Roseanna Taormina '99 said she cannot even fathom how students can attend Dartmouth without receiving financial aid.
For a large part -- they don't.
More than one-third of Dartmouth students receive financial aid in one form or another; last year 1,781 students benefited from more than $24 million in College grants and an additional $8 million in federal and College loans.
College President James Freedman said financial aid is critical to the well-being of the College.
"It allows us to assemble the type of class we want," he said, emphasizing that were it not for the College's need-blind financial aid program, many academically capable students would be precluded from attending the College because of the $28,000 yearly price tag on a four-year Dartmouth education.
Freedman said despite the challenges need blind admissions has faced, it is safe for now. As a result of the fundraising initiatives of the Will to Excel capital campaign, the lower than expected need of the incoming class and their prowess at obtaining outside scholarships, need blind admissions is safe for the foreseeable future.
Need-blind admissions
Need-blind admissions is the College's top priority when it comes to assembling the type of class it wants, Freedman said.
Generally, all domestic and Canadian admissions decisions are made independent of financial aid decisions.
Although Karl Furstenberg is dean of admissions and financial aid, he said there is no connection between the two offices.
"Every single admissions decision is based solely on the information in the admissions folder," he said. "It is only after the decision has been made to admit a student that it is turned over to financial aid."
Need-blind admissions are key to the academic mission of the College because they allow academically qualified students to apply without worrying that they will be denied admissions because of financial need, Furstenberg said.
He said a unique feature of the College's need-blind admissions policy is that it guarantees financial aid for students for the duration of their tenure at the College.
Freedman said although the need-blind policy, which accounts for 15 percent of the College's budget, does come up for review "periodically" by the College's Board of Trustees, "there has never been any serious threat to it."
Although he could foresee future scenarios in which need-blind admissions could be eliminated, Freedman said he could also envision scenarios where "we close Baker Library," and he said neither is "very likely to occur."
Director of Financial Aid Virginia Hazen said the College examines the need-blind admissions policy every year.
Hazen said need-blind admissions is safe for the next several years because, "we had a class come in that had much lower need [than was expected], so we look good for three years."
Furstenberg said this year's freshman class won more scholarships than previous classes from sources outside the College, which helped need-blind admissions.
But Hazen said the opposite was just as likely to occur. "If it came in way over budget they'd come talking to me."
Both Hazen and Freedman said the continued feasibility of need blind admissions was boosted by the success of the Will to Excel capital campaign, which will have raised $500 million by the time it concludes in October.
Furstenberg said the Capital campaign raised more than $40 million toward an endowment for financial aid.
Finally, Furstenberg cited the fact that the incoming class in the last year had less need, as determined by the Dartmouth formula, than they were projected to have by the financial aid office, which allowed financial aid projections for the future to improve.
For many students, need-blind admissions is also an imperative part of the admissions process.
"We should reward hard work, whatever the person's economic background," Jorge Motoshige '96 said.
Motoshige, who is not on financial aid, said he feels it is important that a college like Dartmouth not consider the economic circumstances of qualified students because in today's world, education is more important than ever to success.
"To close off people from that education severely impedes their social mobility" unfairly, he said.
Other students think need-blind admissions should be maintained -- if only to ensure that qualified students are not scared away from applying.
"I have a number of friends from high school who wouldn't apply to a school like Dartmouth because of the cost," said Eric Eckberg '99
Taormina said she does not think a high school senior's financial situation should enter at all into their application decisions, and need-blind admissions maintains this luxury.
"I don't think it's fair for there to be a thought in anyone's mind that the reason they didn't get in was because of money," she said.
Need-Blind elsewhere
Furstenberg said Dartmouth is only one of 10 or 12 colleges throughout the country that is need-blind. But unlike at Dartmouth, need blind admissions at the dozen or so colleges who offer it, is not a top priority.
Marc Fuccillo, a sophomore at Brown, said he did not choose to apply for financial aid at the school because he had heard that it would hurt his chances of being admitted. Fuccillo was admitted off the wait-list.
Brown University is the only member of the Ivy League that does not have a need-blind admissions policy.
Brown Director of Financial Aid Tony Canshola said that Brown is not and never has been need blind because, "we don't have [Dartmouth's] endowment."
He said according to Brown's policy, "admissions admits people until we run out of money. "In general, he said, this affects only the last students admitted into the incoming classes.
At Brown, 51 percent of the Class of 1999 receive some sort of University financial aid. Canshola said he was able to give funds to more than half the class by being conservative with grants given to each individual family. "I have no problem sharing the responsibility for an education with the family," he said.
He said need-blind admissions is not a realistic policy because of the financial demands they place on institutions.
"There is this perception that Ivy League schools have endless pots of money and that's not the fact," Canshola said.
He said he thinks the fact that Brown is not need-blind does not affect the size of the applicant pool.
"We've been very open about it and still get 16,000 applications each year, so it hasn't hurt us," he said.
At Yale University, need blind admissions are "a 10 on scale of one to 10" in terms of priorities, Director of Financial Aid Donald Ruth said.
Ruth said several years ago, Yale experienced a crisis in financial aid when 42 percent of the incoming class qualified for aid -- a large increase from the 35 percent demand that had been stable for the previous 15 years.
He said Yale initially faced a $2 million deficit in its financial aid budget for those years, but the university recouped the money by rearranging expenditures in its general budget.
Yale also deals with increased demand for financial aid by allowing the self-help portion of aid it expects students to assume to increase.
Wesleyan University also conducts need-blind admissions, but Director of Financial Aid Edwin Below does not consider it a priority in and of itself.
"The priority is assembling a diverse, well-qualified group of incoming students," he said. "Need-blind admissions is only one means to that end."
Below said Wesleyan has been meeting increased demand for financial aid while maintaining need-blind admissions by increasing the loan portions of aid it offers students. Below said this practice can backfire because students may choose to attend elsewhere if the package they receive includes too many loans.
Below said that if need blind became financially unfeasible Wesleyan would discontinue it.
Jockeying for a position
Furstenberg said many students use the financial aid offers from other schools to obtain better offers from schools they would rather attend.
This can happen because colleges all have different formulas for predicting students' eligibility and are prohibited from colluding with other schools in determining Financial Aid.
"We make the best estimate we can," Furstenberg said. However, he described the market for qualified students as "very competitive," and said that "someone has to make some decisions" in terms of which students to pursue.
When admitted students call up Dartmouth and present financial aid packages offered from other schools, Furstenberg said Dartmouth tries to equal the competing offers.
"If a student presents us with 'I'd really like to go to Dartmouth, but Princeton gave me this much,' we'll try to close that gap," he said.
"It is not so precise that there isn't room for adjustments," Furstenberg said of the financial aid process.
Hazen said the difference between financial aid offers from different schools is usually small.
A complicated process
Every spring, once the incoming class has been admitted and either accepted or declined, the financial aid office's job begins in earnest.
Hazen said the awarding of financial aid at the College is a very complicated process that takes three to five months from beginning to end.
The average grant aid for students in all classes for the 1995 to 1996 academic year was $14,000, said Beatrice Filimonov, senior associate director of financial aid
All students fill out federal financial aid forms in February. The federal form determines a student's eligibility for federal funds, which include work-study, several types of loans and Pell grants.
The federal forms ask questions about students' families' incomes and assets and apply a formula that determines students' financial needs. Hazen said the federal formula is different from the Dartmouth formula because the federal one is more lenient in determining eligibility for loans.
"They wanted to make more people eligible for loans," she said.
Hazen said this stage, when looking at a student's eligibility for federal loans and grants, is the only part of the financial aid process where an upper-class student's academic performance is considered.
According to federal regulations, students must be making "satisfactory progress" toward their degree, which manifests itself in minimum grade point average requirements and a minimum number of courses passed, Hazen said.
Hazen said that all students are run through a computer program that checks their eligibility.
This is rarely a problem for Dartmouth students, she said, but when she sees a student has been suspended, "red flags go up" in her head.
All students also complete a second Dartmouth financial aid form, which asks questions similar to the federal one but applies a different formula in order to determine "need" for Dartmouth funds, Hazen said.
This second form, Furstenberg said, is "sort of a pain."
"It is almost like doing your taxes," he said. "So we make the best attempt we can to make what is a fair expectation for the family," he said.
The Dartmouth formula is a little more complicated than the federal one, Hazen said, because, "ours tries to come up with a more equitable answer."
The Dartmouth formula takes into account factors that the federal formula ignores. The formula takes a weighted sum, which considers family income, subtracts taxes, and adds a percentage of the family's assets, including home equity, which the federal formula ignores.
This calculation yields a sum which is considered to be the amount of money that a family can contribute to their child's education each year.
That number is divided by the number of children the family will have in college in a given year and the resulting number is the so-called "family-contribution," the amount families are expected to contribute towards their children's Dartmouth education.
The difference between this number and the sum of tuition, room and board, books and an estimate made for miscellaneous expenses is the amount of financial aid the student will receive.
Financial aid need is met first with loans and then with work-study eligibility, called "self-help," and finally grants to fill any remainders, Hazen said.
Self-help
Work-study is a federal program whereby the federal government reimburses the College 70 percent of the wages it pays to eligible students, according to Assistant Director of Financial Aid and Work-Study Coordinator Chad Puls
The amount of self-help, or the sum of loans and grants, a student is eligible for depends on the student's class year. Incoming students are expected to receive $5,000 in self-help aid; sophomores, $5,500; juniors, $5,900; and seniors $6,300.
Furstenberg said Dartmouth is unique in setting fixed amounts of self-help responsibility for its students.
"We have a very equitable approach," he said.
"Everybody, regardless of what their admissions status is, is given pretty much the same financial aid expectations for loans and jobs," he said.
Self-help loans are met first with federal funds and then with Dartmouth Educational Loan Corporation moneys, Hazen said.
There are two different types of federal loans available to students; the Perkins and the Stafford.
Perkins loans are more attractive because they have lower interest rates, Hazen said. They are awarded to the needier students.
Stafford loans are then given to the remaining students and students with Dartmouth need but no federal eligibility are given the option of accepting DELC loans.
But Hazen said the financial aid office makes it a priority to keep the loans students are burdened with as low as possible.
"We don't plug in the maximum loan just because they've got eligibility," she said.
Even if they are eligible, Hazen said, students will not receive federal loans if the self-help portion of their aid can be met by a combination of loans and work-study eligibility.
The remainder of a student's self-help portion will be met by work-study eligibility.
Puls said there are between 700 and 1,000 students working each term under work-study eligibility.
About $1.3 million was spent during the 1994-95 school year in work-study salaries out of the $3.1 million that was awarded, Hazen said.
Hazen said there is a difference between the amount of eligibility and the amount actually paid out to students because work-study students are not required to work, it is only suggested.
Even if they do work, work-study students do not have to work for an employer that participates in the work-study program.
In fact, Hazen said, work-study payments "make up a fraction" of the student employment wages.
But work-study is still critical to the Dartmouth financial aid system because "it allows the College to employ far more students than would otherwise be possible and allows them to earn the money they need to continue their education," Puls said.
Puls said eligible students are awarded about 10 to 12 hours per week of work-study eligibility.
The amount of eligibility is "a pretty standard" throughout the nation, he said, although Dartmouth does have higher wages on average than other colleges, so the average work-study student might make more at Dartmouth than at another school.
Puls said typical jobs include working at Dartmouth Dining Services, working in an academic department or working in one of the five off-campus venues that contract work-study students through Dartmouth.
The remainder of need is met with grants, Hazen said. Grants either come from the federal government, in the form of Pell Grants and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, or in the form of Dartmouth grants.
At Dartmouth on aid
Caitlin Foley '97 said she thinks the "Dartmouth Experience" is fairly egalitarian when it comes to financial aid.
"No one really cares how much anybody's daddy makes," she said of the school's environment.
Part of the reason for this attitude, according to students, is that those on and financial aid are indistinguishable from those who do not receive any aid.
"It's nearly impossible to tell whether somebody is on financial aid unless they tell you," said Nathan Cook '98, who receives financial aid.
Cook, who works for DDS, said that the sacrifices he makes in order to attend Dartmouth are relatively minor compared to what his Dartmouth education is worth.
"DDS does take up a lot of time, so I have much less for extracurricular stuff, but on the other hand ... what I might have missed is compensated," because DDS is part of his social and extracurricular life here, he said
He said he is able to deal with not being as well off as some of his friends are.
"I may watch my money a little more than some other people, and maybe not eat out if it's too expensive," he said. But "that's pretty minor."
A big difference between students on aid and those not, according to students receiving it, is the time they spend working as part of their work-study aid.
"It's only different in that I can't waste as much time as everyone else," said Jen Collins '99, another DDS employee.
But Ben Herman '96, who has worked for DDS and received aid for four years, said he is not bothered at all by the time and commitment working requires.
"Working my way through college is a good experience; being almost entirely financially independent of my parents is a great feeling," he said
