Great Schafer Interview (Topher Scott confirmed as 2nd Assistant)

[billhoward]

Schafer himself has improved tremendously over the years as a speaker for both the program specifically and Cornell in general.  He's always been sincere and funny, but he would not have made such cogent and organized responses even a few years ago. This was a pleasure to listen to; thanks for posting it.

Speaking of the importance of being well-spoken to represent your school, new Harvard lax coach Chris Wojcik was the graduation speaker at our HS (he's an alum) and he was not, unfortunately, a polished presence. Wojcik had a pretty good message to tell - "there's more to life than working for Goldman Sachs so, what the heck, follow your dream, maybe one day you'll be a Harvard coach [once the Cornell guy moves to Maryland]" - but Wojcik's best medium must be small groups.

[CAS]

I'm not suggesting there is a lot of such aid, but I refer you to the description of the Cornell Commitment program [which is beyond my computer skills to post]. I think these, and other programs offered elsewhere, provide benefits such as research support accounts and need-based loan replacement.  A friend at Columbia had a fellowship in the sciences which offered similar benefits.  Technically they may not be considered merit aid, but they are programs which award a subset of the freshman class with special benefits.

[Weder]

Maybe I was wrong and Cornell isn't the school I thought it was... When I was there it was drilled to me that Cornell does not give out any merit based scholarships. Once you got in you are equal. Maybe things changed. In which case, I guess that saves me a couple hundred bucks a year.

Cornell National Scholars, one of the Cornell Commitment programs, has been around since 1944. All of the programs are based in part on academic merit.

[Rosey]

Once you got in you are equal.

IMO the egalitarian part about the Ivy admissions process is not the discounted pricetag but the need-blind approach: the Ivies don't take into account your ability to pay when deciding whether to admit you or not. That they then commit to reducing the cost to a level based on some sliding scale is dubiously useful (mostly because for reasons previously stated on some other thread I think the financial aid system is a scam), but less important than not admitting someone because their parents don't make enough money, like Brown did until sometime in the mid-90's.

You might then argue that talk is cheap because admitting someone costs nothing, and you'd probably be right. :-) But need-blind still feels like the "right" thing to me, because at least it gives the prospective student the opportunity to figure out a way to pay for it even if the school doesn't discount the cost sufficiently.

Ultimately, I think there are two potential endgames to the financial aid war, because the current path is unsustainable, resulting in something approximating a square wave separating those who don't pay from those who pay full freight for multiple students. (1) The Ivies figure out a way to cut costs and raise recurring non-tuition revenue sufficiently to cover the full cost of undergraduate education for everyone, or at least cut the full-freight price to something remotely reasonable even for a middle-class family; or (2) they admit that higher education is a business and that their goal is price discrimination to extract the maximum that each admitted student's family can pay. I simply don't think they can straddle the line forever.

[KeithK]

It seems to me that the important thing to preserve is need blind admissions.  Applicants are assessed without regard for how much they can pay and are guaranteed enough aid that they can attend if admitted (though that guarantee may include a potentially large debt component).  I think the new policy still preserves this.

It's in Cornell's best interest to recruit the "best" student body it can (however best is defined). It seems reasonable to pursue this with merit based aid.  Once you have need blind admission and need based aid in place I can only see a couple of good reasons to oppose merit aid.  One is if you think merit aid will drain funding from need based aid.  It seems like the University still has a strong commitment to need based aid, since the package matching is an increase in funding coming from donations and endowment. Two is if you think merit aid will be granted for reasons that run counter to the universities mission (for example, giveaways to guys who have great slap shots). I won't dismiss this concern out of hand, but I will say that the package matching policy isn't well suited to the kind of "corrupt" practices that one might oppose on principle.

Edit: Fixed some poor grammar.

[KeithK]

Since I obviously haven't been paying attention can anyone point me to a story or press release about the new financial aid policies?

Cornell Chronicle
Financial aid initiative web page
Appealing your financial aid decision web page
CAAAN bulletin
How is this possible?

A belated thanks for the links!

[CAS]

Bravo KeithK.  I completely agree.

[Trotsky]

Two is if you think merit aid will be granted for reasons that run counter to the universities mission (for example, giveaways to guys who have great slap shots). I won't dismiss this concern out of hand, but I will say that the package matching policy isn't well suited to the kind of "corrupt" practices that one might oppose on principle.

Could you elaborate on this?  Are you saying since it's a perk for applicants already offered admission under non-merit criteria it can't be misused to exempt unqualified applicants from "legitimate" (i.e., academic) criteria?

[Trotsky]

Schafer himself has improved tremendously over the years as a speaker for both the program specifically and Cornell in general.  He's always been sincere and funny, but he would not have made such cogent and organized responses even a few years ago. This was a pleasure to listen to; thanks for posting it.

Speaking of the importance of being well-spoken to represent your school, new Harvard lax coach Chris Wojcik was the graduation speaker at our HS (he's an alum) and he was not, unfortunately, a polished presence. Wojcik had a pretty good message to tell - "there's more to life than working for Goldman Sachs so, what the heck, follow your dream, maybe one day you'll be a Harvard coach [once the Cornell guy moves to Maryland]" - but Wojcik's best medium must be small groups.

As Dale Carnegie would say, nobody is a born public speaker, it's a skill that must be developed.  It has become rare for people to get any public speaking practice as part of their normal education.  Very few people, particularly from an academic background, seek explicit tutoring in the skill. Since the vast majority of non-sociopaths have a natural fear of public speaking bordering on abject terror, inexperienced speakers tend to be as bad as student drivers, and then improve commensurate with their experience.  I don't know why we would expect anything else.

[Trotsky]

And now that I look at the list of universities that Cornell matches - the fact that Duke is there, which is notorious for giving insane financial aid packages to athletes only, makes me even more sad.

Stanford is the only school where I have teaching experience, although a good friend of mine had a similar experience at Duke: I would risk charges of slandering the institution to state that talented athletes are admitted to those places, despite the reputation to the contrary, with no regard to their academic preparation.  It may be that they had double secret IQ scores north of Max Planck, but the actual level of academic attainment, and interest, of many of the student athletes I tutored at Stanford was zero (and likewise with my friend at Duke).

[css228]

Look, I know many athletes here who might have gone somewhere else without the level of aid they received. Sure they got in partially because of their athletics talents, but once they're in they deserve the same chance at aid as everyone else. And a lot of these people would have gone elsewhere because they couldn't afford to otherwise. As a result they're getting a better education. And I know as many athletes who walked on when they came here, but came here because of financial aid. And finally, there are plenty of athletes that are paying full freight to come here. Something like that would never happen at a lot of those other schools. I think we shouldn't confuse the merit based system of getting in (which yes does involve athletic skill, as well as artistic talent, or leadership, or academic talent) with the need based aid. Even if you're a talented hockey player, you're not going to get much (if any) aid if your family makes $150-200K. Even if they're matching HYP, they wouldn't give that much aid to those people. More generous aid isn't a bad thing. Some of my good friends at school, who happen to be good athletes, are only there because of the increases. If the consequence of increased aid is that more people can go to Cornell I'm all for it. It's not like all the aid is being funneled into athletic scholarships. Seriously where's the problem?
*I forgot to state that the people who are getting their aid packages from HYP matched wouldn't be receiving that aid in the first place if it wasn't need based. So it's really just letting someone else define need*

[CAS]

At Cornell, recruited athletes graduate at the equivalent rate of the overall student population [92-93%].

[David Harding]

Schafer himself has improved tremendously over the years as a speaker for both the program specifically and Cornell in general.  He's always been sincere and funny, but he would not have made such cogent and organized responses even a few years ago. This was a pleasure to listen to; thanks for posting it.

Speaking of the importance of being well-spoken to represent your school, new Harvard lax coach Chris Wojcik was the graduation speaker at our HS (he's an alum) and he was not, unfortunately, a polished presence. Wojcik had a pretty good message to tell - "there's more to life than working for Goldman Sachs so, what the heck, follow your dream, maybe one day you'll be a Harvard coach [once the Cornell guy moves to Maryland]" - but Wojcik's best medium must be small groups.

As Dale Carnegie would say, nobody is a born public speaker, it's a skill that must be developed.  It has become rare for people to get any public speaking practice as part of their normal education.  Very few people, particularly from an academic background, seek explicit tutoring in the skill. Since the vast majority of non-sociopaths have a natural fear of public speaking bordering on abject terror, inexperienced speakers tend to be as bad as student drivers, and then improve commensurate with their experience.  I don't know why we would expect anything else.

I don't know how it is anywhere else, but my daughters had far more experience giving presentations in school (1990's) than I did (1950's-1960's).

[upprdeck]

does letting players in at reduced rates really cause any money to change hands?  at schools that give scholies you have to allocate the money for the scholie into the budget from someplace in the athletic dept.. at a school like cornell does it really matter or is it all funny accouting anyway.. its not like the cost for adding 200 athletes really changes the bottom line for the school. in reality it costs zero to the school . its not like we have to add more professors or it adds incremental costs to the school, other than perhaps food. if a class has 20 or 25 kids it really doesnt cost more to teach. its not like the costs of the school are being covered by the tuition/fees at 100% of the going rate.

[RichH]

does letting players in at reduced rates really cause any money to change hands?  at schools that give scholies you have to allocate the money for the scholie into the budget from someplace in the athletic dept.. at a school like cornell does it really matter or is it all funny accouting anyway.. its not like the cost for adding 200 athletes really changes the bottom line for the school. in reality it costs zero to the school . its not like we have to add more professors or it adds incremental costs to the school, other than perhaps food. if a class has 20 or 25 kids it really doesnt cost more to teach. its not like the costs of the school are being covered by the tuition/fees at 100% of the going rate.

Comment 1: The "does it really matter" argument works for schools like Virginia Tech.  I lived in Blacksburg, VA the year that Marcus Vick was Quarterback for VA Tech's football team, and it really didn't feel like anybody cared about how the football team lived in town, or integrated in the academic community as long as they won and were #3 or better in the nation. Their coach made something north of $4 Million. So, whoopie, they got to jump up and down every few Saturdays in the fall as the team ran out for ESPN. I mean, who cares, right?

Comment 2: I, and I'm assuming some more Cornellians, would take your argument a lot more seriously if you capitalized and punctuated properly, especially given the topic. Look, I try not to be a pedantic a-hole on this forum. Everybody makes a mistake here and there, but I just counted 17 typographical mistakes in your post in a quick 1-minute scan. Arguing for "scholies" (whatever that means) isn't going to win you many fans here.