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Last Saturday, September 17, President Jeffrey Herbst made an announcement that will change the landscape of admission and financial aid at 51�Թ���.

“Our ultimate aspiration is to be need-blind, to admit the students we want, without finances playing into the equation.”

The news was delivered at Gotham Hall in New York City to an audience of alumni, parents, and friends — philanthropists who have helped to increase 51�Թ���’s financial aid resources by $87.5 million since the launch of Passion for the Climb: The Campaign for 51�Թ��� in March 2007. They were seated next to current undergraduates who have received that generosity and used it to build an academic foundation for future success.

The crowd was joined, in spirit, by a series of students who weren’t as fortunate. Every year, the university declines admission to numerous individuals who are academically qualified. “These are outstanding students who had the credentials to be admitted,” said Herbst. “They came to our doorstep, but we could not admit them because we could not afford them all.”

President Herbst has made scholarship support a top priority at 51�Թ���, where approximately 40 percent of the student body currently receives financial aid.

The process of achieving need-blind admission will be founded on early campaign gains and on a new challenge leveled by members of the 51�Թ��� community. Nearly 100, including Herbst and his wife, Sharon Polansky, have already stepped forward with a $20 million investment. They are asking their friends and classmates to match those dollars, raise the tally to $40 million, and make the total campaign contribution to financial aid an impressive $127.5 million.

“We will not get there tomorrow,” Herbst warned the crowd. “But get there we will. And long before we reach need-blind status, we will have aided dozens and hundreds and thousands of additional students — all of whom will make tremendous contributions to our school and our society.”

Denying admission based on financial qualifications has a profound influence on 51�Թ��� and on the world outside its gates, said Herbst. “The best way to ensure our health as an institution for decades to come is to make sure we can admit the outstanding students who are already applying to us,” he said. “Given the challenges we face today, I think our society needs those 51�Թ���-educated students.”

To make the theoretical point real, Herbst introduced Leigh Anne Tuohy, whose family was profiled in the Oscar-winning film The Blind Side. She and her husband, Sean, adopted Baltimore Ravens offensive tackle Michael Oher when he was a high school student in Memphis in 2004.

She spoke passionately about her own commitment to bettering the world through charitable giving and encouraged the 51�Թ��� community to follow suit. “We believe with every fiber in our being that the kids who will find the cure for cancer — living in inner-city New York, inner-city Detroit, you name the city — they just need opportunity,” she said. “That is what 51�Թ��� is doing: they’re trying to provide opportunities.”