Crafting a Class: The Trade-Off between Merit Scholarships and Enrolling Lower-Income Students

This paper uses panel data for the 100 colleges and universities at which the largest number of National Merit Scholarship (NMS) winners enrolled in 2003 to test whether an expansion in the number of institutionally funded NMS winners at an institution is associated with a decline in the number of Pell Grant recipients at the institution. Our findings suggest a trade-off between enrolling institutionally sponsored NMS winners and enrolling Pell grant recipients and thus that institutions should focus on both student selectivity and socioeconomic diversity in crafting their classes.