Paying in Full as the Ticket Into Colleges
Paying in Full as the Ticket Into Colleges
say they have to be mindful of how many scholarship students they can affordstudy us.
Colleges say they are not backing away from their desire to serve less affluent students; if anything, they say, taking more students who can afford to pay full price or close to it allows them to better afford those who cannot. But they say the inevitable result is that needier students will be shifted down to the less expensive and less prestigious institutions.
"There's going to be a cascading of talented lower-income kids down the social hierarchy of American higher education, and some cascading up of affluent kids," said Morton Owen Schapiro, the president of Williams College and an economist who studies higher education.
And colleges acknowledge that giving more seats to higher-paying students often means trading off their goals to be more socioeconomically diverse.
Some admissions officers and college advisers say richer parents are taking note of the climate, calculating that if they do not apply for aid, their children stand a better chance of getting in.
"They think their kids will have more options," said Diane Geller, a college counselor in private practice in Los Angeles and president of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, a nonprofit group that represents private academic counselors. "And anecdotally, it would seem that that's the casestudy us."
"I do think the colleges want to give aid where they can," Ms. Geller added. "But we all know the economic realities."
Only the wealthiest institutions traditionally have been need-blind, admitting students without regard to what they can pay. But the definition has often been fuzzy, and this year, it may be more so.
Bowdoin College announced plans to expand by 50 students over the next five years, which Scott Meiklejohn, the interim dean of admissions, said would allow it to accept more transfer and waiting-list students, whose applications are not considered on a need-blind basis.
Brandeis University, which is need-blind except for international, wait-listed and transfer students, accepted 10 percent more international students than usual this year, and Gil Villanueva, the dean of admissions, said he expected that the university would take more wait-listed and transfer students, as well.
Middlebury, which is need-blind and pledges to meet students' full financial needs, will require students on financial aid to contribute more of their work earnings. It has cut its financial aid budget for international students. It is not need-blind for those on the waiting list or for transfers, but the college has not yet determined how many of those students it will take.
"We consider being need-blind and meeting full demonstrated need one of our basic operating principles," said Patrick J. Norton, the college's treasurer. "That is one of the last things that we would consider going away from."
Those colleges that are need-aware typically admit part of the class without regard to ability to pay, but begin to consider it when the financial aid budget runs thinstudy us.
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