A Commitment to Socioeconomic Diversity

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Tara Freeman

St. Lawrence University regularly provides approximately 80 percent of its students with financial aid, which is often a decisive factor in choosing a school. 
Mary, for instance, a sophomore from New Hampshire, said she had applied to more than a dozen schools. Although St. Lawrence was on her list, she worried about its remoteness and relatively small size, and there was no way she could afford its tuition, room and board, and fees, which now runs about $50,000 a year.  
But in the end, Mary said, “financial aid was the primary reason I chose SLU. I had been accepted to my top school. However, it hadn’t awarded me a fraction of what SLU had. I asked myself, ‘Do I want to go to a school with a prestigious name and be in debt paying off college loans for the rest of my life, or do I want to go to a good, respectable school free of cost and be able to afford to attend law school upon graduation?’  The answer was obvious. I could not be happier about my decision today. SLU has turned out to be the perfect fit for me both socially and academically.”
Mary, who asked that her real name not be used, said that one of the best things about the university’s financial aid is that it “attracts a more diverse group of students.”
President Dan Sullivan has pushed hard for socioeconomic diversity on campus and he’s been a strong critic of many “elite and wealthy private colleges” for having proportionately few low-income students.
“Everyone in America would benefit if we managed to educate a higher percentage [of these students],” he has said.
Sullivan says research has shown that many wealthy, elite colleges didn’t realize they were disregarding many students from poor families. The schools were drawing from applicant pools that were filled with students who had very high test scores, and this left out many poor students because in general they don’t have as high scores as affluent students.
St. Lawrence has consistently sought socioeconomic diversity. For over a decade, at least 16 to 22 percent of its undergraduates have been Pell Grant recipients, students who come from families in the bottom 25 percent of family income.
By contrast, many of the nation’s wealthiest schools, including Middlebury, Colgate, Vassar and Yale have enrolled far fewer Pell Grant students. A story last year in the Chronicle for Higher Education reported that on average just 13 percent of undergraduates at the nation’s 75 wealthiest private colleges received the Pell Grant in 2006-2007. That compares to 18 percent at St. Lawrence.
Many of SLU’s competitors have need-blind admissions, meaning the ability to pay is not considered and a student’s admittance is based entirely on his or her application, grades and letters of reference. 
However, “theory and practice are two different things,” cautioned Alison Almasian, SLU’s director of admissions.
In a speech a year ago, Sullivan cited research that found these institutions are not actually need-blind, partly because they recruit athletes and the children of alumni who have higher-than-average family incomes.
Sullivan has also said that “75 percent of St. Lawrence students received institutionally funded scholarships,” which is more than many wealthy, elite schools.
In addition to need-based grants, SLU also awards merit scholarships and most go to students with financial limitations. The merit scholarships are very helpful in attracting top students, says Patricia Farmer, director of financial aid.
Under Sullivan and Terry Cowdrey, vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid, Almasian found that the acceptance process has drastically changed for the better after SLU took the plunge and stopped requiring students to submit their SAT scores.
“We would come across students [who were] in all ways fabulous” except for their test scores, Almasian said. When SAT testing continued to change, first with the addition of a writing section, St. Lawrence did some research that proved students’ grades and achievements in high school are a much better predictor of college success than test scores.
Not requiring the tests also helps many international students.  Many Canadians, for instance, do not prep for the SAT’s in high school. (This writer, a sophomore from Ottawa, would not have applied to St. Lawrence if SAT scores were required)
The university’s emphasis on diversity goes back to the school’s founding by the Universalists, who believed in inclusiveness and equality.     
Sarah Kent, senior assistant director of admissions, said St. Lawrence “values having students from various economic backgrounds because it adds to the community.”  Even though St. Lawrence’s endowment recently plunged, the university plans to continue forward with scholarships and financial aid.
“There hasn’t been an indication that we are going to decrease in financial aid,” said Farmer. Like last year, she said, the school is anticipating that more financial aid may be needed as more families are squeezed by the recession. Although St. Lawrence’s endowment was not as large as many of its competitors, this meant the university lost less net worth than other competing schools. Hopefully, this will allow for more flexibility in granting financial aid.