1. It’s Not Just about equity anymore!
New Approaches to Packaging financial aid.
Lisa Blazer, Ph.D. – University of Texas San Antonio, NASFAA National chair
Mary Sommers – University of Nebraska at Kearney

2. Why this topic?
Enrollment Management – we play a vital role. The 3 Rs – Recruitment, Retention and Research
Need to assess the impact of financial aid awards in attracting and retaining students.
We can help our institutions meet strategic enrollment objectives and we need to be at the table for the discussions and leading efforts for enrollment management
Financial Aid administrators will help institutions be strategic while also ensuring need-based aid is available to all students.

3. University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA)
Approximately 29,000 students, half are 1st generation college students, almost 50% of undergraduates are PELL eligible.
Graduation rates are low and need to be improved.
We have been packaging on a first-come, first-served basis for years.
UTSA did not have recruitment scholarships compared to our competitors.

4. UTSA – what’s Been happening?
Graduation Rate Improvement Plan (GRIP) was created in 2011
-- Focused on improving graduation and retention rates.
-- A committee looked at financial aid incentives – small scale and we weren’t at the table for the initial conversations.
Fall 2013 – drop in enrollment – got everyone’s attention.
GRIP – revised in 2013
Tier one Recruitment initiative
Created New Awarding Philosophy, Enhanced recruitment efforts, new competitive recruitment scholarships established, Top scholars recruitment efforts, enhancing on- campus employment opportunities.

5. UTSA – Recruitment scholarship
UTSA did not have a merit-based recruitment scholarship.
Looked at what competitors were doing – especially in Texas.
Freshmen – Distinguished Presidential Scholarship (DPS) – started with pilot in – projected cost would be $1.2 to $1.5 million for 1 cohort annually. Likely will be $4 million a year with 4 cohorts
Transfer – Distinguished Transfer Scholarship (DTS) – initially received small amount of funding of $300,00 for first cohort. Donor matching – we are awarding $500,000 per year
In , we created a new Top Scholar pilot group (5 students). Full-ride scholarship plus additional programming. We are now offering 10 new students a year.

6. Dps criteria - Freshmen
Class Rank
Old SAT
New SAT
ACT
Amount
Top 10%
1400
1450 32
$24,000/$6000 per year
Top 15%
1300
1360 29
$16,000/$4000 per year
Top 20%
1200
1270 26
$12,000/$3000 per year
Top 25%
$8,000/$2000 per year
8 semesters /4 years
Full-time enrollment
Must complete 30 hours
2.5 GPA

7. Dts criteria - Transfer
Award Amount over 2 years
GPA (4.0 Scale)
Renewal UTSA GPA
$6000/$3000 per year
3.75
3.0
4 semester/2 years
Enrolled Full-time

8. Merit scholarship results
DPS – Freshmen – awarding approximately 375 students each year
Renewal rates are about the same as non-scholarship students so we need to look at improving
2nd cohort (1516) performed better
Adding programming to help boost retention
DTS – Transfer
First year more limited funding – awarded 95 students
Additional funding with initiative to increase transfer population – awarding between students in the fall and then additional students in the spring to boost enrollment

9. Awarding Philosophy Change – Beginning 2014-15
Targeted aid to students we expected to succeed.
New Model: Residual Need (RN)
COA – EFC = RN
A percentage of RN would be met by: institutional scholarships or grants, state scholarships or grants, exemptions or waivers.

10. Awarding philosophy
New Native Roadrunners – Awarded 45% of RN to guaranteed admissions students (Top 25%, 2nd Q with 1100/24+)
New Native Roadrunners – Awarded 20% of RN to those who were admitted but didn’t meet guaranteed admissions criteria (holistic review for admissions).
UT CAP – Awarded 20% RN and canceled institutional scholarships.
Transfers – Awarded 25% of RN, but stacked any scholarships received.
Current Students – continue first-come, first-serve philosophy.

11. New FRESHMEN FINANCIAL AID awarded
Total Grants & Scholarships
Number of Students
% of Total Grants & Scholarships
Total Grants & Scholarships
Number of Students
% of Total Grants & Scholarships
Top 10%
$3.5 million
762
26%
$3.4 million
688
27%
Next 15%
$6.5 million
1485
49%
$5.7 million
1287
45%
2nd Quartile
$2.2 million
876
17%
2.2 million
746
3rd/4th Quartile
$384,000
219 3%
$449,000
177 4%
Non-Ranking
$726,000
224 5%
$841,000
240 7%
Total
$13.4 million
3566
100%
$12.7 million
3138

12. Financial Aid Awardees Overall - SAP
Total Awarded
Not Making SAP
% Not Making SAP
Total Awarded
Not Making SAP
% Not Making SAP
Native Roadrunners
3566
881
25%
3138
678
21%
UT CAP
396 32 8%
287 17 6%
Transfers
1954
250
13%
1699
186
11%
Current Students
11,328
1524
10,958
1247
TOTAL
17,244
2687
16%
16,083
2128

13. Freshmen Awardees – Guaranteed Admissions – how did they do?
Total Not Meeting SAP
SAT/ACT Below 1000/21
SAT
ACT 21-25
SAT 1200+
ACT 25+
Top 10% 63 36 19 8
Next 15%
273
199 62 12
2nd Q 89 28 49
No Rank 20 2 14 4
TOTAL
445
265
144
Total Not Meeting SAP
SAT/ACT Below 1000/21
SAT
ACT 21-25
SAT 1200+
ACT 25%
Top 10% 55 35 14 6
Next 15%
274
206 48 20
2nd Q 77 22 38 17
No Rank 37 3 15 19
TOTAL
443
266
115 62

14. What’s happened since?
Made small changes to the DPS and the DTS Scholarship Programs
DPS remained the same for For we ranked students for admissions and for the DPS.
DTS – for available to all transfer students, not just TX residents and community college transfers. Leadership is considering whether we should adjust and put more money into transfer scholarships
The university did commit to continuing both programs as well as the Top Scholar Program to help support recruitment and retention. The President and Development are working with donors to provide funds that UTSA will match. Thought we had permanent funding – still temporary funding – looking towards future
The estimated cost for all recruitment scholarship programs will be approximately $7 million per year with 4 cohorts of DPS and 2 cohorts of DTS

15. What’s Happened since? Awarding Philosophy
– reduced to 40% RN for incoming native Roadrunners - we had a $3.6 million cut to our major TX Grant program, which impacted our overall $ availability and the number of students we could award (see previous slide)
– reduced to 30% RN for incoming native Roadrunners Guaranteed admits but stacked scholarships – TX Grant funding was restored for now
Renewal and amounts of awards are still being reviewed
If a student completed 30 hours and maintained SAP, we awarded at a higher RN percentage
Lower than 30 hours did not – not sure we were effective in how we communicated this

16. What’s coming around the bend? – new student success initiatives
CLASS – Coordinated & Linked Approach to Student Success
Financial Aid is 1 of 5 pillars
Looking for innovative ways to award financial aid – looking at Georgia State
Ideas include:
Retention Grants – micro grants to help cover small balances
Guaranteed financial aid packages for 4 years – Recruitment & Retention Tool
Predictive Analytics Model – provided by UT System
Target our limited financial aid based on data
Will be able to predict whether students will come to UTSA and eventually 1st year retention

17. University of Nebraska at kearney
6500 to 7000 students – most undergraduate
Residential campus
Part of the University of Nebraska System
Endowment and annual giving generates around $1,800, 000

18. What was the problem?
Increased dependence on tuition revenue to pay our bills.
Frustration with determining the impact of our previous packaging approach.
Restricted nature of endowed funds made it difficult to use to advance enrollment goals.
Recent conversion to a new SIS made extracting data to analyze more difficult.
Changes in the reporting structure for the Office of Financial Aid.

19. What Did we do? We hired a consultant.
We involved an existing enrollment management council and a smaller sub- committee of this group to work with us and our consultant in the weeds.
We worked really hard to extract good historical data to provide to the consultant for meaningful analysis.

20. What did we learn?
We had pockets of students receiving higher proportions of aid.
The first problem was due in part to our merit aid strategy.
We were loosing ground in our key constituency, Nebraska residents who aren’t “premiere” academic students.
The issue with disproportional awards was big and couldn’t necessarily be resolved all at once.
Changing our merit aid approach was a political issue and would not happen quickly.
We could take baby steps in both need and merit based aid to start.

21. How did we change our packaging policy
We moved away from an equity packaging approach.
We moved to a % of need with gift aid calculation.
We were able to provide more grant aid to more students over a longer period of time in the awarding cycle. We didn’t anticipate this. But it has a resulted in a subtle shift in our minds, first come first served isn’t always best.

22. What have been the results?
New student enrollment for fall of 2016 was up after a down year in fall of Admissions applications were up significantly as well for fall of 2016 verses fall of 2015.
For our aid applicant population our headcount was up, but our percentage yield was down (about 2.7%)
Because of the level of detail we have we can tell quite specifically where there were pockets of students where our yield was lower than the year before. We’re working on determining what might have had a impact and have a working theory relating to verification.
Despite more admitted students, our FAFSA filing percentage was down when compared to the prior year by 3.6%. This is something we definitely want to work on.

23. How can you do this?
You have to determine as a campus community what matters to you. Is there a problem? Tuition revenue, academic profile, retention, graduation rate, need- merit balance.
Think about how your packaging approach might be impacting your problem.
Try to avoid thinking “microscopically”, think “macro”. Group your aid applicant pool in a way that makes sense for you and then ask questions and decide what data you need to answer them.