@DeepBlue86 actually is does apply (and more toward the unfairness argument) as it seems that this is a under the carpet way to give out merit aid to the most desirable of applicants. Does this not seem unfair toward the ED applicant?
@CU123 but Stanford and MIT were already top in a specific area and provided something that HYP did not, thats why they were able to join. HYPSM has been the unoffiial top club for decades now, even though the acronym has started being used in the past 1-2 decades. even decades back conventional wisdom was HYP for liberal arts on the east coast, Stanford for the west coast and MIT for very technical STEM/Econ-oriented students.
There is no school that can provide something that HYPSM cannot provide just as well or usually at an even higher level. Yale and Princeton have fallen behind Harvard and Stanford that is for sure, but they are still well ahead of all the other schools and I do not see any ways the other schools are going to catch up. The difference in resources and prestige between Yale/Princeton and the next group is very big.
Also while I agree that ivies do compete for top students with multiple need-based FA offers by increasing their offers a bit, they do not give awards to well-off students to make them matriculate. They do not match merit-based scholarships given to these students by other schools.
I agree… Y and P are the 2 most likely candidates to go ED if they see their stats slipping… then it all goes ED.
@CU123 - exactly which ED applicants would under-the-table merit aid for RD applicants be unfair to?
The full-payer ED applicants, who wouldn’t be eligible for it anyway, since it comes under the guise of need-based aid? I don’t think so. I’m guessing they’d rather be in their position of being able to pay for college in full, and wouldn’t trade places with someone who had much lower income/assets and therefore was in the position of being able to bargain for need-based aid.
The full-rider ED-applicants, who already have all their costs covered, so are indifferent?
No, it would be unfair to the donut hole applicants, to whom ED is already unfair (which is the central point of this discussion). Under-the-table merit aid to donut hole RD applicants only makes ED even more unfair, because it means they might be leaving even more money on the table by applying early.
Separate note: there are already about a thousand other CC threads where people can argue about elite college rankings - do we need to turn this thread into one more?
Can y’all stop debating which schools belong in the HYP&c… acronym soup? Or at least take it to its own thread?
the use of ED and SCEA is very much linked to how the colleges are jostling for position. and how these change in the future is going to be linked to how a university feels their position changes or doesn’t.
one thing is for sure…all these strategies are used to boost yield… often at the expense of applicant interests.
@Penn95 and @DeepBlue86 I believe that ED is certainly fair to those whom their FA doesn’t change no matter how they were admitted (low and high income), I can’t find an argument that really changes that. The idea that very low income applicants don’t apply because their afraid they might not get enough FA is not a logical argument as they do enough research to get into a top school but don’t understand they will be fully funded by the university??? However, it is unfair for those donut hole applicants that find they must give up “merit aid” disguised as “FA” in order to gain a leg up in admissions. This whole argument about FA being the primary issue is not relevant as it’s a false premise. Its bad for the ivies to give “merit aid” when they claim they don’t, but at least the other top schools don’t put any false restrictions on giving merit aid to entice applicants to matriculate.
I can think of a multitude of reasons why very low income applicants may not apply early and it has less to do with FA but perhaps more to do with social support systems, and lack of awareness and college prep that more financially advantaged students have.
I get that but these are very high performing low income students. Its a disservice to say that they lack awareness in this day of information technology.
lack of awareness in the sense of social support and college prep to apply early … even for high performing low income students… even in this age of the internet… is very real.
I have worked with these students in programs designed to get them into top colleges.
I would argue that this assertion is at best very difficult to support, and at worst completely wrong.
I mean, seriously—there are a lot of high schools out there where the goal is getting through, and guidance toward anything bigger than that is lacking to nonexistent. In particular, somebody in such a situation who’s brilliant but has issues preventing them from showing their brilliance in high school most likely isn’t going to get the mentoring and direction they need to become aware.
(Plus, information technology? Have you ever looked into the state of rural broadband in this country?)
It is more than likely a not-identical risk/reward relationship exists between those that require FA and those that are TRUE full pay (you have to edit all of those out who require merit aid because of their EFC, but can’t actually afford full pay. They are in the same boat as FA ED … if they don’t get it, they can’t accept the one ED offer). However, it is not “unfair” any more than all of life is unfair based on economic or social advantage.
Parents worked hard, or got lucky, and so their offspring can make choices with less risk than those who have less. This is true for those investing in stocks (those who are wealthy can spread investments out or wait for gains, but those with far less may be reliant on the returns of a single investment), buying a car (any car can turn into a lemon, but the rich can afford to fix it), or any other life choice. ED is just one more of those where an adverse result has a greater relative impact on those who have less buffer.
The american dream is typically defined as the ability of anyone – through hard work, delayed gratification, and determination – to succeed financially and socially and in so doing improve not only their own life experience, but that of their family and offspring. It is by nature a dream of getting an advantage for yourself and your children that is greater than the advantage your own parents gave you. An “advantage” is the flip side of “equitable” – you can’t have both. But we consider the system “fair”, even if it is not equitable in every situation, because all have the opportunity over their course of their lives, regardless of how they started, to create their own advantage. If the definition of fair becomes that risk/reward is equal for everyone in every choice, then we by definition took away the possibility of advantage, and in so doing killed the American dream.
I am friends with a lot of immigrants. They came here because they could make their lives better for themselves and their children. Not because it was a guarantee, but because it was a very real possibility. If fact, I can’t think of a single one that hasn’t succeeded in doing just that.
There is the narrow point, comprehensively established upthread, that ED is unfair to many lower-income applicants (particularly donut-holers) because it limits their financial options relative to other applicants. There is the broader point, also made upthread, that ED is inherently unfair to lower-income applicants because it’s disproportionately used by wealthier applicants at better high schools, with high-quality preparation and counseling. Many really strong poor applicants simply don’t have the savvy, or the encouragement/support from their schools, to apply early and exploit the better odds, just like many can’t imagine being admitted to a top-tier university, since it’s so far from their experience. And they certainly need more help getting to grips with the ins and outs of financial aid and whether they’re likely to be able to pay for college than middle-to-upper-income applicants from better schools.
This is why the top schools beat the bushes looking for high-quality first-gen applicants (e.g., if you follow Yale Admissions on Instagram, you’ll see that last week they were on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana). Rather than indulging a diversity fetish (as some commenters like to argue), they’re trying to counteract the inherent unfairness in the system, unfairness that manifests itself very directly in early admissions, particularly ED.
And this is why, when I hear how ED “enables the schools to pick the students who really love them”, I roll my eyes a little, because what that really means is “enables the schools to pick the students who were in a position to apply early, understood how to work the system and were disproportionately full payers, but yes, had the school in question as their top choice given the odds”.
questbridge is a program that is bridging that gap between high achieving low income students, financial and scholarship aid, and admission into top colleges.
Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Princeton, Yale are part of the program (all ivies are part of the program except Cornell and Harvard)
If high performing low income students are in a generally low performing school environment, it is likely that they hear little or no chatter about highly selective colleges from (probably non-college-graduate) parents, peers (most of whom are probably going to the community college if they go to college at all), and counselors (who are busy keeping students from dropping out and dealing with other issues like unintended pregnancies). So they may not hear about taking PSAT, SAT, ACT, SAT subject tests during 11th grade, may not realize that recommendations are needed, may look at CSS Profile (and its fee) with suspicion or decide that it is not worth chasing a flaky non-custodial parent, etc… In senior year, a student who has not already started the college application express train previously may find it difficult to get everything ready and done by the ED deadline.
As I was on the lower tier of family income what I went to high school I can certainly say that you are correct from my experience 30 years ago. I got nothing from my GC except a personal call informing me of my ACT scores. However it seems that the GC’s would have come a long ways since then…but maybe not.
just consider the student peers at a very low income school… many of them are looking for jobs… others are looking to vocational schools to get HVAC training (nothing against HVAC personnel it’s hard and difficult work)… …the gunners are looking at a 2 year community college. the concept of going to a 4 year college let alone a top college is a completely foreign concept… especially for the parents.
@DeepBlue86 while I see your points and they are valid I am more in line with @NashvilletoTexas point of view on this.
I do not believe you can fault selective schools like Smith and Haverford for any lack of lower-income kids applying. Such LACs are very wealthy and can cost the same or even less than a public. The problem is that not just lower-income but many middle-class families have barely heard of them. And with thousands of high schools in a huge country like the USA, they cannot send reps everywhere, and even when reps do go to ordinary public schools, maybe nobody shows up. Selective LACs like ti have smart kids from all over, if they can get them.
For many families the only schools on their radar are the publics and maybe some privates in their home states. They have heard of Harvard and Notre Dame and Stanford, but these are perceived as too expensive, too far, schools only for the brilliant so Junior won’t get in anyway, and the parents are correct. Same parents are often uninformed that there are dozens of great schools, often with merit/financial aid available. That takes time and effort to learn though.
CU123 is correct that here is a ton of info out there on colleges, but there’s a billion tons of other stuff on the internet.
It would be interesting to know what percentage of students from low income families attending highly selective colleges came from high performing school/home environments. Examples:
- High performing school has a low income part of town in its attendance zone, so some low income students attend that school.
- Student did well enough to be placed in a high performing magnet school or into an honors cohort in school.
- Low income parents are highly educated but either chose low paying professions or are unable to work to the usual income potential due to disability, non-recognition of foreign credentials of immigrant parents, or some such, but are able to guide and keep the student on a college prep academic path (including getting on the college admissions express train in 11th grade instead of waiting until 12th grade).
- Student attends an academically elite private school on scholarship / financial aid, perhaps knowing about it (and possibly getting scholarship / financial aid) due to parent being employed there.