Qadgop the Mercutan writes:
> All the schools she selected to apply to are such that they
> rarely give any academic scholarships. They can all fill their
> classes with students (and parents) who are willing to come up
> with the cash.
Well, it depends what you mean by “academic scholarships.” If your daughter has applied to places like MIT and Amherst, nearly all of these places certainly do give people financial aid (generally a combination of scholarships, loans, and campus jobs), and this financial aid is offered to anyone who is accepted at the college. If the student comes from a working-class family that’s barely scraping by (not necessarily a truly poor one, just somewhere below comfortable middle-class standards), this could be large enough that it would pay for nearly all of the student’s tuition and room and board. And financial aid is usually available in smaller amounts even for students whose families are middle-class. Indeed, at some highly selective colleges, because the cost of tuition is so much, something like 75% of students get at least some financial aid.
But I guess you mean by “academic scholarships” ones which are awarded to students without any regard to their family’s financial situation. I’m going to have to guess here. I presume that since you’re a doctor, you’re at least reasonably well off. Did your daughter apply for financial aid at all the colleges she has applied to? Depending on how much you make (there’s a wide range of incomes for doctors), she would getting somewhere between nothing and some reasonable proportion but not nearly all of her tuition paid.
A lot of less selective colleges (like Oklahoma State, apparently) have realized that this gives them an opening by which they can recruit some top-notch students who otherwise might not have considered going to them. They offer full-ride scholarships to some students with top SAT’s and high school grades without any consideration to their family’s financial situation. (Incidentally, how did they find out about you daughter? Did they get her name, along with her SAT scores and grades, from the SAT people?) Now, who’s going to be tempted to take a scholarship like that? Not students from rich families, since their family has enough money that tuition costs aren’t enough to really bother them, so they can afford highly selective but expensive colleges. Not those from struggling working-class families, since they will be getting enough financial aid from those same highly selective but expensive colleges that they can scrape by there. (Their families will be hurting from the expense, but then they were hurting even without any college tuition to pay.)
No, these scholarships were created so that these less selective colleges can recruit top-notch students from well-off but not rich families who would otherwise go to highly selective colleges. These families have just enough money that they can afford the tuition at expensive colleges, but it would hurt to pay that much. The deal then is that colleges like Oklahoma State are recruiting students like your daughter by offering to let them go to a less selective college but pay much less than she would at a more selective college.
Is that a fair deal? I don’t know. You’re going to have to answer that yourself.
