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.

@ChangeitUp2 We don’t have a quota for home / overseas — we can take whatever number we like of overseas students. It’s our home students where we have to apply effective quotas of, eg., numbers of students from independent/maintained schools, number of students from underrepresented cohorts, etc. So if we’re low on those, we make more offers to them — and often no overseas students as a result. (Overseas offers effectively drop outside our quotas, so don’t help us meet our offer targets.)

We do apply different ratios for different types of student - we call it a “cover ratio” - but in practice we are often dealing with such small numbers that this doesn’t make much practical difference. Eg. if you have a student allocation of ten for a particular subject, and you need to make 70% of these to applicants from the U.K. maintained sector, if you take up one of the three remaining places with an overseas offer and that student doesn’t take up the place, you’ve lost that offer and you only get 9 students arriving. (Generally, if you’re going to make a risky offer, you’d rather make another offer to a home student with potential from an underprivileged cohort, because we have more of them applying than we can take.)

We do all our admissions process in one go to fit in with the U.K. examination timetable, so there are no rolling admissions — all the offers get made at the same time, so it’s crucial to get the numbers right.

Overseas students vary from very few in some subjects to around 10% in some subjects (more in STEM); but they are largely from Asia and Europe, or other countries with U.K.-legacy or U.K.-compatible education systems, with very very few applicants from North America. That was also true even before U.K. universities imposed much higher fees.

I agree with all of this. I suppose it may be new to some on the thread

Candidates from struggling backgrounds are less to have been coached, and admissions officers know this. A candidate from a bad school and a struggling background who achieves aptitude scores in, say, the top 1% rightly stands out.

It is interesting that @cityofgirls confirms the use of SAT scores as a measure of intellect by Cambridge or Oxford, where AP scores are regarded as more coachable. That is consistent with the thinking that receiving a great SAT score - when you may not have even been thinking of HE - can open up opportunities. Which is where our discussion began!

Well, we look at all the data we get including the SATs, but that’s not quite the same as using them as a measure of intellect - a candidate with great SATs but who doesn’t have the 5 x 5 AP scores would still not be admitted. There is a reasonable amount of scepticism about standardised tests in the U.K. - we do sometimes use adaptive standardised assessment tests at points in the school curriculum, but these aren’t used as formal qualifications or for university admissions. Likewise some subjects at Oxford and Cambridge use standardised tests like the BMAT, LNAT etc., but these are much more knowledge-based aptitude tests than US SATS, and they are only used as an additional piece of the data profile.

@cityofgirls Thank you that explanation makes a lot of sense.
I would also let you know as a parent living in the US right now, that the AP tests are all getting diluted. Some are having up to 30% of the curriculum dropped, in an effort to increase the pass rate.

I didn’t mean to put words in your mouth, @cityofgirls. ‘Cleverness’ is more of a British term than an American one. I daresay that SAT doesn’t claim to map directly to intellect and all hell would (rightly) break loose if it did

@poetryandwine
A significant difference between SAT score and GPA is likely to make an admissions officer wonder if an applicant had been coached for the SAT or even if a ringer had taken the test. A good GPA even from a poor school and a good SAT score will get the student into a university, and if the student and family have educated themselves on the financial aspect of university and are prepared for the student to enter an environment that is culturally different in many respects from the one they're used to, the student can be successful.

The most important factor in getting a promising student into a university is support and encouragement from home and knowledgrable encouragement from the school. My local high school conducts personal outreach to families of promising students whose families have never gone to university, beginning early in the high school years, instead of inviting all parents of juniors to meetings in the school to discuss universoty applications and financing and hoping that the parents will both turn up and also see the potential of their students.

There are cultural barriers to aspiration that many universities do not take into account, expecting disadvantaged students and their families to take an enormous leap in the dark. Above all, families can have a huge fear of debt, and an aversion to loans. It's very important to steer these students toward universities that have programs offering full rides to lower income students, and no nasty surprises like a books and materials charge amounting to $$ per semester, or obligatory university health insurance $$ even if a family has Medicaid. Families can be very attracted to ROTC programs in university as they offer full payment, an armed forces commission upon graduation, and five years of a steady paycheck/ active duty afterwards, with lifelong VA benefits.

A good SAT score alone isn't going to make the decision to go to university happen.

This is a really interesting discussion. @mathanxiety and @ChangeitUp2 how would you say the IB is considered by the Ivy League and equivalent US universities? As compared to APs for example?

Honestly I don't know how the Ivy League sees the IB, but I suspect they take plenty of students who have completed the diploma overseas and some in the USA. We lived in a town until recently on the East Coast, where the IB was well represented by a British school and a Lycee. But at the same time, two of our local public high schools offered it (not the one my kids attended). One of these took it very seriously, students had to apply-in and would complete the full diploma, the other school had a kind of pick-n-mix approach where students could take AP classes and IB classes and mix them to their own advantage (to lean more into STEM usually). There was no focus on the diploma and therefore really no cache at the end of it. Both cohorts are mostly focused on getting into the in-state options with the Ivy colleges as "reaches" because they are now reaches for everyone when the acceptance rate is in single digits.

@Edgeofforever I don’t know about US universities, but a good thing that the IB does is that every year they publish global stats on the year’s cohort, so you can see eg. what numbers and percentages of the global IB cohort achieved each point score. A candidate achieving 45 is usually in the top 0.8-1.2 percent of all candidates taking the IB worldwide, for example — this is really useful data for elite university admissions.

Oxford and Cambridge generally have an admissions threshold of 42 points (but, in practice, the IB students I admit tend to have a minimum of 43-44).

@mathanxiety I never said good SATs alone were enough. You’ve been arguing above that a good GPA from a bad school isn’t helpful either.

I am only saying that requiring the SAT can be eye opening for certain kids.

I taught at a public Ivy for 15 years so all of this is quite familiar to me, thanks. I will note for MumsNetters that ROTC is a US military scholarship programne, for citizens only. That steady paycheck tovwhich @mathanxiety refers is from active duty, about which people will feel variously. Personally I think 18 yo is very young for making a 5 year commitment 4-5 years in the future.

The IB is well regarded.

One local private single sex school here offers it alongside the regular AP, honors, or college prep curriculum. Students have to qualify academically for entry to the program. However, since their program requires three subjects studied at higher level and three at standard level during junior and senior years it suffers by comparison with the AP, which offers unlimited opportunities to rack up college credits and potentially save time and money at university, depending on where you go (universities that require a core or common curriculum for all incoming freshmen don't normally allow students to skip chunks of the freshman experience even with 5s in their APs). While the IB is seen as a feather in the cap of the private school that offers it, many parents prefer the tried and trusted AP track.

Hi, @Edgeofforever

It happens that I am close with a YP from a state school in the US who did IB. They wouldn’t have qualified for financial aid anywhere and of course many top schools don’t give merit scholarships.

They were admitted early decision to their extremely competitive top choice and offered a hefty merit scholarship by their back up choice.

Of course this is a data point of one, but quite recent.

PS I think the international aspect of IB may mitigate against grade inflation, though that is no more than a hunch or possibly wishful thinking.

We know A levels suffer inflation and @ChangeitUp2 has said that AP tests are going the same way.

Very surprised to hear that attending a good high school (and living in affluent area) is a prerequisite to doing well in SAT. As someone working in education in a developing country I know many children from a poor background who didn't attend good schools or live in affluent areas who went on to ace the SAT and receive full scholarships to top US universities.

Lovely post, @Isthiso

Similar to what top SATs can do for Americans with good grades etc from weak schools

PS that link was about younger pupils. Not clear how it plays out for the SAT. Also, the absolute top performers, particularly on the aptitude tests, occur everywhere.

Thank you, yes the IB does seem to have so far missed out on the grade inflation. It's really helpful to know that it's highly regarded in the US as I get the feeling it is not as well regarded in the UK, and offers made for it seem higher than those required for A Levels.

A lot of UK universities seem to look at the three IB Higher Level subjects and treat them as if they were 3 A-levels. Since the material covered per subject is slightly less at IB than at A-level (with exceptions), IB offers tend to be on the harsh side. It's IMO a bit of a rough-and-ready approach and some IB students miss out on top universities unfairly.

Such a great wealth of info, so very grateful. We are thinking of applying too and the first SAT attempt wasnt as wanted(1540). My daughter said it wasnt hard and she didnt know what was wrong as there wasnt a way to check for it. Does Ivy league needs absolute marks. Would revising longer than 4 weeks is needed and could have improved the score. We think of applying but only when the SAT is good enough. Since the SAT result last week, she seems to be put off.

@Edgeofforever , @Ceramiq

When I was doing admissions we liked IB although as @Ceramiq says we essentially treated the requirement for excellent marks on three Higher Level exams as A Level conditions.

There was some worry that with less Maths content students from an IB background would be at a disadvantage, but we did an internal study and they were actually performing slightly better, with the large majority of the other students having A star or A at FM. Possibly this is because IB HL Maths emphasises problem solving, critical thinking, and less routine problems.

I have been in the UK for a while now so I am not up on this, @Greenleave . I hope some American parents can advise you.

What country are you in?

IB students may be studying a quantitative subject at SL that isn't captured by the focus on the 3 HL subjects? And students with a heavier than normal workload at 16-18 (which is the case for IB students versus A-levels and many other national education systems) are perhaps better prepared for university in a more general way.

We certainly do like IB and treat it on a par with A-levels, but as I said, even though our standard offer is 42 points (Oxbridge), in practice the IB applicants we take tend to have 43/44 rather than 42 (though, this is also true of A-level - most of our intake achieve results higher than the threshold standard offer). I couldn’t speak to other university admissions systems though.

Some STEM subject tutors are a bit less keen on IB because they can think the content is not in-depth enough (even higher IB is less coverage than A-level in terms of content and depth; and STEM subjects here require high maths coverage too).

I’m in the humanities, though, where we find that the IB’s slightly less depth compared to the A-level is balanced out by the breadth of the IB subject offer and the interdisciplinary value of doing more subjects. At one time about 10-15 years ago a lot of our U.K. candidates were doing the IB, and there was a real trend towards it. The Gove A-level reforms really knocked that on the head, unfortunately, because schools had to adjust their sixth form teaching quite substantially and a lot stopped offering the IB as a result.

In general, though, I’d say we are usually very happy to see it, but that it may benefit students more who are going into the arts/humanities/social sciences; and a bit less for those hoping to take STEM subjects where they may be slightly disadvantaged against the greater specialisation of STEM A-level courses.

I agree with you on this. We also had an overall marks requirement that was an attempt to capture this. I think most UK universities give less thought to IB qualifications than to A levels, but are happy with them

@cityofgirls @poetryandwine My niece did the IB (not in the UK) and was able to take Maths, Biology and Physics at HL and Chemistry, English and French at SL. Doing Maths plus 3 Sciences is by special request to the IBO but is in practice granted to students who haven't discounted pursuing HE that requires all four subjects (which was the case for my niece in the country in which she was living). She had an offer of 43/776 for NatSci at Cambridge. In the end she got 45 and doesn't seem to have encountered any problems at all on her course - indeed, she has been actively recruited for a PhD when she graduates this summer.

My experience tells me that international qualifications (ie national secondary school leaving diplomas) are practically impossible for admissions teams to really understand but I would have thought that the IB should have been fully grasped by now and not viewed through the prism of A-levels.