Scholarship plan unique in Ivy League

The University's new Mayor's Scholarship package is unique among several similar institutions in that it is completely grant-based, Ivy League university officials said yesterday. In the new package, Mayor's Scholarships starting with next year's freshman class will not include any student loan obligation. Rather, students who qualify to be Mayor's Scholars will receive grants "that will meet their full need, as determined by the University." Princeton University's Student Financial Aid Director Don Betterton was among many Ivy League financial aid directors who said that their respective universities do not offer any financial aid package which is solely comprised of grants. "There are some students we don't give loans to, and there are some students we don't give [work-study] jobs to," Betterton said. "There are no students that receive full scholarships for their need." "We do only offer financial aid packages with loans," said Jennifer Sprague, staff assistant at Harvard University's Office of Financial Aid. And financial aid officials at Yale and Brown universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology echoed their colleagues at the other institutions. All of the schools were part of the Ivy Overlap Group, which met once a year until 1990 to determine the financial aid packages for individual students who were accepted at more than one school. University Financial Aid Director William Schilling said that he is unaware of whether or not other schools have similar financial aid packages because of limits imposed on the Overlap Group by a judgment in a recent anti-trust suit against the Ivy League and M.I.T. "I don't know what other schools are offering since we don't talk much anymore," Schilling said. However, Schilling added that the package is an exceptional case for University financial aid options. "[The Mayor's Scholarship package] is clearly different from anything else we're offering," Schilling said. According to the agreement between University President Sheldon Hackney and Mayor Ed Rendell, students who have been selected as Mayor's Scholars "will receive grants in an amount equal to 125 times tuition for that year." The agreement states that the new package "will be distinguished from any other financial aid program at the University and should enable the University to compete more effectively for students from Philadelphia." Schilling said that while the funding for the Mayor's Scholarship program is drawn from the same source as other University financial aid programs, "a part of the University's financial aid budget, which would be equal to 125 times tuition, would be set aside as the funds for Mayor's Scholarships with this special no-loans package." The announcement of a new Mayor's Scholarship package by Hackney and Rendell came in the midst of the throes of a lawsuit filed against the University which is scheduled to go to trial in Common Pleas Court on November 23. The lawsuit, filed by labor unions, student groups and several individuals, claims that a 1977 city ordinance requires the University to award Philadelphia high school graduates 125 scholarships a year for a total of 500 at a time. However, both Rendell and Hackney have said that the new agreement is not in any way related to the lawsuit.

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