<p>A link to a spirited defense of merit aid by Daniel F. Sullivan, the president of St. Lawrence U. </p>
<p>I’d never seen anyone lay out this strategy so clearly: use merit aid to attract no-need students; use revenue from them (even though tuition their has been discounted) to provide aid to more low-income students; and balance the books by making loans a higher percentage of the package for these low-income students. </p>
<p>It’s interesting that neighbor Hamilton’s foray into the merit game didn’t seem to work. </p>
<p>The meagre % of low-income students at most of the elites has gotten a good deal of press. The article made me aware of a couple of things about less selective schools; they’re pretty obvious on reflection, but never crossed my mind:</p>
<p>-In addition to luring some high-end academic admits, merit money generally enrolls students who wind up paying more than the average tuition. You get double the bang for your merit buck.</p>
<p>-I’m not sure that there’s anything noble or altruistic in St. Lawrence’s approach (they only meet the full need of 50-something% of their students, a fact that the article conveniently omits), but the article did make me aware of how interrelated the trade-offs between merit money, admitting more/fewer low-income students, meeting full need, and average student debt load are. </p>
<p>-Even slightly less selective schools will have more low-income kids in their admissions pool because of the correlation between standardized test scores and income.</p>
<p>I admire St. Lawrence for reaching down for kids (low income) rather than just grabbing legacies and athletes with sub-par scores. Athletes (helmeted) at Ivies I’ve read average as much as 200 points below other admits. So do some legacies… I’m guessing. Once you’ve got those in grabbing lower income kids with lower scores will drag down the schools SAT average. Maybe that explains the megar 10% of pell grant students at some of the schools with HUGE endowments.</p>
<p>This is exactly Princeton’s no-loan strategy, which is simply merit aid in disguise, with more than half the recipients coming from families in the $100k-$160k range.</p>
<p>It’s interesting to see a college president kicking out so directly at his supposed betters.
Every institution I’ve seen acts in its own interests as they see them. St Lawrence is only doing what it needs to survive. The 1997 USN&WR lists its 25%-75% SAT range as 1040-1240 with a 60% admit rate; The 2007 USN&WR lists a SAT range of 1050-1250 with a 59% admit rate. (Now they don’t require SATs, so the more recent numbers might be inflated. Couldn’t find any Common Data Set). This is after 10 years of the building echo-boom. St. Lawrence is saddled with a remote location in a depressed part of upstate New York. This is not to say that many of his points don’t have plenty of merit. They do. I just don’t think he’s enrolling a lot of low income students by choice.</p>
<p>Thanks marathon. That is an excellent article. It’s a must read for anyone wishing to understand financial aid discounting.</p>
<p>The only missing piece of the article is that the St. Lawrence pres. would glady enroll more high-stat full-pay students and fewer Pell Grantees if the school could get them. In fact, that exact goal is usually in every college strategic plan you read.</p>