<p>Brandeis’ approach to being “partially need-aware” (see post #48^) is interesting, and at first glance it seems eminently fair. But on further reflection I’m troubled by some aspects of it. Great for the kids with need who get their full need met. (Great for them also to know that they weren’t at the very bottom of the admit pool, because those places are occupied by full-pays). But from the sounds of it, once the FA money runs out, Brandeis simply bars the door to any more applicants with ANY level of need. That could be $100, or $1,000, or $10,000, or $40,000 of need. But that seems a little harsh. What about the applicant with $100 of need, who surely could find a way to get by; maybe the parents would agree to eat tuna casserole instead of fresh fish on Fridays. Or the kid with $1,000 of need who would be willing to take out a modest loan? Or the kid with $10,000 of need for whom Brandeis has always been his dream school, who would sacrifice a lot (extra loans?) and for whom Mom & Dad would sacrifice a lot (maybe one of them takes a part-time second job, elevating family income to the point where there would be no “need” in years 2-4?) to get their kid into Brandeis? Or maybe Grandma, whose finances are not considered in the EFC calculation, would be willing to fork over part of it if it meant getting little Jimmy into Brandeis. Some schools "gap’ many or even most of their applicants, yet many of the “gapped” find ways to dig a little deeper and make it work. But the applicants to Brandeis don’t even get to make those choices. And it’s not clear they’re better off for it; they might very well end up being “gapped” at some other, lesser schools, and end up having to make the same hard choices about how to pay for it, when given the choice they might well have chosen to make a go of it at Brandeis.</p>
<p>So why does Brandeis insist on slamming the door on them? Well, I can think of a few reasons. First, Brandeis wants to protect its yield so as to protect its selectivity; likely they get a lower yield on “gapped” kids than on full-pays and on applicants whose need is fully met. To me, that’s a pretty shabby reason to deny a kid an opportunity to try to make it work. Second, by going partially need-aware in just the way it does, Brandeis guarantees it won’t have students griping internally or externally about Brandeis’ lousy FA, or about unfairness in FA awards—you either get full need or you don’t get admitted, and if you’re in the latter group you’ll think it’s because you didn’t make the cut academically. And there’s some truth to that—kids with need who don’t get in because they’re considered only after FA has run out are, by definition, toward the bottom of the admit pool; it’s just that the threshold for admission is set higher for kids with need than for full-pays. Third, Brandeis may not want to signal to those they “gap” that they’re at the bottom of the applicant pool, i.e., that Brandeis didn’t want them as much as the other 90% of kids with need, to whom it awarded full financial need. That would be a discouraging message: not only are you not getting any money, but we didn’t really want you as much as we wanted most of your classmates. That could ruin your whole day. Or your whole college career.</p>
<p>And just how big an advantage is it to be a full-pay under Brandeis’ system? Well, it depends on how far their FA goes, but the full-pay advantage could be huge. Suppose they can fill up 90% of their class before the FA budget runs out. Sounds pretty good right? Only a few extra full-pays get in at the bottom of the class? Well, it’s more than meets the eye. Brandeis gets about 7,000 applicants and accepts about 2,800 (=40% admit rate) to fill just under 800 places in its entering class (=28.6% yield). According to US News, 70% of Brandeis freshmen applied for need-based financial aid, and 58% were determined to have need. If it were need-blind, Brandeis could just rank order those 7000 applicants into deciles, 700 per decile, and offer admission to the top 4 deciles in order to fill its class. But using the Brandeis method, they’ll run out of FA somewhere around the middle of the 4th decile, around 2,517 admits, the number they need to get to 720 enrolled (90% of the total class). To get in with need, then, you need to be in the top 35.9% of applicants (2,517/7,000). The remaining 10% of the class, 80 chairs, will be filled by full-pays who fall below the 35.9% cut-off for applicants with need. But assuming yield is constant at 28.9%, they’ll need to offer admission to 280 full-pays to fill those 80 places. Just how deep does that take you? Well, it’s not clear whether they throw out all the remaining applicants who applied for FA (i.e., 70% of the remaining applicants), or only those whom they’ve already determined have need (58%). Assume the latter. That means they toss out 2,600 applications from kids with need, leaving a pool of 1,883 full-pays, of whom 280 will get offers of admission. If you do all the math, then (which I’ll spare you here), they’ll have offered admission to 45.0% of the full-pay applicants, but only 35.9% of the applicants with need. That’s a HUGE admissions advantage for full-pays who barely need to be in the top half of the applicant pool to be admitted, while applicants with need are borderline if they’re in the top third. (More precisely, applicants with need to be at the midway point of the 4th decile or higher, while full-pays need only be at the midway point of the 5th decile or higher). And that’s assuming they’re filling only the bottom 10% of the class with full-pays, and that once FA runs out they’re rejecting only those they determine don’t have need, and not simply taking a short-cut and throwing out everyone who applied for FA; in that latter case, the disparity would be even greater.</p>