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<p>Well, that wasn’t really my central point, but the answer to your question is probably ‘yes’. For example, at the schools that pledge to meet the full financial aid of all students, surely some students simply don’t obtain all of the aid that they should, often times because of a lack of knowledge about how to position themselves to obtain maximum aid. Let’s face it - many families simply do not know how to optimally ‘shield’ (a euphemism for ‘hide’) their assets for the purposes of maximizing their financial aid. Another example would not be regarding financial aid perse, but rather regarding other ways to reduce costs. Many families do not actually know how to establish state residency to reduce tuition at an OOS public school. For example, it may make sense for a given family to ‘move’ to the particular state in which their child will be attending a state university. Heck, it may even make sense for that child to attempt to defer admission for a year (e.g. send him off on a Grand Tour to Europe) so that the family can complete that move to the new state. Granted, this is most easily done if the parents were perhaps contemplating moving to the new state for career purposes anyway. For example, if you’re a manager at Intel operations in Arizona, and your child gets into Berkeley, then that’s when you should consider pursuing an internal transfer opportunity to Intel headquarters in Santa Clara. </p>
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<p>I meant the latter. Obviously if everybody studied harder, then probably no overall systemic change would occur. But come on, let’s face it. Not everybody is going to study harder. Heck, we have an entire pop socio-culture that militates against scholastic achievement and instead celebrates intellectual mediocrity - witness the popularity of Jersey Shore and the Kardashians. Like I said, most American high school students are simply not interested in academic achievement, and that’s not going to change.</p>