<p>I was wondering if colleges are really "need-blind" in the admissions process. On many of the visits i have been to, the admissions reps all claim that their school is "need-blind" in making decisions but i'm not sure if this is actually true or not. Thanks.</p>
<p>There are only a handful of colleges that are audacious enough and have the $ to be need-blind. They are extremely proud of this fact and it’s a huge selling tool. Their alumni donors would hold them to these pledges. I’m not aware of any colleges who have been need-blind, reverse that policy.</p>
<p>I would say that the admissions reps all claiming their colleges to be need blind, then you’ve gone to info sessions of only a very select group. The HUGE majority of colleges are not need blind.</p>
<p>No school can truly be “need blind” because a student’s high school name and home address are going to somewhat suggest ability to pay. Certainly a child from an inner-city school whose home address is in the projects is going to be assumed to have need.</p>
<p>Conversely, a student from a top private is going to be assumed to be a full-pay or close.</p>
<p>Excellent point mom2college! Now we know one of the reasons that so many elite schools with money have such a high rate of prior private prep school attendees. This also helps to keep them well endowed down the road as well.</p>
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<p>I don’t think you can separate the effects of adcoms being able to look at (and make decisions partly based on) an applicant’s high school and address and the fact that the applicants’ parents are legacies/famous people/big donors/all of the above - which already puts them at an advantage compared to others.</p>
<p>There are a few school that have reversed ‘need-blind’ policy within the last year. I believe both Carlton and Reed have stated that for a small portion of their students, they are looking at finances (5% in Reed’s case).</p>
<p>One ‘need-blind’ school that DS applied to EA, not using Common app, never asked if we were applying for FA. Their FA forms are due 2/15, long after he hears about EA on 12/15. I thought that was impressive.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids: I’m not suggesting that admissions officers are blind to the fact that some kids apply from lessor economic situations, not at all. As a matter of fact, they pride themselves on being able to weigh in outside factors such as that in their decision making.</p>
<p>I’m speaking to the point of what I believe the OP asked: I assume that the poster is wondering if colleges who state that they are need blind, somehow consciously or sub-consciously penalize applicants who will need FA, in order to preserve their colleges’ budgets.</p>
<p>Certainly I can’t speak for peoples’ personal biases – we all got 'em, right? But I would assert that those rarefied schools which are “need blind” also practice holistic admissions evaluations and that they are driven by the institutional goal to bring in the best (as they define it) incoming freshmen classes – blind to the FA needs of that list of admitees. I’m saying that the “need blind” colleges, by and large are still admitting students w/o regard to their ability to pay.</p>
<p>If colleges that claim to be need blind (very few do, as far as I know) were truly so why do their percentages of students on financial aid tend to always be in the same range every year (e.g., sixty vs. forty percent, or whatever). How can it be a coincidence that the mix is so very stable year after year?</p>
<p>No so mahimahi: Look at when HYP announced their monster FA increases two years ago. Their admitted students on FA all jumped (not a ton, but some). Certainly they all saw a huge increase in applicants from middle class backgrounds. One can’t discount the fact that there are also tons of great applicants from wealthy backgrounds who, by sheer strength of their files, makes them coveted applicants. This number isn’t decreasing either.</p>
<p>I applied to one school ED and three schools EA. All four claim to be “need blind.” However, all four asked whether I intend on applying for FA. They claim that they need this information to process FA, not to consider it in the admissions process. That’s bull. They don’t need to process my FA stuff before the majority of kids even apply RD. They aren’t 100 percent need blind.</p>
<p>The reason colleges ask for FA information early is that they give you an estimated FA package if you are accepted early. This is particularly important for ED schools, because if accepted, you will have to accept or turn down the school by an early deadline based on the FA package they give you. You will not be able to wait and compare an ED FA package to RD ones.</p>
<p>mahi is correct. The number of needy students does not change year-after-year after year. </p>
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<p>The number of poor matriculants did not change. H & Y just started giving a $ discount to kids higher up the income scale. Thus, the number on need-based aid went up, but they just changed the definition to increase the number of eligibles, up to $180k income, in Harvard’s case.</p>
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<p>Perhaps true, but there is: 1) no evidence of same (besides the spin of the colleges); 2) no evidence that these kids were accepted.</p>
<p>ihs: Reed was not need-blind…</p>
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<p>But they should ask you to submit that answer under a separate cover that only goes to F/A office.</p>
<p>It does seem incongruent to say a school is need blind but to ask the Fa question on the app at all. Couldn’t that app process instead ask the ED applicants intending to ask for aid to prepare forms to be mailed within days of the ED acceptance notices…</p>
<p>A friend of mine firmly believes that acceptances for students NOT asking for aid is higher than those looking for FA…she says these universities are afterall businesses…she feels not asking for aid increases the likelyhood of admits
She has a point.</p>
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<p>Oops. Sorry. Was Reed the college that went back and redid 5% of their acceptees and changed them to full pay after the initial acceptance go around? I think that’s why I thought they were need-blind.</p>
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I’ve wondered. If we get any FA which is not likely, it won’t be more than few thousand at most. But few thousand a year is real money. On the other hand, I think you have to apply in order to qualify for some of the (even non subsidized) loans?</p>
<p>Probably the best ‘sign’ is a school that accepts student before requiring student/parents financial info. </p>
<p>As to the student’s address and school being indicators … yup. Also, I doubt they overlook looking at the job titles and companies that employ the parents. Do they look at other things? I don’t know. But, if a student’s parents shelled out 5-10K to send their kid to a two week course at that school in the summertime … it might just be an indicator of ability to pay when the kid goes to apply. I can’t kill a school for looking at that as it might allow them to afford to take another underprivileged kid (in the case of a school with capped funds).</p>
<p>LOL. Besides your zip code, HS name, parental occupations, and whether or not you’ve checked the box that says whether you’ll be applying for FA, adcoms can look at your house if they want to. Try it. Go to Google Maps, enter your home address, go to “satellite view,” and zoom in. It will give them a pretty good idea of the size of the house, the size of the lot, how it’s landscaped, what the neighboring houses are like, etc. Then go to “street view” and it will show a picture from the street. In many places they can get online public records of the assessed value of the house and land, and/or estimates of current fair market value based on recent comparable sales. House value won’t tell them everything—they won’t know how leveraged your parents are with mortgages, etc—but in combination with parental occupations it goes a long way toward determining how likely it is that you’ll need FA. I have no idea whether they actually look at these things, and any school that publicly claims to be need-blind shouldn’t be doing this. But if they want to cheat, they can cheat.</p>
<p>I think they can also manipulate the mix of FA v. non-FA enrollment somewhat with decisions about how many applicants to take from the ED pool. In general, ED applicants are significantly more likely to be non-need, because a lot of applicants with significant need are reluctant to apply ED for fear of locking themselves in before they’ve seen the FA package.</p>
<p>“Was Reed the college that went back and redid 5% of their acceptees and changed them to full pay after the initial acceptance go around? I think that’s why I thought they were need-blind.”</p>
<p>Yes, but I’d reword it for clarity: After the adcom finished their work in mid March, word came down that because of the collapsing economy’s effect on endowment and earnings, Reed couldn’t fund as many needy students as they had planned, so they had to replace (before notifications went out) about 100 FA acceptances with those who could pay full price (around 30 students with Reed’s yield). The effect was to increase the number of need-aware acceptances. Reed got close to being need-blind in recent years, but the economy derailed those efforts for the time being.</p>
<p>In spite of this, Reed increased its financial aid budget by 7.8 percent for this year, and was able to offer aid to 14 percent more applicants for this year’s incoming class compared to last year. But they had wanted to do even better.</p>
<p>“In many places they can get online public records of the assessed value of the house and land, and/or estimates of current fair market value based on recent comparable sales.”</p>
<p>zillow.com show this info for some (many? all?) locales.</p>
<p>Don’t forget the easy stuff: ECs! It’s hard to participate – much less standout – in ECs if you have to work as a grocery bagger to help pay the family bills. Since colleges place a premium on ECs to “build a class,” they are in fact placing a premium on kids who have the time and wherewithal to be able to successfully participate in those “valued” ECs, i.e., kids from middle-upper class families.</p>