Vassar College, founded at the outset of the Civil War to educate women, remade itself in 1969 when it admitted men for the first time. Then, the liberal arts school in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., reinvented itself again in 2007.
That’s when the college adopted "need-blind" admissions, offering seats to qualified applicants without considering whether, or how much, they could pay. The policy required the college to make a substantial investment in financial aid, and it produced a revolution in the school’s demographics.
In 2007, 12 percent of freshmen entering Vassar had enough need to qualify for federal Pell Grants. Within two years, the share had climbed to 20 percent and federal data showed it has stayed above that threshold ever since. In 2015, the Pell share for Vassar was 23 percent.
Vassar is one of 39 nationally ranked schools with Pell shares of at least 20 percent in their freshmen classes in 2015, out of about 150 The Washington Post examined. Eighteen of those schools are, like Vassar, private.
Read more at The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/10/23/pell-grant-shares-at-top-ranked-colleges-a-sortable-chart/