<p>
Surely you jest. Lower it to what?
The middle class will never see a dime. It is just another charitable contribution.</p>
<p>“The entire system being optimized is just an euphemism for taking merit money from the wealthy and middle class and adding it to the need based pool of money for poor students.”</p>
<p>Merit aid is about top students. The poorest top students are already covered; they get zero EFC. It’s the middle class top students that have the hardest time paying their EFC.</p>
<p>Really it would be the colleges that would lose out. Those who do not get merit money at all will make their choices based more on sticker price, personal preferences and prestige. My son would not be at his school even though he liked it the best if it weren’t for the merit award. And his college would lose out on those kids who would decide as my son would have, and those are the top applicants of the bunch. The merit money would under the proposed scenario be used as financial aid so that more applicants with need would be accepted and get their need met more fully. Since the top kids regardless of financial need were offered merit awards, the standards would then be lowered to get the money since ONLY those with need will get those awards. Because this definitely affects yield, the school would get kids of a lower academic caliber, and also would lose out on kids that they would like.</p>
<p>Since we want to get rid of merit awards to encourage the top academic kids to come to a school, shouldn’t athletic scholarships also be eliminated and given only to those with need? Why are we picking on merit awards when the primary purpose of colleges is for the academic development, and having the better students enhances the academic climate of a school?</p>
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Are you suggesting that the top students from poor (0 EFC) families are currently getting 100% of their need met with need based programs ONLY? Because they are not (other than HYP genre). Many/most of this group is getting a combination of merit and need based aid. I understand that if you eliminate merit aid that these students will just get a bump in need based aid to compensate for the loss, but how does that help the middle class? Raising the amount of income that a middle class family can make and still receive need based aid? To what? $75K? Not a chance. I still think that whatever money a college moves from the merit pool into the “Need” pool will be realized by students BELOW the current middle class bar.</p>
<p>I don’t think Vossron is interested in helping the middle class on up. And I can’t really disagree with him when I take an objective view of the situation. However, I don’t see colleges eliminating the merit awards. It benefits them too much.</p>
<p>^ I’m interested in not helping the upper class that doesn’t need help, and sending those scarce dollars where they are needed.</p>
<p>I have to assume that Hamilton College sees some benefit in eliminating merit awards. Since there are all kinds of people, there can be all kinds of schools. Hamilton may be trying to appeal to those opposed to merit awards, or their trustees may be dominated by such people.</p>
<p>If we want to make it optimum for the whole system, why are we focusing only on money. An Intel award winner wouldn’t need a great educational environment to flourish. Why aren’t we advocating more expensive colleges with small classes and lot of resources and support to the middle and lower grade academic students so that they have a better opportunity to finish colllege and be successful? The high achieving students can survive in lesser academic environments and still come out well. Doesn’t the current system exacerbate the difference between the academic haves and have nots, and why should the financially stronger student be punished by being denied scholarships while the academically stronger student is not made to sacrifice for the weaker ones?</p>
<p>A school eliminates merit awards usually when it sees little or no benefits reaped from the awards. Like too many students turning down the awards to go elsewhere. Why Hamilton has chosen to do this, I don’t know.</p>
<p>I know Oberlin started giving merit awards because they felt that in order to get the type of students they wanted, they needed to offer them. They were losing too many of the students they most wanted to schools like Denison with generous merit aid and the state schools that are very good in Ohio and surrounding areas. To continue that trend would have meant a lowering of the quality of students going to Oberlin. Also, I heard that they were having trouble giving sufficient money to all of those kids who needed financial aid that they were accepting as they lost a number of close to full pay and full pay kids who chose to go elsewhere.</p>
<p>I think I mentioned that S answered several surveys from schools that he declined. THey were all schools that offered merit aid, and they were most interested in getting information about how it was perceived and how it affected his choices. In his case, he immediately dropped both schools that were private, expensive and offered no merit aid. He then looked at what was left. The merit aid was crucial in his decision to go where he did. He actually called and requested a reconsideration of the amount to clinch his decision and he got it! If he had not gotten that extra money, he would have gone to one of three other schools that offered more merit money than his first choice.</p>
<p>I found what Hamilton said about eliminating merit awards:
[News:</a> A Push for Need-Based Aid - Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/03/16/hamilton]News:”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/03/16/hamilton)</p>
<p>THe thing is this. Every 0 EFC high-stat kid would not then get a full ride if there were no merit aid. The money dispensed at any school would be based on what the school had available. If there were fewer kids paying a large number (although not full freight), there would be less money to spread around in the need pool. Meaning that those poor kids would either have to take out more debt, go elsewhere, or not go at all. I don’t get the principle being so important that such would be a desirable outcome, when the college could give out, say $100k in merit money to 10 students and receive $350,000 in tuition/fee payments from them, leaving a net of $250,000 to be spread around.</p>
<p>VossRon has already established that he includes damn near everybody in his definition of the ‘middle class’; and I will say for the thousandth time that the middle class has no justification to expect subsidy for prestige-whoring.</p>
<p>Between the two, this thread has degenerated into a tempest in a teapot.</p>
<p>
I would agree that Vossron seems to have little or no interest in helping the middle class or wealthy. Clearly I am in favor of helping the middle class and not shifting any more funds to the poor.</p>
<p>What do you consider “prestige-whoring”? I have to say as a guy it sounds intriguing.</p>
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Personally I am not in favor of any enforced system across private schools but I would like to see more of them move away or lessen the amount of merit given. Public schools are another story … I think it is crime for in-state kids who need financial aid (or could use more aid) that some schools give merit aid to out of state students (not a huge fan of merit aid for in-state students either).</p>
<p>There will be students who fall through the cracks of any system deisgned … personally I think the merit system creates more losers than a pure need-based system because of the systemic inefficiency of the system.</p>
<p>I suspect you misunderstand VossRon. He wants his definition of the middle-class to receive subsidy similar to what the poor-class receives today. His class warfare argument is “the poor and middle should unite against the rich.” The cynical side of me thinks that he very well knows the poor are not going to get any more than they already have, so they are a free ally.</p>
<p>The unintended consequence vossRon has not seen yet in his wish to transfer merit aid to need based, is that very talented, but ever so slightly sub HYP middle-class students will suffer, because they will not be able to attend good-but-not-prestigious schools for close to full ride. He finds it easy to blame the rich, but is missing the details.</p>
<p>Hang out on CC for a while. Prestige-whoring is what keeps this website alive.
Need something more concrete ? Stick your d**k into HYPM////, and shake it all around … hopefully you know the rest of the song.</p>
<p>I want to point out that merit aid at many private colleges today is just a label to stroke parents ego. At amounts up to a 50% discount but usually more like 25 - 33%, the ‘merit aid’ is simply bringing the list price tag down to market pricing. Except for the weak student, who pays for the privilege of attendance. Inherent in this national pricing scheme is an option for a student faced with list price to go to a less prestigious school, and receive ‘merit’ aid.</p>
<p>It’s impressive that Hamilton feels that it can still get the caliber students it wants without giving merit money. It competes with schools like Union, Colgate, Trinity, Gettysburg, Geneseo, Binghamton, St Lawrence, Hobart WS, the Maine “trinity” among others. Some merit money could tip the scales for those on the fence as to where to go. I know some kids who picked Hamilton for a bit of merit money over some of the listed schools.</p>
<p>Eric is closer 
to what I think than is aglages, but let there be no doubt that what I really think is exactly what Hamilton said (as I posted above).</p>
<p>Sorry, I truncated my last post. I suspect that if ‘merit’ aid was dispensed with today, many many colleges would lower their list prices and cut need-based aid drastically so that their current income streams would stay the same. The ‘rich’ with mediocre kids would laugh all the way to the bank.</p>
<p>Hamilton is just trying to game the system, by being the odd man out for the moment. The feel-good explanations are just PR.</p>
<p>Where does the rich category start? According to Harvard, we would get a nice subsidy, but according to every financial aid formula we have seen, we get zilch. With 2 kids in college, it becomes close, but still no cigar. There are many folks that would be considered rich that shop carefully for college because they are living up to their incomes already, and every dollar counts. Now if their kids get into HPY, they may come up with something but they are not about to pay for Hamilton over Geneseo at the current sticker price differential. </p>
<p>Our sons’ prep school contracted out a financial aid consultant a few years ago because the need for one was so great. Though you would think that families who lay out so much for private high school and/or under education would be able to easily pay for any college, that is not the case these days. In the last few years, I’ve been hearing rumbles of “value”, “cost”, “worth” and “merit award”. More kids are looking at SUNYs and at OOS flagships.</p>