<p>My recollection from a lecture about the history of Oberlin financial aid by Rupert Wilkinson (which you can read about at <a href=“http://www.oberlin.edu/stupub/ocreview/2005/11/4/news/article8.html[/url]”>http://www.oberlin.edu/stupub/ocreview/2005/11/4/news/article8.html</a>) 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>A few fun quotations:</p>
<p>“In the decade before the Civil War… [Oberlin College] moderated the extremes of opinion and emotion with which it was beset.”
John Barnard, 1969</p>
<p>“Now we are really too popular.”
Charles Finney, c. 1870</p>
<p>“Really the old Oberlin is passing away.”
John Rogers, 1895</p>
<p>Peter Collopy, Oberlin '07</p>