Aid Office Continues Efforts To Recruit Lower-Income Students

With the markets in flux and family budgets stretched, Ruby K. Tamberino is the kind of student that the admissions office is committed to attracting.

A senior at the Bryn Mawr School, a small all-girls school in Baltimore, Tamberino comes from a single parent family with less than $60,000 in annual income. Under Harvard’s financial aid policy, all of her expenses should be covered.

Tamberino’s mother struggles to send her and her brother to private schools because no scholarships are available. Tamberino didn’t want to strain her family’s finances any further, and she said that she was “blown away” when she heard about Harvard’s financial aid program during her junior year, naming it as a key reason she applied.

“Coming from a single income household, I knew that finances would have a tremendous bearing on my college choice,” Tamberino said, calling Harvard’s commitment to financial aid in light of the economic downturn “absolutely thrilling.”

Last December, Harvard College implemented a financial aid initiative aimed at upper-middle class families. Under the new program, families making between $60,000 and $120,000 pay from 0 to 10 percent of their total incomes, while those making between $120,000 and $180,000 pay only 10 percent. The new program also eliminated loans and removed home equity from consideration.

In light of the dramatic declines in the stock market and the broader economic recession, Harvard’s commitment to affordability has never been more critical for attracting students from working and middle class backgrounds. As Sally C. Donahue, the College’s director of financial aid, said, the new program “came at just the right time for families who were feeling the pinch.”

WRITING OFF HARVARD

University President Drew G. Faust announced in November that the University’s deep coffers had been hit hard, with the endowment losing 22 percent of its original value in the four months through October. The losses through the end of the fiscal year might amount to 30 percent, Faust said.

But despite the gloomy news and the accompanying salary freezes and budget cutbacks—Donahue said that the admissions office is considering cutbacks in publications and conference travel—Faust immediately noted that financial aid for low and middle-income students was a top priority that would not be touched.

The one continuing concern, according to both Donahue and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67, is that families will cross Harvard off their list without carefully examining its financial aid opportunities.

“You could have families, students and their parents, just deciding in general terms that private higher education is just too expensive,” Fitzsimmons said.

Mary C. Bellamy, college counselor at Cape Cod Academy in Barnstable, Mass., said that there were varying levels of awareness of financial aid opportunities.

“Many [students] might not be aware that a private college education would be affordable for them,” she said. She has noticed that students are more likely to have one or two public universities on their college lists this year.

In addition to ensuring that prospective students see Harvard as affordable, the University also allows students whose financial situations change during the course of the year to submit “midyear appeals” to have their aid packages adjusted.

Donahue said that while there are no statistics yet about the number of appeals, she wouldn’t be surprised if they had as many as several hundred.

LOW INCOME RECRUITING

Because many students may not be aware of Harvard’s financial aid program, Fitzsimmons is frequently out of the office, crisscrossing the country—and the world—and constantly emphasizing his commitment to making Harvard affordable.

With the introduction of the upper middle income program last year, Donahue said that Harvard saw a 20 percent increase in people applying for financial aid and an 8 percent increase in those receiving it.

The percentage of lower-income students in the freshman class has held steady for the past few years at “just below about a quarter of the class” after rising when increases in financial aid were announced a few years ago. Currently, about 60 percent of the freshman class receives need-based financial assistance.

Fitzsimmons said that as with any big change, it could take anywhere from three to five to even 10 years for news of the program to be widely known.

Naomi T. Ewing, director of college counseling at Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart, located in Chicago’s north suburbs, noticed that low income students aren’t quick to latch onto Harvard’s promise of affordability.

“They still don’t believe that it’s a viable option,” she said. “It’s a still a thing where students and families have to be encouraged.”

—Staff writer can be reached Lingbo Li can be reached at lingboli@fas.harvard.edu