I've heard doing away with need-blind aid & admission really changed Oberlin

Peter_Collopy_1
Tue, 06 Mar 2007 19:21:59 +0000

My recollection from a lecture about the history of Oberlin financial aid by Rupert Wilkinson (which you can read about at http://www.oberlin.edu/stupub/ocreview/2005/11/4/news/article8.html) is that Oberlin actually was need-blind until 1994. The current need-aware policy is not limited to the waitlist, but it is only “at the margins,” so the college is need-blind regarding the “best fit” students. We do have a generous financial aid budget and “meet 100% of demonstrated financial need,” though whether that’s really what people need varies.

Concerns about the school becoming more conservative are a tradition going back at least 140 years or so. Sometimes they’ve been justified, usually they haven’t. I think right now there are ways in which Oberlin is becoming more conservative (we have an active College Republicans group again after not having one for a decade or so) but by and large it’s not changing very much.

A few fun quotations:

“In the decade before the Civil War… [Oberlin College] moderated the extremes of opinion and emotion with which it was beset.”
John Barnard, 1969

“Now we are really too popular.”
Charles Finney, c. 1870

“Really the old Oberlin is passing away.”
John Rogers, 1895

Peter Collopy, Oberlin '07