The 568 Group is a consortium of American universities and colleges practicing need-blind admissions

Need-blind admission

Need-blind admission is a term in the United States denoting a college admission policy in which the admitting institution does not consider an applicant's financial situation when deciding admission...

. The group was founded in 1998 in response to section 568 of the Improving America's Schools Act of 1994.

History

In response to several prestigious colleges and universities holding "Overlap Meetings" to set similar tuition and financial aid levels, the Justice Department

United States Department of Justice

The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...

 began an antitrust investigation in 1989 and in 1991 filed an antitrust suit

Sherman Antitrust Act

The Sherman Antitrust Act requires the United States federal government to investigate and pursue trusts, companies, and organizations suspected of violating the Act. It was the first Federal statute to limit cartels and monopolies, and today still forms the basis for most antitrust litigation by...

 against 57 colleges and universities. While the Ivy League institutions settled

Consent decree

A consent decree is a final, binding judicial decree or judgment memorializing a voluntary agreement between parties to a suit in return for withdrawal of a criminal charge or an end to a civil litigation...

, MIT contested the charges on the grounds that the practice was not anticompetitive because it prevented bidding wars over promising students from consuming funds for need-based scholarships and ensured the availability of aid for the greatest number of students. MIT ultimately prevailed when the Justice Department settled the case in 1994.

In 1994, Congress passed the Improving America's Schools Act including a section number 568 that expands upon the issues in the MIT settlement. Section 568 states that is not unlawful under the anti-trust laws for two or more need-blind institutions to agree or attempt to agree:

1. to award financial aid only on the basis of need;
2. to use common principles of analysis for determining need;
3. to use a common aid application form; and
4. to engage in a one-time exchange of certain pre-award data of commonly admitted financial aid students.

The amendment specifically prohibits the sharing of any information on the amount or terms of any prospective, individual aid award and makes clear that the exemption does not apply to the awarding of federal financial aid.

Membership

The following is a list of member institutions, as of 2010:

• Amherst College
  Amherst College
  Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
  
  
• Boston College
  Boston College
  Boston College is a private Jesuit research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. The main campus is bisected by the border between the cities of Boston and Newton. It has 9,200 full-time undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. Its name reflects its early...
  
  
• Brown University
  Brown University
  Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
  
  
• Claremont McKenna College
  Claremont McKenna College
  Claremont McKenna College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college and a member of the Claremont Colleges located in Claremont, California. The campus is located east of Downtown Los Angeles...
  
  
• College of the Holy Cross
  College of the Holy Cross
  The College of the Holy Cross is an undergraduate Roman Catholic liberal arts college located in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA...
  
  
• Columbia University
  Columbia University
  Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
  
  
• Cornell University
  Cornell University
  Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
  
  
• Dartmouth College
  Dartmouth College
  Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
  
  
• Davidson College
  Davidson College
  Davidson College is a private liberal arts college in Davidson, North Carolina. The college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked in the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News and World Report magazine, although it has recently dropped to 11th in U.S. News...
  
  
• Duke University
  Duke University
  Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
  
  
• Emory University
  Emory University
  Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...
  
  
• Georgetown University
  Georgetown University
  Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
  
  
• Grinnell College
  Grinnell College
  Grinnell College is a private liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa, U.S. known for its strong tradition of social activism. It was founded in 1846, when a group of pioneer New England Congregationalists established the Trustees of Iowa College....
  
  
• Haverford College
  Haverford College
  Haverford College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in Haverford, Pennsylvania, United States, a suburb of Philadelphia...
  
  
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
  
  
• Northwestern University
  Northwestern University
  Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
  
  
• Pomona College
  Pomona College
  Pomona College is a private, residential, liberal arts college in Claremont, California. Founded in 1887 in Pomona, California by a group of Congregationalists, the college moved to Claremont in 1889 to the site of a hotel, retaining its name. The school enrolls 1,548 students.The founding member...
  
  
• St. John's College
• Swarthmore College
  Swarthmore College
  Swarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The college is located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia....
  
  
• University of Chicago
  University of Chicago
  The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
  
  
• University of Notre Dame
  University of Notre Dame
  The University of Notre Dame du Lac is a Catholic research university located in Notre Dame, an unincorporated community north of the city of South Bend, in St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States...
  
  
• University of Pennsylvania
  University of Pennsylvania
  The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
  
  
• Vanderbilt University
  Vanderbilt University
  Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
  
  
• Wellesley College
• Wesleyan University
  Wesleyan University
  Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
  
  
• Williams College
  Williams College
  Williams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams. Originally a men's college, Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this...