As a member of the College's alumni board said recently: "Carleton's success is built on a simple formula: a talented and diverse group of students brought into a close working relationship with a faculty that likes to teach." Throughout the community there is a deep appreciation for Carleton students: for their high levels of intelligence, diverse ethnic, racial, and geographical origins, curiosity, energy and participation in campus life, and for their many achievements-both here and as alumni. Our intention, with regard to admissions, is to strengthen Carleton and to increase our stature among the handful of most highly selective liberal arts colleges.

The talent and diversity of our students is a critical piece (some would say "the" critical piece) of our standing as a national liberal arts college. It is abundantly clear that we must not neglect admissions and financial aid-a core activity of the College. At the same time, we have noted concern about the future of admissions and financial aid at Carleton, including the 1997 Survey of Alumni. This survey revealed that the cost of attending Carleton, size of endowment, ethnic diversity on campus, and level of financial aid were listed as the top four "weaknesses to be improved." In one way or another, these "weaknesses" are all related to admissions and financial aid.

Admissions has become a highly competitive business and all indications are that it will become even more so. To achieve our goals of increasing selectivity and diversity and managing our financial aid costs responsibly, we believe the two most important steps the College can take are to increase significantly the number of applications and to reevaluate our financial aid policies.

Recommendation 1: Increase significantly our pool of talented, diverse applicants

Why is this so critical to Carleton's success? The intensified competition for highly qualified students is coming from all quarters and in a variety of forms. Some large public universities are offering full scholarships to any National Merit Finalist who matriculates. Many schools with modest admissions standards are awarding multi-thousand-dollar non-need merit grants both to attract targeted students and to maximize net student fee income. Some of the elite universities have begun to reduce need thresholds to increase applications from students from middle- and low-income families.

Increasing the diversity of our student body is an important and immediate goal of the College. Initial efforts this year appear to have produced a substantial increase in the number of African American students who will matriculate in the fall of 1998. But more needs to be done. If we are to ensure the academic quality of our students, facilitate our efforts to develop a more diverse student body, and keep our financial aid expenses manageable, we simply need to increase the number of applicants from which we select each class.

Saying that applications should increase is one thing, but making it happen is quite another. Regardless of the strategies we undertake, this will be a long process. We are unlikely to see dramatic results in just a few years. The long lead time increases the urgency of getting started soon. We recommend three avenues for achieving this goal: 1) collaborate with other highly selective liberal arts colleges in research efforts aimed at distinguishing a quality liberal arts education from a university education, 2) develop research and marketing initiatives to improve Carleton's profile among the liberal arts colleges with which we compete, and 3) involve more people on campus in the recruitment process.

A consortial research program, which was recommended by the Admissions and Financial Aid Committee in its 1995-96 report, would provide us with information about our admissions processes and outcomes relative to our university competitors. The results of the research should be used to raise public awareness of the distinctiveness and value of a high quality liberal arts education and to develop more effective marketing strategies.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s Carleton emerged as a national leader in admissions marketing research. These efforts resulted in a near doubling of applications in less than a decade. In recent years, other schools have become much more sophisticated in their own marketing research and our edge in this area has disappeared. It is time to renew this research and convey our distinctive characteristics more effectively to prospective students, especially those who inquire about Carleton, but do not apply.

More involvement of faculty, students, and staff in the on-campus recruitment effort may be necessary, given the effective ways in which our competitors are using similar strategies to attract students. We recently launched a major Alumni Admissions Program (AAP) that should soon begin to pay dividends in increasing applications. An on-campus effort could be highly effective in convincing more of those applicants that Carleton is the school for them. We are quite grateful for the fact that the Admissions Office staff has protected the rest of us from many of the demands of a "total community recruitment" strategy, but we need to think about whether our traditional arrangement has become obsolete. In implementing such a program we will need to think about how faculty and staff time would be accommodated within our busy schedules.

One thing is very clear to us: a substantial increase in applications will be necessary for Carleton to achieve our goal of increased student diversity and to improve student quality over the next decade. It is for this reason that the Twenty-first Century Committee considers this recommendation to be the single most important one we make.

Recommendation 2: Reevaluate our principles and policies regarding financial aid

Several years ago, in order to control financial aid expenditures that were reaching unsustainable levels, Carleton modified its need-blind admissions policy to allow consideration of need for up to 15 percent of a class. So far, fewer than ten percent of any incoming class has been admitted on a need-sensitive basis. We retain our commitment to meet the full demonstrated need of all admitted students. Our financial aid policy
also adheres to the belief that, with the exception of National Merit Finalists and National Achievement Scholars, grant aid should be awarded on the basis of need.

In the tumultuous world of financial aid in higher education, we must constantly assess the strategies employed by our competition and their impact on our admissions efforts. On the one hand, we cannot allow financial aid costs to consume an increasing share of the College budget, as they were a few years ago. But on the other hand, we must have a policy in place that allows us to attract the students we need to sustain quality. This is a delicate matter, both financially and philosophically. We recommend that the College Council appoint a task force or direct the Admissions and Financial Aid Committee (AFAC) to coordinate a discussion aimed at clarifying our current policies and evaluating whether any modification is warranted.