"The hesitation about acting individually to curb the awarding of merit aid to financially well off students, among other practices, has led to talk of seeking broader antitrust exemptions to allow colleges to act in concert," (Inside Higher Ed reports. "The conventional wisdom is that unless you are Harvard or a few other institutions, you can't act alone without taking a hit. Maybe not. In the last few years, some colleges have pulled back from the policies everyone else says they'd like to pull back from. Notably the sky hasn't fallen (and neither have their admissions numbers). Consider the cases of Hamilton College, which completely eliminated merit aid to spend more on need-based aid, and of Tufts University, which imposed a limit on its use of early decision. Both colleges are competitive in admissions, with excellent academic reputations - but neither has even close to the endowment or admissions clout of Harvard or the other institutions at the top of the admissions pecking order."