I'm tempted to write "FIRST!" just to be ironical.

But I just can't bring myself to do it...

Oh, just do it...

SECOND!

I'll make sure to read the financial aid plans for next year. MIT is my top choice school, but financial aid still plays a part in where I will eventually go.

I am only a junior and, of course, haven't applied to any schools yet, I don't know if I'll be accepted or not. But I do know that if I can't get a lot of financial aid, I can't go. My mother and I live by ourselves and we make less than $20,000 a year. A bit less. Would I get a decent financial aid package?

Very well written!

@Havi: If your family makes less than $20,000 a year, you'll probably get a very substantial financial aid package.

Supposing I get in, I think my family makes roughly 60-65,000 a year. What ballpark aid can I look for?

Awaiting that announcement in a week.

Quite a lengthy missive from Susan Hockfield -- but, alas, it's ultimately a rationalization for continuing MIT's current financial aid policies. She says nothing new -- and I was hoping that MIT would follow Harvard, and indicate that it would be extending financial aid to middle class families. Poor families can get aid, so can internationals; wealthy families can affort MIT; but the middle classes see savings wiped out. We need a new, more realistic, more empathetic, definition of "need-based."

true dat. ^

i agree with the last 2

Slightly off-topic, but I have a quick question. I sent an e-mail to the financial aid office saying I didn't want to apply for financial aid (I ticked the box in my actual application) but I haven't gotten a response of my e-mail yet.

Should I resend the e-mail or just hope that MyMIT portal is updated when it's done updating?

Thanks

this eases my mind...i was debating what would happend if mit doesn't give me enough money, would i then have to stay at my state college? (not that it is bad, but i will definitely prefer MIT).

and also..wow i didn't that there is 35% MIT students whose family income is less than $60,000..that really puts things in perspective.

finally, thank you financial aid people! =)

Oh boy, that means regular decisions are going to be rolling out in the week/s after FA is released...

Good luck to all of us.

Thank you very much for the update - I know that my parents are extremely worried about how to pay for MIT if I'm admitted. I'm glad that MIT, once again, shows that it's committed to putting its students first and hopefully will increase financial aid for the middle-class families! Graduating $100,000 in debt isn't my idea of a fun college experience :)

As a parent of a freshman, I am very disappointed that MIT is not following the lead of Harvard and Yale, schools that will now limit annual costs for a family to 10% of family income up to $180,000 and $200,000 respectively. Our son was accepted by Yale and turned it down. That decision will now mean that for the next three years MIT will cost our family $90,000 more from our savings than the next three years at Yale would have cost. I know people don't have much sympathy for families that earn that much and have saved that much, but for us that means that most of our hard earned savings will be wiped out and unavailable for retirement or to pay college tuition for our daughter, who is now in sixth grade. More importantly for MIT, how many excellent students (and their parents) will now choose Harvard or Yale who would have otherwise chosen MIT?

Anonymous has it correct. The students of middle-income families have a much harder time meeting financial college expenses. If those who make more than 50k - 90k are struggling, it is because our students have been block from receiving monies from such sources such as the Millenium Scholarships, solely because they don't qualify for a "Pell Grant". How about if those who qualify for Pell be given to first, then any monies not claimed by eligible "Pellers" be them earmarked for use by those who still meet all other rigorous academic qualifications. Why let this money go unused? So many other economically advanced countries support there educational systems by ensuring that all those who have worked so hard for a better future for themselves and their families & future family be rewarded not penalized because they fall between the dollar Catch-22.

Please let the new aid be amazing! I WANT TO GO TO MIT!!! Thanks. :)

Hello,
I am applying as an international student and on the my.mit website I see the "foreign tax return" document missing. My country however has no such document, and I have sent two e-mails to the finaid office explaining this, and received no reply both times. The document is still listed as missing.
Please advise on what to do.
Thank you and have a good day.

I am thinking 22% of undergraduate students at MIT come from families earning $60K or less, not 35%, as it was written that "17% of our undergraduates come from families earning less than $45,000 a year, and 22% come from families earning less than $60,000" rather than that an *additional* 22% earn less than 60K but more than $45K. If it's truly 35% earning under $60K, that wasn't written properly.

When is the announcement date?

I agree with "Parent of '11" that MIT will lose some highly qualified applicants. Our family is also paying full tuition for a child to attend MIT, and our child also turned down Stanford and Yale in addition to other places offering scholarships. We have a second child interested in MIT, but we have now told that child that he must remove MIT from his list, because the school is so much more expensive than the other fine schools to which he will apply. That's just the way the market works. One final note, from the perspective of a family paying full tuition. When our daughter was born 18 years ago, we began saving the amount of money we believed we'd need to pay for her college. We used financial instruments from Merrill Lynch and other well-known investment firms. Based on those instruments, we made some sacrifices over the years to save $140,000 for her tuition. Back then, everyone believed this would cover the cost of the most expensive private university. However, college costs have far outstripped inflation. The true cost of MIT over the four years our child is here will be slightly over $200,000. And here's the bottom line: Although our family is not considered in need of financial aid, we do not have an extra $60,000 lying around anywhere. And we also have a second child.

I'm glad that MIT offers generous aid to families who desperately need it. But I'm sorry that MIT will no longer be able to compete for the best and the brightest students.

Thank you, "Parent of '11." We are in exactly the same position as you. Wish child had chosen Harvard (though we were all for MIT at the time).

We're likely in a similar situation to "Parent of '11". Our child is applying for class of 2012, but she's already heard from Northeastern, Drexel and Stevens. We've saved about $80,000 over the years for her education, but I own a family business and our EFC based on FAFSA is 55,000. The three schools she's already heard from are all offering $15,000 or more per year in merit scholarships, and we're realistic that saving $60,000 in our of pocket costs over four years will make a big difference. I really wish MIT would dip into the endowment a bit more...I think they are losing highly qualified students to schools like Stevens and Northeastern that are more generous with their grants.

I wish that MIT would reconsider their decision not to follow the more progressive financial aid policies of Harvard, Stanford, and Yale. Going into significant debt in order to pay for an MIT education is very stressfull for middle class families.

This is merely a rationalization for continuing the status quo at MIT. It is nice to hear that MIT believes that it is meeting the needs of low income applicants. However, the whole point to the Harvard initiative, which MIT chooses to ignore, is the growing problem of affordability for the children of middle class parents. The rich can afford it and the needs of the poor were being addressed by existing programs, such as MIT's. It is the middle that was, and at MIT continues to be, squeezed out. I suspect that MIT can well afford to make an undergaduate education tuition free for all students without coming close to touching principal. Cooper Union does this without anywhere near the endowment of MIT. My guess is that free undergraduate tuition would cost MIT approximately 150Million per annum. The endowment is 8.5Billion and is earning 15% per annum. Maybe an MIT mathematician can do the math for me.

Dear Parent of '11, AnotherMITParent, Anon, WTBSAlumni, concerned parent '11


….“Disappointed that MIT is not following the lead of Harvard and Yale”…. How dare you compare MIT to Harvard or Yale. Did you not read Susan Hockfield entry? She made it abundantly clear how generous MIT is with the available endowment funds. Also, did you know that Harvard has 3.5 times more cash in their endowment than MIT and Yale has 2.2 times more cash? Harvard & Yale are excellent universities, however they were not as generous when their endowments were equal to today’s MIT endowment value.

….” $90,000 more from our savings than the next three years at Yale would have cost”…. I don’t get it! Knowing your cost of MIT for the next 4 years, you turn down Yale. Your cost to attend MIT is not going up, why are you looking back? Nothing has changed for you now compared to a year ago. If you thought your child would get a better education in law at MIT than Yale, then yes you probably made the wrong decision a year ago.


……“will now choose Harvard or Yale who would have otherwise chosen MIT”……… Why? If I had the choice between a full ride to Yale and no scholarship to MIT, my family would beg, borrow and steal for me to attend MIT!!!!! Yale & Harvard are not as highly ranked as MIT for my career goals. Don’t compare apples with oranges. Yale & Harvard are more in competition with each other.

Before future comparisons are made, please:

- Compare USNews ranking for the specific career goals.
- Compare college endowments
- Compare college-operating costs.

In conclusion, MIT is generous to it students and it would not be MIT without the requirement of expensive state of the art equipment. Technology is always evolving. Perhaps MIT is a victim of its own succes

For our child first year at MIT we have paid MIT more than $39,000 besides some amount to airlines and so on. We got a loan for him because according to the calculation of MIT's need-base policy, that is the only option for us, a deserted middle class family. Working hard and saving hard now sounds like the worst thing we have done for years. Because a loan to pay back at graduation, my son has been over too thrifty on his food expense, around &100 a month, trying to lessen the amount of next loan. His MIT generously fincial-aided peers from low income family brag they can go to restaurants for delicious Chinese food, Thai foods,.. because they are basically all-bill paid. One such boy said he averagely spends around $500 a month for food. MIT paid him to live in the dorm, to fly to Beijing for summer and so on...too. Another girl gets to fly back to Ukraine twice a year to visit her family, to London to attend a spring break program..because MIT simply gives her all the very much money and enabling her to save and even buy tickets for her brothers to come visit her from Ukraine. Starting from CPW for our son as an admitted student, we could not afford to spend the flight ticket for him to go. Why? Every penny counts for our family if we want to send him to MIT. He turned down Yale and Standford too. Is it a bad decision? I am afraid so.

I am sure when a low income family student gets a loan like our son does, he will have an equally strong financial ability to pay back like our son will when he gets a job at graduation. If my son has to forget about grad school for repaying his loans, why doesn't a student from low income family has all the advantage of no need to worry about repaying loans and go ahead to develop his career and gifts?

Coming from one of the many families that fits in the >$100,000 but not well enough off for this not to be a major financial challenge group, this is an issue very important to me. That said, I'd just like to post my support for what Susan Hockfield said..

MIT has been very generous over the years and has a real commitment to doing the best that they can while ensuring that their university will continue to prosper for future classes.. history has not yet shown what effect Harvard or Stanford's new policies will have on their future classes.. and in any case, as noted above they have some 17 and 8 more billion dollars to work with.

I think we should take in to consideration Mrs. Hockfields perspective. No she isn't going to talk bad about her own university but I remind you that she was a high ranking member of staff at Yale before she came to MIT.. she has comparative experience, if MIT was not living up to its competitors, she would be well aware of it and I believe that she is a principled enough woman to not ignore her own opinions. Do you see doubt in her letter?

Further, while I agree that a lot of it reads like a justification to largely continue current policies, I remind you that MIT HAS NOT ANNOUNCED THEIR POLICY YET, save your complaints until such time as they are based, please.

On another note, Mr. Barkowitz, how was your trip to Israel over a year ago? As a member of the MIT Blog community (soon to be a member of the MIT community proper), I have missed your contributions.

~Donald Guy

To "Another MIT parent" Unfortunately, the finaid program at MIT and elsewhere punishes parents who sacrifice and save for college. I am in the same position. The amount saved and invested was supposed to cover the estimated future costs of a private college education, but, because of the unprecedented and inexplicably large tuition increases, it falls about 60k short. However, it is more than enough to disqualify my child from any type of financial aid. To date, I have heard no rational explanation for why these unprecedented tuition increases were necessary particularly given the amount being earned on endowments, tax free. And, noone has explained why colleges have increased tuition in virtual lock step with their competing institutions, despite differences in their endowments and cost structures. Kudos to Congress for forcing the issue. And Kudos to Harvard Yale Stanford and Brown for seeing the writing on the wall and starting to address the issue before the long overdue legislation is enacted.

Wow!

Nice to return to the blogs with something simple and uncomplicated!! :)

So, I know everyone is anxious, and I know everyone is eager, but read Susan Hockfield's message again please. An announcement is coming next week and I promise to post it here when available and talk with you about what it means for each of you. In the meantime, I cannot comment on any possible permutations (as I am sure you can understand) or what the announcement will look like.

To some specific questions I can address:

Havi, anyone with your income level should get a fairly substantial package, but we will need to see a financial aid application next year to know...

Steve, wait for the announcement...

Reg, if you do not plan on applying just ignore any messages from us. We will update our systems to correct this. You can also email me your actual contact information and I will change your status myself.

Carmen, the 17% and 22% are not each additional students. In other words, the 22% of students earning less than 60,000 includes the 17% earning less than 45%.

Contsantin, if you have no tax return in your country, we request a letter from each parents' employer identifying salary in order to satisfy this document. If you have already sent this, let me know (by email) and I can look into it.

Donald, it was an amazing trip! Really life changing. I'll try to post a reminiscence of it soon, but in the meantime you may want to look here for a reflection I wrote about my day in Jerusalem.

"How dare you compare..." Why not compare?

The problem here is that many high school seniors can feel pretty strongly about which college they want to go to. MIT has that special hacking culture that one doesn't really find at Harvard or Yale, for example. However, students often don't really think about financial considerations at this point. They want to follow their hearts, and as a result, many parents give in to their child's wishes, thinking that somehow they'll stomach the costs so that their child will be happier. Some parents, however, will decide that it's simply not possible to send their child to school without going into deep financial trouble. Some may decide that MIT is not special enough to warrant the tens of thousands of dollars extra they'll have to pay. And it's MIT that's losing out in the end.

Let me summarize: MIT is not a company, but an educational institution. It needs to have its student's needs in mind.

Maybe take a page out of Stanford's new policy which states that families earning less than $100,000 no longer have to pay tuition, and families earning less than $60,000 no longer pay tuition nor room/board. This policy clearly addresses the strains put on the thousands of middle class families (mainly those who qualify for the first stated policy) across America who knowing their sons/daughters have saved a decent amount of money, but then according to FAFSA should contribute nearly if not a third of their income.

oh well..22% is still not bad. I have a quick question. Is the financial aid package going to arrive separately from the admissions package? As in, would the financial aid office send its own package independent of the admissions office or would the financial aid package be sent over to admissions to be packaged together?

I'm disappointed to hear nothing new here. We are a middle-class family in a very high cost-of-living area. I'd like to point out that a $160K income in our area probably goes only as far as $80K (if that much!) in an average cost-of-living area. I used Princeton's web-based financial aid calculator (which takes location into account, but doesn't count home equity), and found their estimate of our family's contribution to be only slightly high, unlike FAFSA's estimate, which has been called by others living here "a cruel joke."
I hope MIT will take location into account when you issue your new financial aid policies. It is not fair to middle class families in our area, who are being squeezed from both sides, to have to give up their meager retirement savings in order to send their children to college.

Maria: Alas, last year MIT did NOT take location into account -- nor did it give ANY consideration to age/proximity-to-retirement status of parents. A struggling middle-class family, we received NO financial aid.
Let's all keep our fingers crossed for a more considerate financial aid announcement in the coming weeks!

Why not just lower the tuition. Universities provide more finacial aids and increase tuition at the same time. Redistribute wealth. Just like give gift using other people's money. Good work. Socialists

@ Maria, Parent '11 & Ms Susan Hockfield

My conclusion is don't send our middle class children to MIT. I am in deep financial pain for my son's education at MIT now. We did not get any financial aid from MIT last year either. His financial aided friend at MIT did not need to fulfill this student contribution part at all because he is from an under $100,000 income family. My middle class son could work all summer to save for this student contribution and that made us so proud of him while his free of student contribution friend stayed at the local library to study for 3 advanced standing tests and got a head start above other MIT freshmen. Where is the justice? Parent contribution is one thing, but how about the young 18, 19-year old boys' parts of their student contribution part? We have dug and poured out two thirds of our meager saving for our son's first year at MIT. How much more do we have for the second, third .. years? How about our second equally strong son going to MIT two years from now? Loans? Does it mean our son has to forget about grad school and simply go to work to pay back for the loans? How about letting the "low income" (truly highly benefitted)students to get loans like our son?

Middle class students will be forced to really swim out to Stanford, Harvard, Harvard... Is it so? Then MIT will be a philanthropy institute of technology for low income students. How about in the near future the fully or greatly financial aided students take up 85% of all the undergraduate students at MIT? MIT will be truly a paradise college for any students not in the middle class. The best gifted middle students will be deserted by MIT or they will need to give up on MIT. Ms Susan Hockfield, we, the middle class parents have worked and saved so hard ever since our first son was born with a hope that one day he would be able to go to MIT. Before he started going to MIT, we have invested a lot of hard earned and saved money for his camps, extra training program to get him adquately trained and foundationed to be able to take the full advantage of his education at MIT. MIT is happy to have him because he is so well trained in many ways on his parents' hard saved money. We are not "poor" enough to cut short on his educational needs yet, but remember we are actually very worried about the coming 3 years of paying his MIT education without entirely losing our retirement money.

I do find it intriguing that a middle-class family who has had the forethought to save money for their child's education gets less support than a middle-class family who did not save anything, but I don't think there's a good way to make that better without in-depth knowledge of the families and case-by-case analysis, which is impossible for such a large student body.

MIT is extremely generous, and as someone pointed out, they would probably be even more generous if their endowment was the size of Harvard's or Yale's. Mrs. Hockfield makes some good points about the cost of an MIT education (which I would imagine is much greater than the cost of a Harvard/Yale education), and IMHO they are doing what they can with what they have.

I would gladly incur $200,000 in loans to go to MIT, rather than go to Harvard or Yale for free. Parents, you may compare all you want, but you're missing the point.

@Daniel (Mr Barkowitz?):

Thanks for the reply :D So, anywhere I can find your e-mail address? It's not on the top of the header like the student bloggers... I've left my e-mail addresss if you want to e-mail it or something :)

I am always confused by the so-called need-based. Suppose a family earns 100 million USD a year and the family wants full aid. Would MIT grant that family? I consider the need-based policy as the school gives whatever one needs. If that is so, isn't it hypocritical that the FA policy exists? MIT should give everybody full aid!( Of course, everybody would be happy if the university gives full aid). I am ignorant of this question. Could someone helps me?

@internationals: Its not about wanting full aid, its abouting needing full aid

As an '11, I am disgusted with how much I am paying for my education. I'm having a blast at MIT and would not imagine going to any other school.

My father makes around $200k/year (very middle class in our cost-of-living area). Of this, after taxes, $100k is left. $45k of that goes to MIT. Cost of living in my area is ridiculous.

My parents are digging into their retirement plan to pay for my education. Unfortunately, MIT financial aid cannot see past the raw figure my honest, law abiding, non-tax-cheating/foreign-hiding parents make every year. It's a shame that Harvard and Stanford's computer science aren't up to MIT's -- I would have gone there in a heartbeat if I had compared financial aid plans.

What's more, MIT would like to offer me an unsubsidized loan with 8% interest! Now I'm paying $45k/year, why on earth would I accept a $3k loan with interest when I'm getting it at 0% from my parents?

If I drop Course 6 for Course 15 just so that I can pay my parents back for my tuition, yeah, people can call me a sellout all they want. I got sold out by the MIT financial aid department.

Sell the propaganda about how MIT is poorer than Harvard, and how our education is better, and how poorer folk are coming to MIT in droves. Good for them -- yeah, I'm happy that they can get full rides. MIT ifnancial aid is screwing me over right now and that's a fact.

There are certainly some heated responses on this thread. In my opinion, this is a good thing. For loyal MIT admirers tempted to jump into the fray and "defend MIT", MIT doesn't need any defense. MIT is all about open access and a free exchange of ideas. I think the thoughts expressed on this thread will be very useful to familes and students considering whether to accept an offer of admission from MIT. Our middle-class family decided that the cost was worth the sacrifice; however, not all families will be able to make that choice, given the lack of support MIT can offer. I also hope that some of the ideas expressed here will stimulate the leadership of MIT to develop a plan to compete head to head financially with Stanford, Harvard, and Yale for every student that MIT wants to enroll.

I would encourage those of you who are jumping to defend MIT's financial aid policies to please see the article I published in the MIT Tech last week, the article which I believe somewhat spurred Susan Hockfield's letter in the first place:

http://www-tech.mit.edu/V128/N7/endowopn.html

Everything stated in the article is the truth, learned over many, MANY visits to MIT's financial aid to determine how I'm going to pay for college.

It's really easy to say that 35% of your students come from families with an income of less than $60K if students are getting free rides! What percentage of their students come from families with incomes of $100,000 - $200,000? And we're talking GROSS income, people. Not net. What percentage of THOSE students receive the "average student grant aid"? What percentage of THOSE students graduate with "only $15,000 of loan debt"?

Open your eyes, folks. EVERYONE deserves to be at MIT...low income, high income, middle income, all races, classes, cultures, genders, EVERYONE. But the current policy makes it incredibly difficult for that to happen, because the students that MIT is so proud of supporting...those with low incomes, or single parents, or other unfortunate circumstances...get to graduate with zero debt, while students like me, who are just as intelligent and just as deserving, are left with the debt equivalent to a new house.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's awesome that MIT can provide support for those who need it. I just think the way they determine need is completely skewed. Take my best friend Dan, for example - low income household, getting over $40K a year from MIT. He got all C's last semester and doesn't go to most of his classes. But it doesn't matter because he's not going to have to work to pay back loan debts. Why should he be debt free, simply because of his family's background? Are we not both independent adults? Are we not responsible for ourselves? Are we not legally in charge of our own lives?

Everyone needs help...and if some students have to take out loans, EVERYONE should have to take out loans.

Susan Hockfield should stop trying to justify MIT's financial aid policy using "average" this and "average" that. We go to MIT...we all know how data can be manipulated to support your point! Look at the nitty-gritty details, don't just try to act like it's all fun and games. Financial aid is a very real problem and should be addressed as such. MIT is not simply being antagonized - their policy is due for an upgrade.

Excuse my vehemence, but I've been struggling for a semester with this. I've had to seek mental counseling and worked with a dean in Student Support Services to cope with the stress that it's put upon me and the relationship I have with my family. Money shouldn't be everything but in this day and age it is, and I hate that.

My life is my life and I should be able to do what makes me happy and what is right, but right now I don't even know if I can stay at my dream school because I don't know if I'll ever be able to pay it back.

So much for meeting "every student's full financial need".

:(

Hi,
I'm on a similar situation as Reg. The Foreign Tax Income Form appears as missing and I have already sent two emails asking about it with no response. My country, Mexico, has this kind of document but by the financial aid dateline the annual tax income had not been done so I sent a letter of my accountant explaining the situation, stating the annual income and the tax payment of the year. Besides the letter with the translation, I also sent some of the partial tax payments of 2007.
What should I do?
Where can I send you an email?

Thanks

Alison - While I sympathize with your situation, you are misplacing the blame for your plight. If MIT didn't consider your parents' income in its decision for financial aid, then it would have to discount parents' income for every student and would in effect give everyone a free ride. Clearly it cannot afford to do this. MIT's endowment is way below that of Harvard, Yale and Princeton. I agree that EFCs are much greater than a family can realistically afford. However, with an income of $125,000, surely your parents should be able to pay something towards your education. It was irresponsible of them to save no money to fund the college educations of their 3 children.

To Alison & All family members that are complaining:

Before enrolling into MIT, you (and your family) weighed all financial packages from all accepted colleges. MIT gave you until May 1st to accept or refuse. So you knew how much it was going to cost to attend before you accepted. So now you want to change the rules.

You could have gone to your fine state university and save a bundle. And being an MIT accepted student you probable received nice packages from other colleges. If you could not afford MIT with the package they offer, why didn’t you go elsewhere? If there is a problem now, it is with your miscalculation, not MIT’s.

Now you want MIT to fix your problem. If MIT were to amend their financial policies due to your complaining, do you think it would be fair to the students that refused enrolling because they knew the offered financial package did not work for them?

It appears some students are wasting positions at MIT that could have been better filled by more grateful people.

Alison, don’t give your self credit for Susan Hockfield post.

Hello all,

So after much self-debate, I have decided to suspend comments on this entry for a few days. Let me explain why.

I welcome and encourage free speech and open debate. I know that we in the office cannot make everyone happy, nor is it indeed ever possible to give everyone what they want. And the staff within Student Financial Services and I welcome and value the opportunity to work with families to try to find a reasonable and affordable plan for each one of you to attend MIT.

But I cannot and will not respond to individual cases of individual students in this forum. Alison, current 11, Parent of 11, etc, I would be happy to speak with each of you individually about your particular cases and welcome your contact (keep in mind I am in the middle of Freshman file review as is the rest of the staff so I may not be able to be extremely timely in my response, but I promise you can have time with me in the next several weeks).

Also, I think it is not time well spent to have a debate about a policy that has yet to be announced. Remember, as I said in my intro (and as President Hockfield said in her letter), our policy will be announced in the coming week. When it is public, I will be happy to comment on it, explain how it will affect families, and discuss the issues involved thoroughly, but any discussion at this point about it is merely speculation.

I admire and respect the civil tone that we have tried to set in these blogs. No single family is immune from the twin pressures of college and finances, and I know the topic of financial aid has engendered strong feelings in the last several months due to the changes in the environment.

I count myself lucky to work at a place like MIT where honest and open expression is valued and cherished. I hope that we can continue this conversation in just that tone. What I do not want is for this space to merely become a whirlpool of vitriol. (Believe me, suspending comments here is my choice, not one handed down to me).

So, I am turning comments off for this post. I will post in the coming week when the following items occur:

1) When our public response to the Grassley request is posted I will share the link and comment with you about the data included.

2) When our announcement is made, I will post it here and take your questions and comments.

In the meantime, note that my blog response email address is moneyman(at)mit(dot)edu (expressed in this way to avoid those pesky internet spambots). Feel free to send me any message in regard to your particular circumstance and I will attempt to respond in the time I have.

--Daniel