<p>I am actually surprised as well. I’m wondering if the scholarship money has been “compressed” or if they plan to reallocate expenditures toward need based aid so as to compete better for some of the higher caliber applicants, but not risk throwing a whole scholarship at them and then not even seriously considering matriculation (you know, because they got into HYPSM or something). This scheme makes sense if they are planning to be more generous to the middle class students falling outside of the Emory Advantage Program ranges (for example, we shouldn’t be offering competitive middle class students less need based grants than say Vanderbilt which has a significantly lower endowment. It costs our competitive edge in admissions to do so and has for the past like 5 years or so. When a student is seriously considering us and the less wealthy but equally regarded school offers more money, it only makes sense that the student follows the money!). However, I also recommend that they expand the scholarship endowment if it has come to this. </p>