College Admissions Counseling Blog

Adds Tufts University to the list of schools which is replacing loans with grants for at least some of its students. Tufts has announced that they are replacing loans with grants in financial aid packages for students with family income below $40,000. Congratulations Tufts.

More good news as Haverford College has announced that it will be eliminating loans for incoming freshman and will be reducing the loan burden for continuing students. I suggested earlier that I hoped that we would see a trend for more colleges to eliminate loans from financial aid packages and it appears that this is indeed happening. Haverford and all of the other colleges who have eliminated loans and otherwise made college more affordable for their students are to be congratulated.

The latest college to announce the elimination of loans from financial aid packages is the University of Pennsylvania. Penn is using a phased in approach to eliminate loans. Beginning in Fall 2008 Penn will eliminate all loans for students with family incomes less than $100,000. Families with income above that level will have their loans reduced by 10%. In Fall 2009 all students, regardless of family income, will receive loan free packages.

As each new selective college eliminates loans, it puts more pressure on the other selective colleges to do the same. Hopefully the pressure will continue. Congratulations Penn.

The good news just keeps coming this week in the world of financial aid at the selective colleges. Swarthmore College and Pomona College have each announced that they are eliminating loans from their financial aid packages. Hopefully this trend among the colleges with significant endowments to cap or eliminate loans continues. This may result in some trickle down effect so that colleges with less substantial endowments can find creative new ways to also limit the loans to their students.

Congratulations to Swarthmore and Pomona.

Cal Tech announced yesterday more good news for students seeking financial aid. Starting in 2008 domestic students with family income below $60,000 will generally have a financial aid package that replaces loans with grants. Cal Tech has historically not give many loans in their financial aid packages anyway but reducing loans for these families is a great step.

Harvard has announced that they are expanding their financial aid to students in several areas. First, families with incomes between 60,000 and 120,000 will pay up to 10% of their income based on a sliding scale. Families with income between 120,000 and 180, 000 will pay 10% of their income. Second, Harvard is eliminating all loans from financial aid packages. Third, they will no longer be considering home equity in the financial aid calculations. Previously, Harvard had a policy that families with income below 60,000 would not be asked to contribute to the cost of their education. That policy continues.

Harvard has a huge endowment and can easily afford the additional cost involved in this initiative. I am pleased that they have joined the ranks of other several other selective colleges that have eliminated loans from financial aid packages and that are working to make a selective college more affordable for low and middle income students.

The entire report on this new initiative can be found here.

Duke University recently announced that they are eliminating a parental contribution for families who make less than $60,000 a year and are making it possible for families with income below $40,000 to graduate debt free. They are also reducing loans for famliies with incomes up to $100,000 and capping loans for families with income in excess of $100,000. Here is the link to Duke's web page describing this new finacial aid support.

Although the loan reductions by Duke are not quite as generous as for some colleges that I reported on earlier, I applaud Duke for helping low income and middle income students to better afford the cost of a highly selective college. You can see a list of the colleges that have been reducing loans to students and replacing them with grants by looking at our home page and clicking college financial aid under the labels section.

I was recently made aware that several highly selective colleges are now combining ACT sub scores from different tests to create a super score like is down with the SAT. The colleges are Washington University in St. Louis and Amherst College. With the increasing popularity of the ACT exam in the traditional SAT areas of the East and West coast the significance of super scoring can be significant. If these two colleges are starting to super score their ACT reported scores will increase and put pressure on other colleges to also start using super scoring for the ACT. If this occurs then the average ACT scores reported by these colleges will increase which will make it appear that the college's test scores are higher than they really are.

I general discuss with the students I counsel the advantages and disadvantages of the ACT and SAT. One of the advantages of the SAT, relative to the ACT, was the super scoring that occurs at most colleges. Now it appears that that advantage may be going away. More and more it is becoming important for students to understand each of the exams to determine which is a better choice for their needs.