Official Brandeis Decisions: Blue Ribbon

unbelievablem
Sun, 12 Feb 2006 09:42:17 +0000

All you have to do is go through the postings in this thread and it is pretty easy to see how the aid dollars were allocated to this year’s Blue Ribbon applicants



here on cc, it becomes easy to fall into the trap of thinking what gets posted here is representative of the world in general. people are drawing conclusions based on very very small numbers.

we do not have data as to how all jewish applicants did in terms of stats vs. merit money. we do not have data as to how all asian applicants did in terms of stats vs. merit money. or for that matter even a statistically significant sampling of those numbers.

it would be great if all schools had stats on merit (and need based) aid similar to the common data set so that applicants knew where they likely would stand. i’ve seen a few schools that offer a clear chart as to what you can expect with what stats. the fact that most don’t provide this is, i think, clear evidence, that they don’t want to be tied to any formula, but rather have the frreedom to decide what the want with each admission decision.

also realize – you are looking at stats that are liikely only a small part of what they are looking at. someone who attended admitted student open house last year told me that they presented info on some of the merit award winners - that info had little to do with their basic academic stats and was more a description of things those kids had done or accomplished. which is not to say that some of those who haven’t gotten merit aid haven’t also done wonderful things – just that the issue is more complicated than just sat’s and gpa’s.