This makes sense – and I appreciate your perspective from the point of view of the scholarship provider. I was just trying to understand why when the Gates site said they provided funds for the full COA that Brown wouldn’t allow that to be allocated to the parent’s portion, which I had always thought was included in the COA.
Because the Gates Scholarship covers gaps in COA funding after financial aid, other scholarships for college, and the family/parent contribution amounts. Regardless of this Gates Scholarship policy, colleges can make their own choices about how to count outside funds to adjust their aid packages.
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Thanks. I understand this now. Just reading the Gates’ Foundation it sounded otherwise and I was curious how it all worked.
If it’s any consolation, in addition to relieving summer savings or work study obligations, Brown does allow Gates funds to cover items it may not include in its COA calculation, like the cost of a computer and some travel.
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I think that all of the above is fair and right on the mark. The goal should be to help the majority of students and when it doubt, it should help the families that struggle the most.
On the other hand, I think it is somewhat disingenuous of the Gates foundation to pat themselves on the back for funding low-income students that they may not actually be funding. The Gates foundation describes itself as sending hundreds of students to colleges like Harvard, MIT, and Princeton when in fact they may not help contribute to funding some of their scholars at those colleges at all. Looking at the images and videos on their website, Gates touts their scholarship as making the most elite colleges accessible to Gates Scholars when in fact those scholars are somewhat less likely to be funding recipients.
They could also do a better job helping their recipients sort out what their financial aid packages will look like with the Gates scholarship since it may be cheaper for a student to attend College A than College B using their Gates funding (for example, with a last dollar scholarship, Northeastern would have become affordable for D22 while Brown would have remained out of her reach even though their total family contributions were similar). Students have about a week or ten days between winning the award and May 1st to make a decision about where to attend college and very little guidance on deciphering how Gates works. The award letter is murky enough to imply that winning the scholarship will make your college choice more affordable. It is not at all surprising to me that @MMRose’s Facebook friends misunderstood.
Finally, as much as I love Brown, it is expensive. So while I get Brown’s policies around external scholarships in general, I don’t see what the harm would be in allowing an exception for low income students or redoing their package to make the parent contribution more affordable with a scholarship aimed at lower-income students, particularly when Brown is willing to recalculate packages based on other colleges’ offers. It seems unfortunate to me that if a student tells Brown that Amherst, Dartmouth or Harvard gave them a better package, Brown will reconsider their aid calculation, but if a student says Gates gave them a scholarship, Brown sticks to its guns on the parent contribution.
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Do we know of an actual case where a low income student asked a financial aid officer-- laying out the facts- to reconsider the policy re:Gates and was told “no, we won’t reconsider”. Or are we working off of Facebook posts?
I am working off personal experience with my daughters. Two colleges would not reconsider. To be fair, in one case, we could have still made it work. In the other case, it remained unaffordable with or without the scholarship.
Are either of these colleges Brown? I’m asking specifically… since the claim was made that Brown/Gates were being duplicitous. There is no shortage of professionals at Brown now who are working to eliminate the access problems for low income students, and I’d love to be able to bring this issue to their attention. But if the college in question is Duke or Cornell or JHU, I’m going to feel like an idiot. So again- are there actual, documented cases where Brown was unwilling to reconsider an aid package because of the Gates payment problem???
No, in neither case was it Brown. Sorry, I misunderstood your question. I thought that you were asking a general question not one about Brown in specific.
And to be clear, I am not arguing that Brown (or Gates) is duplicitous. Brown’s policy is in line with its peer institutions. Gates seems to be very well-intentioned (though fairly disorganized). I am arguing that Gates could be much more helpful in assisting its recipients in sorting out these matters before May 1st so that there are no unexpected surprises in August.
However, I stand by what I said about Brown being relatively expensive for low and moderate income families. Of the 32 schools that D22 seriously considered, it came in at #25 in terms of expected parental contribution. However, it is still willing and able to be far more generous to such families than hundreds of other colleges and universities, and I think that should be celebrated.
Gotcha. And I’m glad I asked. I misunderstood your point- I thought your frustration was that Brown refused to negotiate financial aid with a kid who had received (but couldn’t take advantage of) Gates.
I believe that President Paxson (and Ruth Simmons before her) is both talking the talk and walking the walk on access for low income families. But there is still work to be done, no question.
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It’s worth noting that Brown’s endowment is the smallest in the Ivy League and is ranked something like 26th overall, which has a bearing on how much income it can throw off for university operations (including financial aid) compared to its peers.
Yes. it doesn’t change how important financial aid is as a strategic priority-- it’s just a constraint in how long it will take to achieve the various goals.
Exactly. Like most of its peer institutions, Brown’s top source of revenue is tuition and fees followed by grants and contracts (usually government or foundation-funded research) and then allocated endowment returns. The endowment supported ~16% of Brown’s operating budget last year.
But I will leave it there to avoid the ire of the mods!
It is. We have a ‘last dollar’ scholarship available here. Well, really it is a scholarship that pays 100% if the student goes to a school in one of 4 states, but it is a last dollar scholarship if the student goes out of those 4 states. The scholarship has a need component, so any student who win the scholarship would get full tuition etc at a meets need school. As outlined above, the students might only get some money for computers, clothes, etc.
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