Harvard free tuition update today

[poetryandwine]

Harvard University announced today that from the next academic year all undergraduates from families with incomes below $200,000 will receive full tuition fee waivers. MIT announced the same limit in Nov 2024.

Further generous aid is available at both institutions. Students may be expected to work for a few hours per week and to make a small contribution from summer earnings. Part time employment is typical of American students so there is no stigma.

Other (rich) universities are also raising their financial aid limits. However financial aid is often geared to American students, or in-state students at public universities (unless it is in the form of a talent scholarship of some type)

Obviously the universities I’ve mentioned are highly competitive, but they, others, and the superb (also highly competitive) four year colleges giving generous aid to international students can make it more economical to attend university in the US than in the UK.

The Fulbright Foundation website is generally an excellent source of information on American universities for British applicants, and vice versa, but it may take a little while to update.

I agree that one can overselect for academics. I think there is a happy medium.

If forced to choose I would rather overselect for academics than for any particular personality. That’s the risk in America. One gets a pastiche of a well rounded personality, or just the top layer. It is similar to how UK applicants in the know may over-emphasise their academic passion.

I share your reservations about humans playing at being god. I think we’ve got ahead of ourselves on several fronts. Many STEM academics do.

To some extent the problem is the rush to market and the lack

….of willingness to think long term around this. AI is possibly the most prominent example right now.

I think the issue with STEM is that it is still so male dominated. I often wonder where we would be if women had been encouraged to do these subjects sooner and had been able to adapt the course of discoveries. Not meaning to derail, just an aside.

A full ride sport scholarship usually includes flight and travel costs.

dc went to a US uni on a sports scholarship. All paid for. We build our holidays around visiting them, added to the money we would have contributed had they been at a uk uni we are better off financially.

their main decision was based around giving up their Team GB place as they are automatically off the team and no funding if they choose uni/training outside the UK.

Your point about networking is a good one. I think it is diminishing somewhat over time. As more and more work involves international trade and co-operation, networks grow and the world becomes smaller. I’m sure it is still an issue to some extent, though.

Being further from family will always be an emotional issue, and how much is simply a personal question. Your point about the expenses of family travel is good.

The ‘full ride’ at Harvard for students from families earning under $100K pa includes a decent travel allocation for international students themselves: I created a fictitious profile a couple of years ago to see how the system worked. Not sure about other universities.

In particular I am sympathetic to Asian Americans fighting the perception that they are taking places from MC and UC white YP, and that they may tend towards personality characteristics less valued by elite American universities (who are all pursuing Tomorrow’s Leaders, if not future presidents - of the USA that is) and be penalised for this.

Yup, there've been huge debates about the position of Asian Americans who become "white" in some racialised debates.

I don’t think they become culturally white at all.

I think many have similar academic advantages to white children, or even better ones, as opposed to the disadvantages experienced by children of other ethnic minorities

I disagree.

The high school transcript that universities require when you're applying shows your grade point average, not your exam results. It is compiled from your first week in high school, beginning with your first homework assignment and ending four years later with your last end of semester exam. All American students and their parents are aware that exam results are only a portion of what goes into the GPA.

It is not an exam based system. It values consistency of effort across all four years of high school, week in and week out, and if you are able to show that you participated in a club, sport, performance club, volunteer club, debate team, marching band, etc, on top of getting As,, so.mhch the better, because it shows you have self discipline as well as whatever skills or personal attributes the extra curricular activity required.

In my DCs' high school, the lists of National Merit Finalists and valedictorians always featured students from a wide variety of backgrounds - east Asian, south Asian, Russian, Nigerian, Irish, Jewish, other white European, African American, and Hispanic. Likewise, the 'also rans' list featured all the same groups. It's a MC/ UMC school district, very ethnically and racially diverse.

In a neighboring less diverse high school district, the NMF and valedictorian lists are almost 100% Hispanic, reflecting the predominant ethnic group.

@poetryandwine
A full ride for a domestic student will.often include airfare as part of the package. Students might otherwise be hard pressed to get home.

Yes, @mathanxiety . I was addressing a concern raised by a PP

@Whycanineverthinkofone I don't know the exact specifics, I think the rowing thing included one round trip flight a year for him to go home, but he also had to be doing rowing camps and things in the US in the holidays so if he also was trying to do internships in the UK in the winter, spring or summer breaks it would have been a couple more round trip flights for his family to fund per year.

I was just trying to illustrate the idea that it's not always as straightforward as just the bare costs, going to university in another country can give you new opportunities but sometimes can cut you off from opportunities as well.

There are undoubtedly differences between the UK and the US. However, the central thesis that academic performance at 18 is not a very strong indicator of performance at 21 or 22 still holds.

Women have been encouraged relentlessly into STEM for decades. When I was at university in the mid-1980s there were miserable STEM students who'd been shoehorned into all science A-levels by their no doubt well intentioned schools.

I disagree again.
In the US, the GPA is a reflection of much more than mere academic performance.

It reflects consistency of effort, ability to excel across a broad range of subjects across four years, and allied with all the rest of the requirements for admission to a private university, the ability to manage time really well.

American students who are aiming for the very selective universities (or very selective schools within universities) will have had to start at 13/14 to advance to the level where they would be considered strong applicants.

They will have excelled at English/ writing (four years needed), a MFL (three to four years needed), math to the level of Calc II, they will have taken four years of science, four years of history/ humanities; they will have also squeezed in electives on top, as well as numerous state and local mandated classes (consumer ed, civics, keyboarding/ spreadsheets/ data, amd more). A lot of students will have managed to get all of their pass/fail state or local graduation requirements done by correspondence or summer courses, leaving time in the school year for the academic courses they need tor university applications.

All of this with extra curricular activities - evidence of leadership in the activities greatly preferred.

The UK system obv is exam based and early specialization means students can simply drop a major area of human thought at 16.

This is all correct. Except, as someone who lives in the US currently in a 10% Asian population state, I would say the academic training starts much earlier. There are children playing violin and other string instruments to an advanced level from the age of about 6, who attended Kumon and other early learning center math (along side my own kids) so that they are taking middle school math in elementary school and high school math in middle school. The push starts early and it is universal, across the board and it's hard not to get swept up in it. Part of the reason is that the elite colleges here want to see a long term commitment not only to chosen major, but also to sports, to music, to volunteer work and other extra curricular activities. The kids are all pushed to out do each other. They spend early mornings and all Saturdays training to ice skate or taking a neuroscience course with Johns Hopkins University online. It's endless and it doesn't start at 13/ 14.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w33570

Research is not supportive of your confidence in GPA

Data is fairly conclusive - GPA does not have good predictive value

Agree, and actually, it's very similar where I live, except it's not just the east and south Asian kids doing it. The Russian kids tend to be pushed into classical music and are often taught math at home (Vygotsky approach). Kids from all ethnic backgrounds are in Kumon and Mathnasium and doing coding camps and robotics from a young age.

Then there are sports - girls' and boys' soccer matches all day every weekend on the local pitches starting at 7am, multiple travel teams recruiting elite kids in soccer, basketball, swimming, baseball, softball, and volleyball when height begins to become apparent. The ice rink never closes, it seems, and people set up small seasonal rinks for hockey practice in their backyards too, with goalposts and inline skates and sticks sufficient for those who prefer street hockey with the added excitement of traffic. The lax bros are always out practicing from age 8 on. Kids are always out with coaches on the tennis courts. There is so much wear and tear on local pitches that many have been astroturfed. Summer sports camps are ongoing for most of the summer, and high school tryouts for Fall sports take place a couple of weeks before school starts.

If you want to make the baseball or softball teams as a freshman in high school, you would need several years of travel ball under your belt, and individual coaching for pitching, as well as years of weight training (kids' weight training goes for all the sports). The high school coaches know who is good by the time kids turn 10 or 11.

Then there are the dance and music kids, to be found in various troupes and ensembles and youth orchestras and choirs from age 8 or 9. The local theater turns kids away from its summer workshop offerings, which fill up within five minutes of registration going live online. The local middle schools do heavily subscribed summer musical theater programs. Kids go to Interlochen and other summer music schools. Summer art camps in local universities are always popular. Residential sports and academic camps in various universities within about a 300 mile radius are very popular.

An enormous amount of money is spent on all of this.

The local park district is a big summer employer of teens who are banking on meaningful work experience to help their applications.

@Ceramiq You know the nitty gritty of the GPA stuff, so you'll also know that the AP exams have weight that sometimes is more significant than just the GPA which I agree, has less and less value.

My kids were expected to get 4-5 AP's at grade 5 for entry into some of the UK universities this year. It used to be just 3 AP's in relevant subjects and in some places it still is, but for competitive courses at some of the RG universities, despite fewer international students paying the higher fees, they have increased the "ask" and I think this is a likely reflection on what you say about the GPA not having the value or reflecting the academic grounding that was previously assumed.

Again , @Ceramiq I disagree.

And so do many universities, which now do not require standardised test scores as part of an application. This is based partly on observed outcomes of SAT and ACT vs. GPA scores of graduates or dropouts, and partly because of the fact that coaching for ACT and SAT is something normally only available to higher income bracket families, and can have an impact on test scores. The standardised tests feature a fairly narrow range of coachable skills, with answers in multiple choice format, whereas the GPA reflects skill and ability across multiple formats - essays of all types in language and humanities, test taking, oral presentation, oral contribution to class, ability to work alone and in groups, and ability to manage time consistently. SAT-math has a slightly higher correlation with college success than SAT-English and Writing, but both are lower than GPA as a predictive factor.

https://news.uchicago.edu/story/test-scores-dont-stack-gpas-predicting-college-success
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0013189X20902110

https://www.ct.edu/files/pdfs/HSGPA%20and%20SAT%20as%20Predictors.pdf

There are many other studies.

That's old news. More and more universities are reverting to standardised tests because of poor recruitment. Keep up ;)

Here

@Ceramiq and @mathanxiety :

Harvard Graduate School of Education has an ointeresting online report concerning the re-increased use of the SAT and ACT dated May 17, 2024.

Briefly, the Harvard researchers support that in most cases use should be optional but also take the point that making the exam(s) mandatory is one way to instil confidence in some who would not otherwise take it and get an excellent result. Several states including Michigan now require one or the other and are sending more pupils to top universities (eg U Michigan, a public Ivy) in consequence. A number of Ivies including Harvard now require SAT or ACT.

The researchers agree the exams are coachable, but less so than most aspects of the college application. They argue scores should be interpreted within the candidate’s life context but are then pretty good at finding academic talent.

British universities are looking for different attributes in applicants from those American universities value, exam taking being a major one.

Also, fwiw, virtually no student will get a 4 or 5 in an AP exam without also getting an A in the AP coursework, which will go toward the GPA. You cannot succeed in an AP exam without putting in the sort of work in the classroom that results in an A. GPA is not separate from AP coursework.

The lack of knowledge of individual high schools on the part of British universities also contributes to the focus on standardised test scores. The standardised test scores are (obv) standardised and reflect individual performance levels as compared to a very broad cohort. It's an easy shortcut for British universities.

However, across a wide variety of high schools, GPA really does predict American university success, but all high schools are not created equal. American admissions counselors have familiarity on an ongoing basis with hundreds of high schools and are better able to evaluate the calibre of courses available in different schools and the credentials of the teachers who create and teach those courses than a British institution would be. Likewise, they are able to give appropriate weight to academic references.

@mathanxiety

"We analyze admissions and transcript records for students at multiple Ivy-Plus colleges to study the relationship between standardized (SAT/ACT) test scores, high school GPA, and first-year college grades. Standardized test scores predict academic outcomes with a normalized slope four times greater than that from high school GPA"