Darwinian admissions
Are selective universities turning a blind eye to some students in need?

BY MEGAN OLDEN | Bryn Mawr's past admissions policy was horrible, according to Nancy Monnich, Bryn Mawr College's director of admissions and financial aid. When faced with a finite financial aid budget and a surplus of exceptionally able applicants, the small liberal arts college outside of Philadelphia would accept all eligible candidates, but not make financial aid available to everyone who needed it.

"It created not only confusion, but a lot of anger," she recalls. "It was really pretty dreadful."

Bryn Mawr's current policy, implemented in 1993, is much easier for Monnich to stomach. Now, if the financial aid pool runs dry before an entire incoming class is accepted, the college accepts remaining applicants only if they can afford to attend with little or no financial help. Monnich maintains that although a difficult choice, the policy change was the kindest option for prospective students. The previous system, she says, "was almost cruel, to sort of tempt them but not make it possible."

Bryn Mawr is not alone in its policy. It might be old news in admissions circles, but many prospective students and their parents have no idea that over the past decade, more selective U.S. colleges and universities have been looking at some applicants' ability to pay as a factor in admission. Schools justify their policies by saying they cannot afford to give aid to all eligible students. Those on the margins of the applicant pool -- up to 10 percent of a given class at some schools -- are accepted only if they can foot the bill themselves. Coined "need sensitive" or "need conscious" in admissions lexicon, this policy denies admission when aid dollars are scarce to a portion of prospective students who -- at least on paper -- don't appear to be able to cough up the dough to pay their own way.

Money has always played a part in the access to American higher education. Although most states have community colleges and state universities that low-income students can afford to attend, the more prestigious schools often have the highest tuition, and even those students who receive financial aid may not be willing to go $100,000 into debt to gamble on an elite education. But does an admissions policy that explicitly chooses rich students over poor smack of fiscal Darwinism?

Thomas Mortenson, policy analyst for the monthly newsletter Postsecondary Education Opportunity, argues that kids on the margins of academic eligibility are often exactly the ones who need aid the most. Statistically speaking, he says, poorer kids don't score as well as their wealthier peers. "When you're talking about how marginal students are treated in admissions, I can tell you with a very high degree of confidence that those are lower-income students that were admitted under the regular admissions criteria," he says. By employing need-sensitivity in admissions, colleges and universities are supporting a more rigid class structure where the rich get richer and the poor have limited access to education. "Instead of breaking down the implications of birth," says Mortenson, "higher education is now reinforcing that."

N E X T_ P A G E .|. Schools have "one eye open" to financial aid needs