lepium wrote:
I think the whole scholarship issue is about trying to "steal" applicants from higher clustered schools, in the hope of getting better students (be them students with higher GMATs or students with better skills and therefore higher salary expectancies or whatever).
Most applicants would probably craft a balanced portfolio with schools spanning no more than a couple of clusters (and some may add some backups which they may end up not attending) and the schools know this. So when, for eg., Emory offers a full scholarship to a student, they are probably trying to convince him of not attending UNC or Tepper but not of turning down, for eg., Columbia, because they know they most likely won't stand a chance even with a full tuition scholarship. UNC or Tepper, in turn, will try to use their scholarship money to try and "steal" applicants from Duke, Ross or Cornell. While these schools will try to "steal" applicants from Ultra Elites. And the Ultra Elites outside H/S (maybe W? dunno about this) may try to use some money to steal a few interesting applicants away from H/S. And H/S will use their money to assist applicants who are quite poor compared to the applicant pool, because they know applicants don't need much financial convincing.
Of course, some schools have more money to give out, so they try to use this to their advantage. Other schools need to rely more on their alumni bases, "fit" or whatever resource they can use.
Cheers. L.
Although most of your argument makes sense, it is largely a generalization. I know 5 incoming students that have turned down Elites/Ultra Elites to attend Rice (Near Elite Frontier). Thus, students will pass up a higher ranked cluster for a cluster 2 or 3 lower, not just the neighboring cluster. The two schools I am speaking about are UCLA and Ross, just for you curious types. So yes, the $ is used to "steal" away students, but you would be surprised the number of clusters students are willing to jump due to $