I have never heard of a rejection letter that said anything beyond 1) we had lots of great applicants, 2) we couldn’t accept all of them, 3) your qualifications were great, 4) we politely regret to tell you are rejected but wish you well.
How exactly was the “you are in, but need too much aid” worded? Frankly, I can’t imagine a school putting that in writing versus just offering you their best package and letting you decide.
I hate to be blunt but would your thinking be different if your kid hadn’t been rejected?
You’ve seen every letter from a school? Really. It was not a form letter. Maybe because it was ED and very early in the process etc…And yes, I have seen other rejection letters which don’t fall within the “form” letter way.
There are certainly a variety of very good LACs that do not offer merit at all (my S24 seems like a bloodhound when it comes to finding them). And while they typically also have relatively good need-based aid, I think they understand that devoting their aid budgets to only need-based aid means they sometimes lose out on high numbers full pay kids who get merit other places.
Not to beat a dead horse, but I think these privates colleges, smaller or larger, that do not compete with merit are OK with losing some admits to colleges that do offer merit because in essence they view high numbers full pay kids as sufficiently plentiful that they are still going to be able to get all the kids like that they want anyway.
Not to be overly cynical, but price is typically set by supply and demand. These colleges only have a certain amount of demand for these kids. And the supply is very high. So, these colleges have the bargaining power to set a high price, and save their aid funding for submarkets where it will make more of a difference because the supply is much more scarce.
Your analysis misses the core issue which is that some colleges have set helping first gen/disadvantaged kids as a strategic priority. It may take 60K in aid (plus Pell) to get that kid, vs. the 5K which gives affluent parents bragging rights “They wanted Suzy so much they are paying her to attend!”. But it is a priority determined by the trustees and carried out by admissions and financial aid, and supported by fundraising which highlights where the money is going. Supply, demand, whatever- some colleges are actually walking the walk and talking the talk.
When my own alma mater went need blind- and doubled down on its commitment to kids coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, my class saw our annual giving soar. It made fundraising MUCH easier. Subsidizing kids who would have gone to college regardless- eh. Not so interesting a cause. Making college happen for kids who cannot afford their state flagship (many are not affordable, especially if they are located in places with no public transportation so a kid can live at home), making college happen for a kid whose plan was one course at a time at the local college while working fulltime at Target-- this resonated with donors whether giving $100 or a seven figure gift.
But the reality is no school is truly need blind. If I’m remembering correctly, MITs admissions head has said as much on podcasts. Every admissions/financial aid dept has an actual published budget. That requires a certain amount of incoming revenue from tuition. No need blind school is enrolling 50% Pell grant … it’s not in their budget.
I’d say they have a ways to go . . .New York Times report ranks Brown lowest among Ivies for socioeconomic diversity - The Brown Daily Herald. And I’m not picking on Brown - it is a fabulous school. It’s just that Ivy+ schools remain the bastion of the privileged. Sure, they have some kids from low SES backgrounds, but the majority are wealthy - in many cases very wealthy. And many of their admissions policies - especially as it pertains to ALDC admits - reinforces that status quo.
What a weird graph that Brown Daily Herald shows! It seems to show just 2 points in time, separated by 10 years, but connected by a straight line as if the trends upward or downward were smooth over the intervening years, when in reality we have no idea what happened in the intervening years. For all we know, 2021 might have been an outlier year, or perhaps 2011 was. Crummy data representation. Surprised this passed muster at the newspaper. ETA: I agree with your larger point that the Ivy + schools in general don’t do much for poor students (because they admit few.)
I think you mean no school is truly need blind and meets full need? (Because, most public schools are need blind but don’t promise to meet need for everyone).
I understand your point, but I don’t quite agree. The number of students that need aid doesn’t vary very significantly from year to year at these Ivies (look at section H of the CDS). And these schools can comfortably manage that variance because they have such large endowments. So they don’t need to actively manage the number of enrolled students whose need they have to meet.
And that’s a function of who they are admitting. It’s no coincidence that 50%, give or take, of each class at many of the highly rejectives is full pay students.
Even the schools with large endowments have to meet their annual net revenue budget (tuition less institutional financial aid)…and they aren’t guessing to make that happen.
Yes, but never indiscriminately. They still want to be sure those kids will thrive at their college, so they are looking for such kids who also have sufficient academic markers, and there is a limited pool of such applicants each cycle. And these colleges are actually competing with each other to get those applicants precisely because this is a mutual strategic priority.
And yes, part of that is because there is donor good will involved in that. And competing effectively for donor dollars is part of what they do to stay on top.
So while I think these are true and important things to know, they are not different explanations from the one I provided, they are more details in support of the explanation I provided.
The open admission community colleges are trivially need blind. So are colleges that preset stat thresholds or do “rack and stack”.
However, these do not necessarily have full responsibility for financial aid (think state grants not specifically part of the campus budget), or give decent financial aid in the first place.
A college that is fully responsible for its own budget and tries to give good financial aid to all students does need to be need-aware for the overall class that it enrolls. This may not require being need-aware in a narrow sense for each applicant, but the overall class needs can be adjusted by weighting application features that correlate to need. E.g. more weight to legacy → lower overall need, and more weight to first generation → higher overall need, even though some individual legacies may have high need and some individual first generation students may have low need.
Controlling for SAT/ACT score should not be taken lightly. The same author lists the following distribution of SAT scores by income level. Controlling for SAT effectively means you expect the Ivy+ distribution to be similar to the ratio below with 99th percentile income kids being ~100x more likely to attend than low income kids. If low income kids are 50x less likely to enroll, rather than 100x, then the low income kids are overrepresented after controlling for score.
Portion of Kids Scoring 1400+ on SAT by Parents Income
99.9 Percentile Income – 19%
99th Percentile Income – 14%
98th Percentile Income – 11%
97th Percentile Income – 10%
96th Percentile Income – 8%
95th Percentile Income – 7%
90-95th Percentile – 5%
80-90th Percentile – 3%
70-80th Percentile – 2%
60-70th Percentile – 1%
50-60th Percentile – 0.7%
40-50th Percentile – 0.4%
20-40th Percentile – 0.3%
0-20th Percentile – 0.1%
The author lists the actual distribution by income level at the median parents income Ivy+ college. Over/under represented is a comparison to income distribution in US population. The pattern is the higher the income level, the more likely the student is to attend an Ivy+ college.
3.1% of students in 99.9th percentile income (31x overrepresented)
17% of students in 99th percentile income (17x overrepresented)
27% of students in 95-98th percentile income (7x overrepresented)
14% of students in 90-94th percentile income (3x overrepresented, median income)
14% of students in 80-89th percentile income (roughly balanced)
12% of students in 60-79th percentile income (2x underrepresented)
14% of students in 20-59th percentile income (3x underrepresented)
2% of students in 0-19th percentile income (10x underrepresented)
