Students respond to Hanlon: ‘It’s counterintuitive to the idea of Moving Dartmouth Forward’

College admissions and financial aid are understood as an inextricably and confoundingly tangled gordian knot which no prospective student can adequately unravel. To make matters worse, policy often changes drastically from school to school and rapidly evolves to reflect changing times.

One such change in Dartmouth’s policy is to end its long-standing international presence as one of only six American schools offering need blind admissions for international applicants. The decision has been met with outrage, apathy, confusion, acceptance– responses ranging the gamut of emotion from different campus groups.

Over 1600 people have signed an internet petition to overturn the ruling, but beyond that slacktivist effort, little has been done in the past weeks to reverse the decision (and who’s to say whether we should?). That being said, the petition page does do a good job outlining the reasoning for and objections against the new policy; take a look if you’re curious.

Still, a lot of people are talking about the issue.

The Tab’s recent interview with President Hanlon included a question about exactly this. Hanlon states the college’s financial aid budget has risen from 11 to 89 million over the past 25 years, making it the college’s fastest growing expenditure. With this in mind, the school has decided not to decrease the amount of aid money offered, just to direct more of it to middle-income domestic students for whom college costs have grown increasingly inhibitive.

This move plays perfectly into a nationwide trend of admissions programs moving to reallocate aid packages from few very needy students to instead offer smaller incentive packages to wealthier students who can pay more and, in due course, fill college coffers.

Personally, having read my fill of online articles and outrageous facebook posts, I decided to take my questions to the street to find out what Dartmouth at large really thinks of the decision.

Here are some excerpts from interviews on the green highlighting a range of opinions on the change (although admittedly mostly negative).

Neuro-engineering graduate student

How do you feel about Dartmouth’s decision to abandon its need blind admissions policy for international students?

“It’s absolutely horrible, I mean, I feel like international students often come from places that need their students to get educated and help out.”

Did you know Dartmouth was previously one of only 6 schools to offer need blind admissions and meet all demonstrated need for international students?

“I did know that, because my undergraduate institution was, and still is one of those.”

Where did you go?

“MIT. and I feel like if a school like MIT can keep it up, Dartmouth should too.”

’18 Computer engineering major

How do you feel about Dartmouth’s decision to abandon its need blind admissions policy for international students?

“Ummm. I’m an international student so I obviously don’t feel that great about it. That being said, I do see the reason behind it having read Tab’s interview with Phil Hanlon.”

“But then again it’s not that great if you’re an international. It’s better for the domestic students obviously, but there’s a reason behind it and that’s okay.”

’19 Computer science major

How do you feel about Dartmouth’s decision to abandon its need blind admissions policy for international students?

“So they’re not need blind anymore then. That’s pretty unfair…”

“The whole premise of move dartmouth forward is to get more people interested in applying to the school and if you take away need blind admissions for international students, it takes out a really big chunk of kids that would want to come here.”

“So it really seems counter intuitive to the whole idea of moving dartmouth forward. Why did they change the policy?”

’18 Environmental science and ’18 Psychology major

How do you feel about Dartmouth’s decision to abandon its need blind admissions policy for international students?

’18 Environmental science major:

“I’m from Canada, and I’m on basically full financial aid. The idea that future students from Canada who work just as hard won’t have the same aid available, I think it’s wrong.”

’18 Psychology major:

“I agree, even though I’m not an international. It will strongly affect the diversity here on campus. I think we have a plenty big enough endowment to offer aid to international students.”

’19 Film student

How do you feel about Dartmouth’s decision to abandon its need blind admissions policy for international students?

“I think it’s horrible. Part of the reason I came here was because they have a need blind policy, I’m an international student from the Phillipines.”