Macalester College Early Action / Early Decision for Fall 2024 Admission

I posted above about my DD receiving merit aid after being accepted ED as a recruited athlete. We did not apply for FA.

We wouldn’t have qualified for any financial aid. So we are looking for only merit based scholarships. So it would be fully pay minus merit.

You can get some information on this subject from their CDS, albeit at a lag.

It looks like in the 2022-23 CDS, out of 2136 students total, 1338 students were getting need-based aid, of which 127 were also awarded merit aid. 512 students were getting no need-based aid, but were awarded merit aid.

I think this is pretty typical for “full need” colleges like Macalester that also have merit programs. Full-need is intended to be very generous and competitive even without merit, so most merit goes to competing for full pay admits.

Of course some such colleges have no merit at all. And indeed, merit is just a small part of Macalester’s aid anyway–Macalester was giving out $63,453,330 in institutional need-based aid, which works out to $47,424 on average per recipient (and there was more from outside sources and self-help). It was giving out $9,279,124 in institutional merit, and they reported an average of $18,034 per those recipients.

So, way more people get need-based institutional aid from Macalester, need-based averages way more per recipient, and that adds up to a lot more money in total.

But the smaller amount that goes to merit aid mostly goes to full pay students.

3 Likes

Thanks

No problem!

I find it interesting, by the way, that only 286 of their students were getting no aid at all (that’s about 13.3%), and in fact 64% of their full pay students were getting merit.

Not a surprise, really, but Macalester is in fact serious about competing on cost in many cases, which is nice.

2 Likes

DS is EA accepted.i am not familiar with all of the stats people use but I will try.

3.6 UW GPA
1520 SAT
Math club, but not many other EC’s
Only a few AP

Surprised in Chicago

They’re offering $10k/yr merit. I heard lots of private colleges offer merit and people never actually charge “sticker” price. Like Kohl’s. To make you think you’re getting a deal- jack the price then offer merit.

4 Likes

A large group of students admitted by EA is not good for popular schools. The students have non-binding offers that are good through the RD admissions. It either leads to low numbers of offers in the RD round or the potential for over-enrollment because there is no incentive to enroll before May unless they use expiring incentives. Tulane is a good example of a school that in the past used EA to meet some institutional priorities and dangled ED2 for the large number of deferred EA students. It filled their seats with mostly committed students before the RD round.

Agree that Tulane is known for using the early rounds in a way that leaves few spots left in the RD round.

The institutional priorities discussed above in relation to Macalester aren’t likely early-round specific. Therefore, I’d suggest that being cautious about considering Mac a target based on strength of application (and not accounting for these other institutional priorities) applies to those in the regular round as well.

1 Like

This is sending me down a somewhat unhelpful rabbit hole (perhaps not totally unhelpful, since DS still has some slots left on the common app, so there’s a bit more strategizing to do), and in 2018-19, i.e. the year my oldest son applied, 7.2% of the total institutional aid awarded to admitted students was non-need based, vs. 12.8% in 2022-23. The percent of students getting need based aid decreased from 66% to just under 60. And this doesn’t appear to be an aberration; there seems to be a pretty clear trend over the past few years (in fact, the couple of years before my oldest son applied, that percent was around 70%). I’ve always been impressed with how Macalester hasn’t seen big drops in stuff like number of pell-eligible kids like midwestern peers like Oberlin and Kenyon with the introduction of merit aid (for Oberlin that was in the mid 90s; don’t know if Mac was also all need-based until that era), so
well, it will be interesting to follow. ETA: also with the caveat that it’s pretty tough to untangle all this stuff
like I said before my pell-eligible Mac student had a combo of a couple of hefty merit scholarships AND need based aid.

1 Like

That is fascinating. My initial reaction is to think this might be related to one of the more underreported stories of recent years, namely that higher percentile incomes have generally gone up more than college costs over the time period you are looking at.

This is one of those areas where the conventional wisdom is typically that college costs are always growing much faster than inflation and are particularly continually getting more burdensome for upper middle class families. It was never really truly that college costs were going up a lot faster than upper middle class incomes, in fact not surprisingly they mostly tracked pretty closely, with both going up a similar amount over inflation. But there was an observable deflection in the trends that started a few years ago, such that actually college cost increases started significantly trailing upper middle class income increases.

Anyway, I am pointing this out because I think it would help explain why even if the needs of lower-income/higher-need students at Macalester have not changed much, perhaps a certain fraction of students would have slipped from low-need to no-need. And perhaps that in turn would have freed up a bit more money to compete for those students with merit instead.

That is all just a hypothesis, of course, but it would make sense given what I know of the overall cost and income trends.

2 Likes

Interesting–maybe so. I guess a number that would be helpful here is percent pell-eligible over recent years, which doesn’t appear to be in the common data set. Certainly there are a lot more upper middle class kids at places like Macalester than at similar east coast schools that don’t do merit. I’ll enjoy following such trends a lot more once this kid is through the process, though, and I’m not seeing him as part of the data!

Quick illustration. Per this site:

Macalester’s COA was $68,627 in 2018-19, $78,900 in 2022-23.

That sounds like a lot of increase, but actually if you use this CPI calculator:

https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

$68,627 in September 2018 equates to $80,688.97 in September 2022. Meaning Macalester’s COA apparently went up less than general inflation in that period.

OK, then if you look at this page:

Household income for the full year 2022 at the 85th percentile was $178,411.

Using the links there, you can go back to the full year 2018 (you want the 2019 calculator). It was $151,124 at the 85th.

If you divide $178,411 by $151,124, then multiply by $68,627, you get $81,018. Again, meaning Macalester’s cost of attendance went up less than 85th percentile income too, percentage-wise.

This is by no means unique to Macalester, it is very widespread.

And Pell-eligible can be a category that is, in fact, an institutional priority for a school. On the other hand an applicant having fairly significant need yet not in the Pell-eligible category is expensive for a school without allowing them to meet a Pell-eligible goal (if they have one).

Does anyone know if Macalester hosts admitted student days, and if so, when they usually occur?

Edited to add that I just found the info: MAC DAY - Admissions & Aid. Hopefully this is helpful to others!

My daughter got her Macalester hat in the mail today! :smile:

4 Likes

HI Congrats! Are you a full-pay family? i.e. was this scholarship pure “merit” with no need-based component? I am trying to figure out what the top end of Macalester’s merit scholarships is.

Super interesting! We viewed Mac as very high target/low reach. It’s been interesting to look schools my S24 admitted/deferred/rejected so far. Deferred from target schools (public flagships) yet many admitted from high target/low reach schools (mostly privates). Our school counselors are also a bit confused with many kids outcome this year (public HS, college town, Southeast US). One theory is our decision on test optional.

Mac is one of top contenders for S24
 (he got in as EA and we will be visiting this April.)

3.9 UW GPA, TO, 8 APs, 2 languages (one for 4 years and another for 2 years), varsity/club sports, zero music (but lots of arts), leadership, art portfolios, low to no need family

1 Like

I’m going to be very interested to see how this all shakes out in the end. There are a lot of moving parts, not least the Supreme Court’s decision, and I do wonder if that helps explain what at least anecdotally seems like a rise in certain types of deferrals. But in the end these classes need to be filled, and so RD and perhaps even the waitlist round could be interesting as well.

Anyway, assuming Macalester would be affordable for you, that is a fantastic outcome already.

1 Like

My kid received 25K from Macalester. We did not apply for financial aid, so this was pure merit. (Subsequently got into top-choice school so won’t be attending Mac, but this award certainly bumped it up the list!)

Mac is our family’s fav, but we will have to see if this is where S24 will pick!

1 Like