Vassar eliminates financial aid loads for Poughkeepsie High School graduates

Sarah Siegel Life Editor

Vassar College will offer an expanded financial aid policy for graduates of Poughkeepsie High School (PHS), President Catharine Bond Hill announced at a gathering of PHS parents and students on Tuesday, Feb. 5.

The Poughkeepsie High School Scholarship Program, which will begin next fall with the Class of 2012, will eliminate loans from the financial aid packages awarded to PHS graduates who are accepted to Vassar. Those loans will be replaced by scholarship funding.

The idea for the initiative came out of a discussion between Anna Volk ’08 and Assistant Professor of English Kiese Laymon, a member of the Committee on Inclusion and Excellence (CIE).

Volk, a resident of Oberlin, Ohio, recalled that Oberlin College offers a program as part of the college-town partnership that gives any admitted Oberlin High School student a full scholarship.

“In Oberlin, everyone knows about the scholarship and many people take advantage of it, including several of my friends,” she said. “So after talking to Kiese, we realized, why can’t we do this here? Oberlin taught me that this is how a college should treat its community’s schools.”

The recommendation for the policy came from CIE, and the policy was endorsed by the Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid.

“It seemed to me like a wonderful idea,” said Hill. “Vassar is committed to recruiting a diverse student body, and PHS serves a very diverse community. We would like their students to look at Vassar as they think about their college options.”

The number of students affected by the program will likely be small. In the past five years, about four or five PHS seniors have applied to Vassar each year.

“In a typical year, Vassar receives only a few applications from PHS, and therefore usually admits just one or two students,” said Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid David Borus. “This has varied somewhat from year to year, but the number of applications from PHS has never been large.”

Two PHS graduates currently attend Vassar, and two more have applied for admission next fall.
Director of Financial Aid Michael Fraher attributed the historically small number of applications to the College’s location.

“If they have applied and been admitted, I believe that the decision to turn down the offer was based on factors other than what they would have had to contribute toward a Vassar education, such as not wanting to go to college so close to home or their belief that a different college was more conducive to meeting their personal interests,” said Fraher.

Despite the additional aid, Vassar’s admission standards will remain as rigorous for local students as they are for students from any other location, the administrators noted.

“However, as part of the increased institutional emphasis on our role in the broader community, the College is working to increase its outreach to local schools, partially in hopes of having more well-qualified students give serious consideration to Vassar as a possible college option,” said Fraher.

Last year Vassar returned to a need-blind admissions policy for all applicants, admitting students without taking their financial need into account. Once students are admitted, the College meets all of their demonstrated financial need through scholarship grants, work study and loans.

Approximately half of all Vassar students currently receive need-based financial aid from the College.

Many of Vassar’s peer institutions have eliminated loans from students’ aid entirely in the past year, including Williams, Swarthmore and Haverford Colleges.

Director of Institutional Research David Davis Van-Atta has been studying these developments but told The Miscellany News earlier this month that, “Vassar is not very positioned to be able to make similar reductions in its loans.”

However, the cost of the PHS initiative will not be overwhelming.

“Relative to our scholarship and grant budget, in excess of $30 million, the cost is not a concern,” Fraher said. “This no-loan policy is really just the latest initiative on the part of the College to have a positive influence on the educational aspirations of students in our community,” he said.

Outreach programs to PHS have included the Vassar Science Scholars Program, early financial aid awareness workshops directed at families of middle and high school students in Poughkeepsie, and an annual workshop to help families understand the federal financial aid application.

Vassar students engage in such programs through volunteer and field work activities.

Hill pointed to these programs, along with the creation of a new shuttle system and the College Bookstore’s move into Arlington, as aspects of a continuing effort to strengthen the College’s connection to the surrounding community.

Fraher agreed. “Hopefully the attention given to this latest initiative will help dispel a belief that high-cost, selective institutions are inherently less affordable than lower cost private or state schools, especially for students from low-income families,” he said. “Within about a 60-mile radius, we are the only school that guarantees to meet 100 percent of the assessed financial need of all admitted students,” Fraher added.

“In the end we just want to make sure that students see Vassar as a viable option financially, all other college factors being equal.”

Borus, too, believes that the new scholarship initiative will foster closer ties between Vassar and the high school. “The program has the potential to make Vassar more accessible to more students and families there, as well as providing yet another connection between the College and our immediate community,” he said.

Director of Public Relations for the Poughkeepsie City School District Nancy Miller hoped that students would begin to see Vassar as a viable alternative.

“We are most appreciative and we are looking forward to having some of our students take advantage of this wonderful opportunity,” Miller said. “It’s not just about seeing Vassar as a possible college choice; it’s also about getting these kids to look at the range of possibilities of schools that are out there for them—regardless of money.”

Volk, an English as a Second Language tutor at PHS, said that the program will benefit both Vassar and the community.

“I know a lot of very smart students who would love to come to Vassar, but consider it totally out of the question because of money,” she said. “The most important part of the program—which we’ll have to see how Vassar follows through on—is that Vassar must now really court PHS students and make it widely known that Vassar wants and will accept PHS students if they qualify,” she said.

Volk also hopes that the program will bring Vassar closer to other schools in the area. In Oberlin, she explained, college representatives visit schools beginning in seventh grade to give the kids information, take them on tours of campus and hold information sessions for parents.

“In a sense, the college becomes part of the community’s school system and in that way becomes a lot less alienated and excluded from the city,” said Volk. “So this scholarship is a first step in that direction, but there are many other changes that we’ll have to deal with as a result of this opening of the college to the community.”