Your comment on Darden increasing the level of scholarships seems to be on the money, as our administration has made statements to this effect. I’m not sure if the level of change in scholarships has been openly shared, although it would probably be available for students that ask.

I think this is an interesting post, but I’m somewhat confused as to your comment that Darden has not made progress to increase the scholarships available to students.

One of the things that surprised me when I visited Darden this fall was I learned number of full, half, and quarter scholarships that were made to students. The staff commented that it was 150 in total, of which 25% are one third scholarships, 50% are half scholarships, and 25% are full scholarships. Given Darden’s small class size, when you look at it on percentage of students getting significant assistance, it’s almost 50%. On top of this, when you look at other top programs’ web sites, this level of scholarship seems to be much higher. Programs may not necessarily advertise all their money available, so perhaps my last comment is not really accurate.

The admissions staff didn’t give out the growth path of these scholarships over time, but there was mention that it’s higher than it has been in the past (directionally). To me, this kind of a policy, opposed to spreading the same amount of money in total to all students with an average amount that you recommend, is more effective. One would figure that the students in the lower half of admission to a program are happy to be admitted, and thus don’t need any money to have a decent probability of matriculation.

Anyways, take care, as a prospective applicant I am enjoying reading your blog.

GO BLUE

All students want a good outcome from their time and dollars invested. The question still remains, however, “what does good outcome mean?”. For some people it clearly means “becoming a part of a community that has a consistently high ranking in the BusinessWeek poll. For others it’s more like “opens the most doors for me that wouldn’t have accessible otherwise”, etc.

For me, I am most interested in a pointy you raised in your second paragraph: “Most of these methods are not being aggressively pursued at Darden”…

If this is the case, and other schools ARE pursuing these methods, then it would appear that Darden is making a decision NOT to pursue these methods. Do you think this is the result of ignorance? bad strategy? good strategy? Or what?

I hope to hear your thoughts and welcome the thoughtful conversation that this post has started on grounds.