Ivy League Gets a Run for Its Money on Top Seniors
Jordan J. Hayles, valedictorian of her senior class this year at Murphy High School in Mobile, Ala., had her pick of some of the nation’s most esteemed colleges. Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, MIT and Stanford all accepted her.
So why did Hayles recently decide on Emory University in Atlanta, a highly regarded institution but more often a place students choose when they can’t get into an Ivy League school?
Partly, she said, because the school offered her a tantalizing financial deal, a package covering full tuition, room and board, foreign study funds, a $1,000 stipend for a research project -- and even money to pay for cultural events or restaurant meals with fellow Emory scholars.
“I thought that was just splendid,” Hayles said. “You get to go out, meet different people, and you don’t have to pay anything. You can’t beat that.”
For some high school seniors who are academic stars, it has become more tempting in recent years to pass up an Ivy League education. Many private colleges and public universities, eager to boost their reputations by recruiting students with stellar grades and lofty College Board scores, are dangling lucrative scholarships, special programs and other come-ons.
“Every school that can seems to be playing this game,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education in San Jose. “This is how you get your prestige up.”
The students spurning the Ivies -- many still fresh from the stressful May 1 decision deadlines -- are bucking the much-chronicled trend of affluent families going extra lengths to get their children into the most prestigious colleges. The Ivy obsession has fostered a boom in SAT prep classes, and even college counseling summer camps, to boost students’ prospects.
Ivy League schools, which provide substantial amounts of financial aid, but only to students deemed financially needy, say they haven’t been measurably hurt by the widening competition for academic standouts.
Still, non-Ivies that recruit aggressively say that they are snagging more top young scholars.
There are no authoritative figures on how many students bypass the Ivy Leagues. But the scale of such recruiting is reflected in the skyrocketing sums that the nation’s four-year colleges have devoted to scholarships based on academic performance. A higher-education researcher, Donald E. Heller of Penn State, has found that the schools raised their spending on merit scholarships by 152%, to $3 billion, between the 1992-93 and 1999-2000 school years. By comparison, they boosted grants based on financial need by 59%.
Hector Martinez, head of college counseling at the Webb Schools, a pair of private high schools in Claremont, said that in the last two years he has noticed “real action in kids and families deciding to turn down an Ivy for a school that offers a generous merit award.”
“Nowadays,” he added, “when private schools are reaching the $45,000-a-year price tag, a lot of families are starting to think about that and say, ‘It’s a huge investment, and maybe a merit award is more of a necessity.’ ”
Cornell economist Robert H. Frank, who has written about the concentration of top students at elite colleges, agreed. “We’re definitely seeing that the schools that have been most aggressive in offering merit-based aid have been taking some students away from the schools who ordinarily would get them,” he said.
All the same, saying “no” to institutions such as Princeton, Harvard or Yale -- or to Stanford or MIT, which often are lumped together with the Ivies -- still can be hard for a student to explain to friends and acquaintances.
“A lot of people walk up to me at school and say, ‘Wow, I can’t believe you turned down Yale. That’s just crazy,’ ” said A.J. Singletary, a high school senior from Mountain Home, Ark., who just accepted an offer to attend Washington University in St. Louis starting in the fall.
In California, USC has been especially aggressive; a recent poll found that nearly 5% of its freshmen said they turned down an Ivy, Stanford or MIT. UC Berkeley, UCLA and small liberal arts schools such as Occidental College also snare some of the sought-after students.
California students often remain in the state because they like the cost and quality of the public universities, along with the climate. “The East Coast does get pretty cold, and I’m not sure I’m ready to adapt to that,” said Brandon Jang, who, along with twin brother Clinton, turned down the University of Pennsylvania in favor of studying bioengineering at UCLA.
The Jangs, both of whom scored in the mid-1500s on their SATs out of a possible 1600, also were enticed by the Regents Scholarships they received from UCLA. The scholarships provide $5,500 a year, along with such benefits as guaranteed parking. “That was one of the big perks,” said Clinton Jang.
Around the country, prestigious non-Ivies such as Emory and Washington University are among the leaders in vying for top high school graduates.
At one point, Singletary told the Washington University admissions office that he was undecided between that school and Yale, and was called back within a couple of days and given an additional $6,000 in aid. In all, he will receive $38,700 a year in scholarships from Washington University. After outside grants, he would be left with about $3,000 to cover.
He said his offer from Yale, while substantial, would have left him with about $14,000 a year in costs.
Still, Singletary said his decision wasn’t just about money. “Every time I called Wash U. I knew I could find somebody on the line who would be helpful, who would try to get me to come to the university,” said Singletary, who hopes to become a lawyer.
Richard H. Shaw, Yale University’s dean for undergraduate admissions and financial aid, said his institution rarely loses the students it wants. He said that more than 65% of accepted applicants enroll. But he said the toughest ones to reel in are from middle-class families who can’t easily afford the Ivy League, but have too much money to qualify for big financial aid packages.
“They might go to an honors college at their home state university and say, ‘Well, maybe it’s not the same [as attending Yale], but it’s going to be less expensive for us,’ ” Shaw said.
Special programs are pivotal, too, in many decisions. Jamie Withey, a three-sport star from the Webb Schools who scored 1470 on his SATs, snubbed offers from Brown and Dartmouth to enroll in USC’s Baccalaureate/MD Program. Withey said he was won over by USC’s rising reputation, a full-tuition scholarship, the chance to be on the track team and the proximity to his home in Alta Loma.
Most of all, he was drawn by the guarantee of admission to USC’s medical school, provided he meets academic requirements. “I thought it was an awesome opportunity,” Withey said.
It’s not clear whether the students who pass up the Ivy League suffer over the long run. Researchers have drawn mixed conclusions about whether a diploma from a top-rung institution translates into earnings.
Policy analysts also debate whether the costly competition is good for higher education in general. Critics argue that the merit aid, which mainly goes to students from middle- and high-income families, would be better spent on poorer students. But administrators say that star students enliven a campus’ intellectual atmosphere.
For extraordinary students such as the Emory-bound Hayles, the college options can be dazzling.
Her credentials include a straight-A average, 1520 on her SATs and qualifying for a National Merit Scholarship, achieved by far less than 1% of the nation’s students. Linda Evans, Hayles’ counselor at Murphy High, said the senior is perhaps the brightest student she has met in her 25 years as an educator. She estimated that Hayles has drawn scholarship offers cumulatively worth $1.3 million.
Hayles said that she immediately liked Emory when she visited, and that she appreciated the aid that would spare her parents heavy college expenses. Although her parents’ income is slightly more than $100,000 and she is an only child, Hayles said: “My parents have to plan for retirement. Personally, I don’t think it’s fair to them to have to spend all this money on me.”
Her parents, for their part, have mixed feelings despite being impressed with Emory.
When Jordan was younger, “we always sort of threw it out there that, ‘Maybe you’ll go to Harvard one day, or Yale,’ ” said her mother, Jennifer McCaskill-Hayles. But now the family doesn’t have the savings for it.
Jordan said she has no misgivings. Besides, she expects to go to graduate school, possibly to study medicine.
“Perhaps the Ivy Leagues will consider me again,” she said.
