YCBK 261: College Financial Aid is a Sham

Your College Bound Kid | Admission Tips, Admission Trends & Admission Interviews

In this episode you will hear: (09:55) Mark and Dave discuss an article by Kevin Carey, that appeared on July 25, 2022 in Slate.org entitled: “The Single biggest thing to know about financial aid: It’s a Sham. Mark and Dave talk about why financial aid is controversial and then they have one of their knock down drag out debates. https://slate.com/business/2022/07/college-financial-aid-sham.html (52:50) For our question from a listener, Lisa and Mark answer a question about what should a student do if they ask for a recommendation and they are told, “you write it and I will sign it”. Do they proceed and write the letter? (01:03:40) Our interview is with Jon Boeckenstedt, the Vice Provost of Oregon State University . In this two-part interview Jon will answer questions about whether certain practices are ethical or unethical in college admissions. Part 2 of 2 Preview of Part 2 Jon rates taking a large number of student through Early Decision. Jon shares when ED feels appropriate and when it isn’t Jon talks about using Early Action as a tool to flip students to commit Early Decision Jon talks about learning from how a college treats you in the application process Jon comments on his perspective on the propriety or impropriety of saying that a college meets 100% of need Jon also comments on whether any college is really need blind. Jon talks why he likes the term “FAFSA-blind” better than “need-blind” Jon talks about what he means by saying, graduation rates are more input than output data Jon tells us a responsible way to use graduation rate as a statistical metric Jon tells us why IPEDS is such a great source of data (01:16:00) The recommended resource looks at Bethesda Magazine’s annual look at which colleges students from six local high schools applied, were admitted and where they enrolled: (01:28:56) There is no college Spotlight this week but Dave and Mark give you a bonus, “in the News” as they discuss Columbia’s fall from 2 to 18 the rankings. The article is called, “Columbia whistleblower on exposing college rankings: “They are Worthless” This article appeared in the Guardian and it is an interview with Michael Thaddeus, the Columbian professor who blew the whistle on Columbia. This is a fascinating article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/16/columbia-whistleblower-us-news-rankings-michael-thaddeus . Please send in your questions either on Twitter at @YCBKpodcast using the Messages tab (this is our preference) or via email at for the 28 admissions interviews we are doing in the summer and fall. Our interviews are with the following people at the following schools: Confirmed interviews you can still send in questions for our guests: Bard-Mackie Siebens Mercer-Kelly Holloway Rice University-Tamara Siler American University-Andrea Felder Pitzer College-Yvonne Berumen Chapman University-Marcela Meija-Martinez Connecticut College-Andy Strickler* Trinity College-Anthony Berry* College of the Atlantic-Heather Albert* Spelman College-Chelsea Holley* Scripps College-Victoria Romero* Saint Louis University-Daniel Wood-(Interview is about transfer admissions, Daniel is a transfer counselor) Colby College-Randi Arsenault* University of Georgia-David Graves* Washington University St Louis-Ronne Turner To sign up to receive Your College-Bound Kid PLUS, our free quarterly admissions deep-dive, delivered directly to your email , just go to yourcollegeboundkid.com, and you will see the sign up on the right side of the page under “the Listen to our podcast icons” We are revamping YCBK PLUS and we will have shorter more frequent blog articles that will launch later this fall. Follow Mark Stucker on Twitter to get breaking college admission news, and updates about the podcast before they go live. You can ask questions on Twitter that he will answer them on the podcast. Mark will also share additional hot topics in the news and breaking news on this Twitter feed. Twitter message is also the preferred way to ask questions for our podcast: https://twitter.com/YCBKpodcast To access our transcripts, click: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/category/transcripts/ Find the specific episode transcripts for the one you want to search and click the link Find the magnifying glass icon in blue (search feature) and click it Enter whatever word you want to search. I.e. 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