The Impact of Academic Scholarships on the Matriculation Decision of Academically Talented Students (Admissions, Financial Aid).

This is a study of 1,555 applicants for Fall, 1982 admission who received offers of academic scholarships from forty-four private liberal arts colleges in the Midwest. With participating institutions representing a wide spectrum in terms of the amount of financial incentive offered and the types of non-financial incentives (or "courting" activities) employed as part of the school's scholarship program, the data analysis is designed to determine the relative influence of economic and psychological incentives on the matriculation decision of the total sample, as well as on different subgroups within the sample. A key feature of this study is the fact that data was obtained from multiple sources. The primary source of data was the forty four institutional participants whose involvement required that they provide the manpower needed to gather data from the admissions and financial aid files of each of the 1555 students in the sample. In addition, each student in the sample received a four page questionnaire in which the student was asked a series of questions regarding his/her perception of the factors influencing his/her choice of school. The findings of this study indicate that level of financial need does influence the degree to which a student responds to financial and psychological incentives. More specifically, a statistically significant relationship was observed between the amount of financial incentive offered and the enrollment decision of students with a low/moderate level of financial need. (This category consists primarily of students who have need yet do not in many cases qualify for government assistance.) A statistically significant relationship between the amount of aid offered and enrollment was not observed for students who either (a) came from families with an income level which disqualified the student for need-based financial aid or (b) had a high level of need which, in most cases, qualified the student for large amounts of government financial aid and , hence, made the financial incentive of the scholarship less critical. The findings also indicate that level of financial need influences the degree to which a student responds to the courtship aspect of a scholarship. The degree of courtship does affect the enrollment decision of students with no financial need, but is not significantly related to the enrollment decision of students with financial need.PhDHigher educationUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/161241/1/8702732.pd