Admissions Academy Blog

Trading Down?

•  Posted by Sarah Ziegler on October 30th, 2008 in Articles of Interest
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The Wall Street Journal recently published an article profiling a high school senior who decided not to apply Early Decision to Northwestern, her dream school, because of concerns over college costs. Two disturbing observations about the article:
1. Northwestern University is committed to meeting the full demonstrated financial need of its students; additionally, Student Financial Services will consider appeals of financial aid decisions should a family’s financial situation change. Their website even includes a site dispelling common myths about financial aid: http://www.ugadm.northwestern.edu/myths.
2. What exactly is meant by forcing students to lower their sights? “She had worked hard to get good grades and write her application essays, but as the deadline neared this fall …” she may have to settle for a “lesser” college? The subtext here further reinforces the idea of absolute, ordinal number rankings of colleges. If this student can’t afford her “tier 1″ college, she’ll have to lower her sights to tier 2 or tier 3 colleges. Rather than take the opportunity to talk about looking beyond highly selective colleges, the author appears to support the notion that colleges are good or bad, better or worse.

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