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This is beholden to BU's definition of need. Barring any transparency on what these definitions actually mean for the school, I'd assume it means the following

by lumost 5y ago

This is beholden to BU's definition of need. Barring any transparency on what these definitions actually mean for the school, I'd assume it means the following. 1 - Students should pay the maximum that they and their family are able to, inclusive of student loans. If their parents have collateral in any form including home equity or retirement accounts, it should be assumed that this collateral can be used to secure loans or pay for the school. AND/OR 2 - BU gives preferential admissions to students who are able to pay the maximum, while telling everyone else that they don't. This can be done through multiple methods including A) offer admission but don't offer significant aid, B) offer admission preferentially based on signs of high income including expensive club participation, high cost achievements, or Geographic considerations. Schools have become adept at pretending to do something about the student loan crises, I don't see why we should take any non-quantified statement at face value. My Alma mater UMass Amherst, used to lead every tuition and fee increase with a statement on increased financial aid - Unfortunately a simple multiplication would always show that the magnitude of cost increase vastly outstripped the magnitude of the aid increase.

smugma 5y ago
They don’t do number two, that is not need blind (blind means admissions doesn’t look at financial need, and this makes sense because the applications are due before financial aid is filled out). But here’s what they do do: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/education/edlife/finaid-pappano-t.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/education/edlife/finaid-p... B.U. may be need-blind in admissions, but like many colleges, it is not talent-blind in financial aid. When the admissions office accepts a student, the file gets a rating before going to the financial aid office. That rating, Dr. Pohl says, is based on a holistic read of the application: factors like leadership, talent, motivation and personal character are weighed as well as grades and test scores.
- chaostheory 5y ago
  > based on a holistic read of the application: factors like leadership, talent, motivation and personal character are weighed as well as grades and test scores This is another problem. Instead of primarily looking at things you can quantitatively measure, the arbitrary measures now have more weight, meaning they can now more easily discriminate against “boring” student applicants. https://priceonomics.com/do-elite-colleges-discriminate-against-asians/ https://priceonomics.com/do-elite-colleges-discriminate-agai...
- lumost 5y ago
  The article is pay-walled, but barring a publicly disclosed admissions criteria - I am dubious of this claim. Consider how adding the following leadership/club activities as "desirable" in the admissions process would affect how much need the student body would need. - "Polo" - "Cross-Country skiing" - "Ski team" - "International volunteer work" It's pretty easy to skew admissions criteria in favor of affluence without overtly checking financials. The university could just as easily de-select items such as. - "Shift manager for Dunkin Donuts" - "Barrista at Starbucks" - "Valet"
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  > of the application: factors like leadership, talent, motivation and personal character are weighed as well as grades and test scores. Yes? So they have a catch all justification for discrimination against and for whoever they like. Remember, holistic admissions was invented to keep out the Jews. Now it’s used to keep out Asians.
  - smugma 5y ago
    I’m not disputing that. They claim to be need-blind, and explicitly acknowledge they have a bunch of other fuzzy criteria. While they could discriminate against poor people who put crappy jobs in their applications, it goes against their diversity goals. Whether or not you agree with said goals, (liberal arts) colleges and universities want a diverse population (and yes, to the detriment of Asians).
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - barry-cotter 5y ago
      Visible diversity is far more important to them than social class diversity. There are large boosts to admissions for non-Asian minorities, much smaller boosts for poor visible minorities and penalties for being both white and poor. > Espenshade and Radford also take up very thoroughly the question of “class based preferences” and what they find clearly shows a general disregard for improving the admission chances of poor and otherwise disadvantaged whites. Other studies, including a 2005 analysis of nineteen highly selective public and private universities by William Bowen, Martin Kurzweil, and Eugene Tobin, in their 2003 book, Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education, found very little if any advantage in the admissions process accorded to whites from economically or educationally disadvantaged families compared to whites from wealthier or better educated homes. Espenshade and Radford cite this study and summarize it as follows: “These researchers find that, for non-minority [i.e., white] applicants with the same SAT scores, there is no perceptible difference in admission chances between applicants from families in the bottom income quartile, applicants who would be the first in their families to attend college, and all other (non-minority) applicants from families at higher levels of socioeconomic status. When controls are added for other student and institutional characteristics, these authors find that “on an other-things-equal basis, [white] applicants from low-SES backgrounds, whether defined by family income or parental education, get essentially no break in the admissions process; they fare neither better nor worse than other [white] applicants.” > Distressing as many might consider this to be–since the same institutions that give no special consideration to poor white applicants boast about their commitment to “diversity” and give enormous admissions breaks to blacks, even to those from relatively affluent homes–Espenshade and Radford in their survey found the actual situation to be much more troubling. At the private institutions in their study whites from lower-class backgrounds incurred a huge admissions disadvantage not only in comparison to lower-class minority students, but compared to whites from middle-class and upper-middle-class backgrounds as well. The lower-class whites proved to be all-around losers. When equally matched for background factors (including SAT scores and high school GPAs), the better-off whites were more than three times as likely to be accepted as the poorest whites (.28 vs. .08 admissions probability). Having money in the family greatly improved a white applicant’s admissions chances, lack of money greatly reduced it. The opposite class trend was seen among non-whites, where the poorer the applicant the greater the probability of acceptance when all other factors are taken into account. Class-based affirmative action does exist within the three non-white ethno-racial groupings, but among the whites the groups advanced are those with money. https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2010/07/12/how_diversity_punishes_asians/ https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2010/07/12/how_diversity_pu...
saghm 5y ago
> Students should pay the maximum that they and their family are able to, inclusive of student loans. If their parents have collateral in any form including home equity or retirement accounts, it should be assumed that this collateral can be used to secure loans or pay for the school. This rings true for me at least when I was in college (early to mid 2010s). My parents happened to buy a house in the late 80s in a community where real estate values ended up rising enormously by the time I was applying for financial aid, and my dad happened to work for a private company where only employees were allowed to hold stock for the vast majority of his career (he coincidentally started there around when they bought the house), so his stock was basically part of his savings for retirement. I ended up not getting a huge amount of financial aid in terms of either grants or student loans, so the options were for my parents to refinance their mortgage they weren't done paying off, spend a huge portion of their retirement money on my education, or have me take out private loans with them as cosigners with the idea that I would hopefully be able to pay them back on my own. We opted for choice 3, so I ended up graduating with around $100k in debt with fairly high interest rates due do having had no credit or income at the time we applied for the loans. Overall, it's worked out due to some luck in terms of the job I was able to get out of college, but it still feels like that shouldn't have been required in the first place. On the other hand, I completely agree with the assessment that I was not anywhere close to a priority to receive financial aid. One of my best friends in college had one parent who only was able to get part time work and another parent who was disabled and couldn't work; between the grants and low interest loans he was given as financial aid, he essentially was able to attend for free, which I wish was available to everyone like him who needed it much more than I did.
tzs 5y ago
BU has a couple of cost calculators online here [1] that let you enter data on you and your parent's income and assets and on how many other siblings you have and their ages and tells you how you would likely be expected to meet the costs. [1] https://www.bu.edu/finaid/aid-basics/cost-of-attendance/net-price-calculator/ https://www.bu.edu/finaid/aid-basics/cost-of-attendance/net-...

by lumost 5y ago

smugma 5y ago

They don’t do number two, that is not need blind (blind means admissions doesn’t look at financial need, and this makes sense because the applications are due before financial aid is filled out). But here’s what they do do: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/education/edlife/finaid-pappano-t.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/education/edlife/finaid-p... B.U. may be need-blind in admissions, but like many colleges, it is not talent-blind in financial aid. When the admissions office accepts a student, the file gets a rating before going to the financial aid office. That rating, Dr. Pohl says, is based on a holistic read of the application: factors like leadership, talent, motivation and personal character are weighed as well as grades and test scores.

chaostheory 5y ago
> based on a holistic read of the application: factors like leadership, talent, motivation and personal character are weighed as well as grades and test scores This is another problem. Instead of primarily looking at things you can quantitatively measure, the arbitrary measures now have more weight, meaning they can now more easily discriminate against “boring” student applicants. https://priceonomics.com/do-elite-colleges-discriminate-against-asians/ https://priceonomics.com/do-elite-colleges-discriminate-agai...
lumost 5y ago
The article is pay-walled, but barring a publicly disclosed admissions criteria - I am dubious of this claim. Consider how adding the following leadership/club activities as "desirable" in the admissions process would affect how much need the student body would need. - "Polo" - "Cross-Country skiing" - "Ski team" - "International volunteer work" It's pretty easy to skew admissions criteria in favor of affluence without overtly checking financials. The university could just as easily de-select items such as. - "Shift manager for Dunkin Donuts" - "Barrista at Starbucks" - "Valet"
barry-cotter 5y ago
> of the application: factors like leadership, talent, motivation and personal character are weighed as well as grades and test scores. Yes? So they have a catch all justification for discrimination against and for whoever they like. Remember, holistic admissions was invented to keep out the Jews. Now it’s used to keep out Asians.
- smugma 5y ago
  I’m not disputing that. They claim to be need-blind, and explicitly acknowledge they have a bunch of other fuzzy criteria. While they could discriminate against poor people who put crappy jobs in their applications, it goes against their diversity goals. Whether or not you agree with said goals, (liberal arts) colleges and universities want a diverse population (and yes, to the detriment of Asians).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    Visible diversity is far more important to them than social class diversity. There are large boosts to admissions for non-Asian minorities, much smaller boosts for poor visible minorities and penalties for being both white and poor. > Espenshade and Radford also take up very thoroughly the question of “class based preferences” and what they find clearly shows a general disregard for improving the admission chances of poor and otherwise disadvantaged whites. Other studies, including a 2005 analysis of nineteen highly selective public and private universities by William Bowen, Martin Kurzweil, and Eugene Tobin, in their 2003 book, Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education, found very little if any advantage in the admissions process accorded to whites from economically or educationally disadvantaged families compared to whites from wealthier or better educated homes. Espenshade and Radford cite this study and summarize it as follows: “These researchers find that, for non-minority [i.e., white] applicants with the same SAT scores, there is no perceptible difference in admission chances between applicants from families in the bottom income quartile, applicants who would be the first in their families to attend college, and all other (non-minority) applicants from families at higher levels of socioeconomic status. When controls are added for other student and institutional characteristics, these authors find that “on an other-things-equal basis, [white] applicants from low-SES backgrounds, whether defined by family income or parental education, get essentially no break in the admissions process; they fare neither better nor worse than other [white] applicants.” > Distressing as many might consider this to be–since the same institutions that give no special consideration to poor white applicants boast about their commitment to “diversity” and give enormous admissions breaks to blacks, even to those from relatively affluent homes–Espenshade and Radford in their survey found the actual situation to be much more troubling. At the private institutions in their study whites from lower-class backgrounds incurred a huge admissions disadvantage not only in comparison to lower-class minority students, but compared to whites from middle-class and upper-middle-class backgrounds as well. The lower-class whites proved to be all-around losers. When equally matched for background factors (including SAT scores and high school GPAs), the better-off whites were more than three times as likely to be accepted as the poorest whites (.28 vs. .08 admissions probability). Having money in the family greatly improved a white applicant’s admissions chances, lack of money greatly reduced it. The opposite class trend was seen among non-whites, where the poorer the applicant the greater the probability of acceptance when all other factors are taken into account. Class-based affirmative action does exist within the three non-white ethno-racial groupings, but among the whites the groups advanced are those with money. https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2010/07/12/how_diversity_punishes_asians/ https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2010/07/12/how_diversity_pu...

saghm 5y ago

> Students should pay the maximum that they and their family are able to, inclusive of student loans. If their parents have collateral in any form including home equity or retirement accounts, it should be assumed that this collateral can be used to secure loans or pay for the school. This rings true for me at least when I was in college (early to mid 2010s). My parents happened to buy a house in the late 80s in a community where real estate values ended up rising enormously by the time I was applying for financial aid, and my dad happened to work for a private company where only employees were allowed to hold stock for the vast majority of his career (he coincidentally started there around when they bought the house), so his stock was basically part of his savings for retirement. I ended up not getting a huge amount of financial aid in terms of either grants or student loans, so the options were for my parents to refinance their mortgage they weren't done paying off, spend a huge portion of their retirement money on my education, or have me take out private loans with them as cosigners with the idea that I would hopefully be able to pay them back on my own. We opted for choice 3, so I ended up graduating with around $100k in debt with fairly high interest rates due do having had no credit or income at the time we applied for the loans. Overall, it's worked out due to some luck in terms of the job I was able to get out of college, but it still feels like that shouldn't have been required in the first place. On the other hand, I completely agree with the assessment that I was not anywhere close to a priority to receive financial aid. One of my best friends in college had one parent who only was able to get part time work and another parent who was disabled and couldn't work; between the grants and low interest loans he was given as financial aid, he essentially was able to attend for free, which I wish was available to everyone like him who needed it much more than I did.

tzs 5y ago

BU has a couple of cost calculators online here [1] that let you enter data on you and your parent's income and assets and on how many other siblings you have and their ages and tells you how you would likely be expected to meet the costs. [1] https://www.bu.edu/finaid/aid-basics/cost-of-attendance/net-price-calculator/ https://www.bu.edu/finaid/aid-basics/cost-of-attendance/net-...