren’t generous…and have trouble getting kids to enroll?
So my advice is to be a informed as possible, to make the right decisions for you, eyes wide open.