Creating a Class by Mitchell Stevens
Although Paul Tough’s writing about Angel Pérez and Trinity College offers the most detailed account of how the net tuition revenue (NTR) number influences need-aware admissions, Mitchell Stevens’ book Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites provides another valuable perspective. Unlike Tough, Stevens does not name the institution he examines, but he does note that it is a highly selective private liberal arts college in the northeastern United States. He observed this college in 2000-01, but many of his observations remain relevant today.
At this institution, the NTR number played a central role during a stage of the admissions process known as the F round. By this point, the admissions team had already made tentative decisions about which students to admit. The F round was when they assessed whether those decisions would generate the college’s desired amount of NTR. A college official describes this process in the following quote from the book:
“We’ll go over [our financial aid budget] by a million [dollars]—or something like that, we always do, and so what you have to do is go back through and revisit the kids getting aid and see who we need to let go. Which is very hard because a lot of times you have already psychologically admitted the kid, and probably are happy about that, and now you have to go back and revisit that decision. It’s very difficult. ”
In another passage, the author directly connects the financial aid budget to the NTR number.
“They knew that they would have to bring in the class “on budget” – attending to the numbers from Financial Aid while also admitting enough full payers to meet annual targets for tuition income. ”
The process described in these quotes is fundamentally similar to the one at Trinity College, as outlined by Paul Tough. In a need-aware admissions process, low-income applicants who were rated higher in initial discussions may be passed over in favor of higher-income applicants who were rated lower. This shift is necessary for the institution to meet its targeted NTR number.
Understandably, the general public finds this process distasteful—much like it does legacy admissions or the admission of donors’ children. Yet these practices rarely capture widespread attention the way the Varsity Blues scandal did, largely because they reflect bureaucratic policies rather than covert, dramatic operations involving Hollywood celebrities. What Tough and Stevens do so effectively is make the bureaucracy compelling by showing what the process feels like from the inside.
Stevens was not present for the F rounds, so he couldn’t offer the same level of detail as Tough. However, he did include several quotes that reveal the gallows humor used by admissions officials tasked with this difficult work. They referred to applicants with large financial need using the sound of a cash register—“cha-ching”—and described low-income students who were initially slated for admission but later rejected as being “F’d.”
I certainly don’t fault these officials for using humor to get through their workday. Many people prefer to remain blissfully unaware of the practices required to meet a college’s payroll, but enrollment management professionals don’t have that luxury. They are tasked with hitting an NTR number—and must confront the NTR dilemma head-on.
A final quote offers further insight into the strain the F round places on admissions officials—and the personal strategies they use to navigate it.
“In that meeting we work very hard to keep that process from happening to keep them as numbers. Because it’s much easier that way. It’s much easier to deny the kid—especially after you already have accepted them—if you just see them as SAT scores and financial aid. The hard part about F-ing [financial aid rounds] committee is that you already have admitted them. And, you know, particular ones of us may have already committed to them. It’s like you know them. So that makes it a lot harder. Which is why, in [regular] committee I always say, I always try to look at the bottom line, look at the numbers, because you know what? It doesn’t get any easier to deny them later. It doesn’t get any easier to say no after you have talked about them. It only gets harder.”
The core idea of the NTRN Project offers a concise lens through which to understand the challenges facing selective private colleges that lack extreme levels of endowment wealth. These institutions rely heavily on tuition revenue, and they often face pressure—from students, alumni, and employees—to spend generously in order to maintain their offerings and reputation. As a result, their budgets include a high NTR target.
To meet this target, they may adopt practices such as need-aware admissions, which limit access for low-income students. Stevens’s Creating a Class provides valuable insight into the mechanics of need-aware admissions and the coping strategies used by the officials tasked with implementing them.