Merit-based aid. Interesting?

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I hope you do not mean to imply that students from upper middle class backgrounds are prima facie less meritorious because of economic advantage? When need-based aid already exists, why even try to parse out merit in economic terms?
To the contrary based on our current methods of evaluation of merit they are more meritorious. All that I am trying to say is that perhaps they have a systemic advantage that contributes to this. One would think that the son of a gardner is just as likely to excel in college and on standardized tests as a the son of business magnate, but thats not what happens.
 
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I had a friend in exactly this situation, did not qualify for any need-based financial aid but her parents are not giving her anything. Seems very unfair, but I can't think of any good solution, since lots of wealthy families would start declaring they're not supporting their children if med schools would believe them. Does your school make an effort to differentiate and treat people like my friend as needy? Like maybe based on how college was paid for?

It basically comes down to formulas. Doing a better job would require us performing invasive financial investigations on every matriculant, and that ain't gonna happen.

I don't think this is necessarily pertinent to the OP, but one factor that as a nontrad I have found helpful in approaching financing my education is how some schools define student independence. Harvard actually does a relatively good job of this: they have a sliding scale for student age vs. expected family contribution. I forget the specific numbers, but as a student gets older they pay a decreasing percentage of the family contribution, down to ~10% for a student over 35 years old. Tufts has a flat cutoff at 38 years old. Georgetown considers any married student to be financially independent and thus doesn't factor in parental income for need-based scholarships.

These examples all obviously only take into account a single factor, but it is a start towards a more "holistic approach" for need-based scholarships.
 
You are more likely to have a 38+ score if you have wealthy parents. I find it interesting that you think SES has no impact on performance when the distributions are clearly different and it is a reproducible effect across standardized tests, and it is pretty robust if you look at the relative deprivation SES literature.
Oh I do think there's an impact on performance. I have no doubt that the +1.5 avg MCAT you get from moving from the middle to the top is statistically significant. But look at the magnitudes we're talking about.

The point I'm making is that the merit winning candidates are so ****ing deep into the right tail that you can't claim it's mostly their wealth any more. When going middle to top is +1.5, and even in the top quintile only half the students are breaking 30+/top 20%, someone that scores in the top fraction of a percent is an extremely capable, hard working, meritorious individual even compared against the rich kids. Doesn't work any more to pretend they're a typical student who had money thrown at them.
 
At my school, tuition is covered for everyone (which I know is not possible at most places, but their reasons for covering the tuition offer some insight into this discussion). The school has three primary reasons for covering tuition:

One reason is recruitment. I know for a fact that several of my classmates would have gone to other top schools that have been around a bit longer and are better known if not for the free tuition. This does matter to the school a lot, especially since it's a newer school and the class composition is really important to our learning style.

The second reason is to meet student need. Many of my classmates are lower income, but many are not in the category that would qualify for much aid at a purely need-based school. (I also wanted to add to this that I was lucky enough to have my parents pay for my college costs, but they literally started saving for that before I was born, and made a lot of sacrifices to make sure my brothers and I could go where we wanted for school. The fact that they paid for undergrad doesn't necessarily reflect their ability to pay for my med school now).

The third reason (and the one my school often brings up as a top one) is that our school doesn't want its graduates to pick their specialties or career paths based solely on their potential income and ability to pay off their loans. Especially since our school is research focused (and researchers typically make less money than clinicians) they didn't want people to feel forced into high-paying specialties or purely clinical, non-academic work. This third point is why I think it would be a mistake to take away merit-based aid. The $300k in debt can easily push some of the best and brightest away from things like academic medicine or even primary care, when we really should want the top students to be following their passions, meeting community needs, and contributing to the field.

I am all for need-based aid as well, but I think it's important to recognize that the two types of aid serve different purposes, especially when considering the potential for debt to shape an aspiring physician's entire career.

[Edited for grammar]
 
Oh I do think there's an impact on performance. I have no doubt that the +1.5 avg MCAT you get from moving from the middle to the top is statistically significant. But look at the magnitudes we're talking about.

The point I'm making is that the merit winning candidates are so ****ing deep into the right tail that you can't claim it's mostly their wealth any more. When going middle to top is +1.5, and even in the top quintile only half the students are breaking 30+/top 20%, someone that scores in the top fraction of a percent is an extremely capable, hard working, meritorious individual even compared against the rich kids. Doesn't work any more to pretend they're a typical student who had money thrown at them.
looking at the chart an just eyeballing it, there is a ~17.5% of EO5 above 37.4 vs 37.4 being 2 full SD's above the eo1 group. Couple this with GPA differences and you have a pretty substantial difference in the population receiving merit based aid. Perhaps adjusting merit based aid based on being above the normal distribution in SES might solve your concerns. In that case sure throw lots of money at the EO5 above 40. Thinking about it, IMHO it seems like a regressive tax like the mortgage deduction.

The EO1 in the top quartile are lucky to get admitted vs the EO5's in top quartile get money thrown at them.
 
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The point I'm making is that the merit winning candidates are so ****ing deep into the right tail that you can't claim it's mostly their wealth any more. When going middle to top is +1.5, and even in the top quintile only half the students are breaking 30+/top 20%, someone that scores in the top fraction of a percent is an extremely capable, hard working, meritorious individual even compared against the rich kids. Doesn't work any more to pretend they're a typical student who had money thrown at them.

This is why academic performance, like intelligence, has a complex relationship with wealth. Certainly, someone above the 95th percentile has done things just right save for rare exceptions, and you can't simply attribute that good performance to wealth (I've known only too many business majors who prove a silver spoon is no replacement for intelligence and study ethic). But the causal factors may work in such a way that saying "X% of success is attributable to wealth" provides an incomplete picture. Many of those high performance high SES people have merit in their achievements that no privilege takes away, but growing up among people familiar with the system and without worries related to finances or family gives the right substrate for achievement. I'd argue that while there may be fundamental differences in between SES groups, some of the difference results from people with the right inclinations not having that substrate.

It's certainly hard to tell apart the people that didn't achieve more because of legitimate reasons from those who simply reached their top, I don't envy the job of people in charge of differentiating the two. But given that there are indeed people in the former of the two, it's compelling to say they need the support more than their high SES and higher achievement counterparts. Again, I understand in the practical world it's hard to draw such a line between shades of gray. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
 
@Libertyne I appreciate the facts you bring to this discussion. I don't agree with what you seem to be implying. Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but the point you seem to be making is that merit aid goes primarily to the economically advantaged which isn't fair because their indices of achievement are artificially inflated by the advantages of wealth. I'm sorry if I am misrepresenting your views. Of course the recipients of merit aid are disproportionately economically advantaged; need-based aid covers the economically disadvantaged. One might draw the wrong conclusions from the data you present; for example that high MCAT and high GPA are the products of wealth rather than hard work and intelligence. Any systemic advantage that wealth confers is already taken into account by disparities in admission standards.
 
looking at the chart an just eyeballing it, there is a ~17.5% of EO5 above 37.4 vs 37.4 being 2 full SD's above the eo1 group. Couple this with GPA differences and you have a pretty substantial difference in the population receiving merit based aid. Perhaps adjusting merit based aid based on being above the normal distribution in SES might solve your concerns. In that case sure throw lots of money at the EO5 above 40. Thinking about it, IMHO it seems like a regressive tax like the mortgage deduction.

The EO1 in the top quartile are lucky to get admitted vs the EO5's in top quartile get money thrown at them.
What are you eyeballing? 17.5% being top percentile doesn't sound right. By definition only 1% of the entire pool can be top percentile, and 17.5% of the top 20% would alone constitute a 3.5% chunk, even if we pretended only rich kids scored that high.

I think some adjustment does happen, due to the overlap with URM. If the lower end SES is disproportionately URM and URM MCATs are looked at differently, you get the idea.

@Libertyne I appreciate the facts you bring to this discussion. I don't agree with what you seem to be implying. Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but the point you seem to be making is that merit aid goes primarily to the economically advantaged which isn't fair because their indices of achievement are artificially inflated by the advantages of wealth. I'm sorry if I am misrepresenting your views. Of course the recipients of merit aid are disproportionately economically advantaged; need-based aid covers the economically disadvantaged. One might draw the wrong conclusions from the data you present; for example that high MCAT and high GPA are the products of wealth rather than hard work and intelligence. Any systemic advantage that wealth confers is already taken into account by disparities in admission standards.
I don't think it's just his view, the authors of the original paper must feel similarly. Merit aid isn't really merit aid if wealth buys you high grades and high scores. Question is how true that statement is. It does seem the majority of high scores come from wealthy backgrounds, but at the same time the vast majority that come from wealthy backgrounds do not have merit-level scores.
 
What are you eyeballing? 17.5% being top percentile doesn't sound right. By definition only 1% of the entire pool can be top percentile, and 17.5% of the top 20% would alone constitute a 3.5% chunk, even if we pretended only rich kids scored that high.

I think some adjustment does happen, due to the overlap with URM. If the lower end SES is disproportionately URM and URM MCATs are looked at differently, you get the idea.


I don't think it's just his view, the authors of the original paper must feel similarly. Merit aid isn't really merit aid if wealth buys you high grades and high scores. Question is how true that statement is. It does seem the majority of high scores come from wealthy backgrounds, but at the same time the vast majority that come from wealthy backgrounds do not have merit-level scores.
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mean of 30 with an SD of 4.9 means a full 30% of EO5s above 35. Assuming a normal distribution.
 
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shame on me and my upper middle class background for thinking I deserved a merit award. My high scores must reflect the wealth of my family so really, I should have payed MORE for medical school (flipping the bird to the folks at Harvard, Stanford, and Hopkins)
 
shame on me and my upper middle class background for thinking I deserved a merit award. My high scores must reflect the wealth of my family so really, I should have payed MORE for medical school (flipping the bird to the folks at Harvard, Stanford, and Hopkins)
I am not trying to take away from the achievements of high SES individuals. But do we seriously think that the achievement gap in scores between lower ses individuals and higher SES individuals is due to lower ses individuals being lazier and dumber? To give an example of how it really is a zero sum game, Even though I am classified as an EO1 I was only offered merit scholarships based on my scores compared to any needs based scholarships. I am happy to be in medical school and have the ability to pursue what I have wanted and ultimately increase the SES level of my children.
 
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@libertyyne: My beef is not with you, but if you wish to defend the position of this paper, let's start with the reference to full ride merit scholarship. The two '"top" full cost of attendance scholarships that I'm aware of are at UCLA and NYU. Both funded by large single donors. I challenge you to prove me wrong that the majority of the kind of merit awards that poach students from Harvard are not independently funded and thus are not taking dollars away from need-based aid (you can take up your concerns with David Geffen, Jan Vilcek, or Larry Silverstein). The argument is flawed right out of the gate
Now let's talk about what I suspect is the real motive for the paper: Merit aid threatens the idealogy of medical students paying for prestige (and who do you suppose has the most to lose?)
Congratulations on overcoming being dumb and lazy.
 
@libertyyne: I see you completed changed the tone and content of your post, thus I wish to retract the snarky remark in response to your original post, though I don't believe in editing
 
@libertyyne: My beef is not with you, but if you wish to defend the position of this paper, let's start with the reference to full ride merit scholarship. The two '"top" full cost of attendance scholarships that I'm aware of are at UCLA and NYU. Both funded by large single donors. I challenge you to prove me wrong that the majority of the kind of merit awards that poach students from Harvard are not independently funded and thus are not taking dollars away from need-based aid (you can take up your concerns with David Geffen, Jan Vilcek, or Larry Silverstein). The argument is flawed right out of the gate
Now let's talk about what I suspect is the real motive for the paper: Merit aid threatens the idealogy of medical students paying for prestige (and who do you suppose has the most to lose?)
Congratulations on overcoming being dumb and lazy.
Frankly, I dont care about the paper. I am just pointing out that there is an element of regressiveness in the way merit scholarships are awarded. we would all like to think that we live in an ayn rand novel where individuals lift themselves up by sheer willpower and innate ability , but reality is way more complicated than that. I dont know how large single donors would respond to "we would like to stratify the awards based on achievement in SES cohort". The schools where I was awarded merit aid did not have large donors and was coming out of some discretionary funding.

Regarding the Edit. It was made before a response was made so I assumed no one had seen it or responded to it. I dont believe the content or argument is different, I just felt my tone was inappropriate.
 
@libertyyne: My beef is not with you, but if you wish to defend the position of this paper, let's start with the reference to full ride merit scholarship. The two '"top" full cost of attendance scholarships that I'm aware of are at UCLA and NYU. Both funded by large single donors. I challenge you to prove me wrong that the majority of the kind of merit awards that poach students from Harvard are not independently funded and thus are not taking dollars away from need-based aid (you can take up your concerns with David Geffen, Jan Vilcek, or Larry Silverstein). The argument is flawed right out of the gate
Now let's talk about what I suspect is the real motive for the paper: Merit aid threatens the idealogy of medical students paying for prestige (and who do you suppose has the most to lose?)
Congratulations on overcoming being dumb and lazy.
Posts from people working on Adcoms on this very thread suggest that only some are coming from private donors and destined for merit. And even if those were the majority of merit-based aid, a claim which nobody seems to have the data to confirm or falsify, it's still fair to say that if the system that distributes scholarship funding does so in a way that benefits those who already come from a better financial position it's indirectly hurting those who end up receiving inadequate or nonexistent financial aid. If this is the shortcoming of a medical institution or the shortcoming of a private donor or donors, it's still worth mentioning. As already pointed out, it's one of the less noble necessities adcoms feel the need to address for stats.

That people make the ethical argument that the money should be allocated to those most in need doesn't detract from your achievements as an undergrad or medical student, nor does your SES devalue your achievements, I don't think anyone here argues that. Only whether your financial support should be given on the basis of need or achievement.
 
@goatmed: Medical tuition should not be a burden for any student. Medicine should attract the best and brightest from all walks. I think all can agree. At some point consideration of merit must enter into the equation...I have no more to say on the topic
 
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