<p>Do colleges use financial worthiness as ADMISSION criteria?</p>
<p>Is this what is meant by need aware? that is, if a college identifies itself as need aware, can they can reject or accept you if you are, respectively, poor or rich?</p>
<p>Let's assume that you would either match or exceed the other admission requirements, gpa, rank, class strength, HS strength, test results, ECs.</p>
<p>I just did a quick google search on need aware and found the following....</p>
<p>It says that being rich enough to pay sway a college into accepting a candidate, but it does not ask my OP question - can being poor sway a college to REJECT a candidate?</p>
<p>One reason I ask is that if we were accepted, we might be able to find money to pay for the college (IRA , eg). It would be nice if they simply accepted us then tell us the price and then we figure out if we can afford college or if we want to go into other funds.</p>
<p>If a college is need aware AND also guarantees they will meet 100% of need, then there is a chance that they will reject you for needing too much aid. The number of colleges that do this are fairly few, and they generally don’t publicize it much, as it’s not good publicity. There are rumors that some schools do this, and scandals about schools that claim to be need-blind, but get caught peeking, but in general it seems to be pretty rare. I’m sure someone can provide examples of this happening or schools where this is rumored to be the practice.</p>
<p>More likely, need aware schools without the 100% need guarantee will admit you, but not offer you much in the way of aid, or come up short in their package, which seems to be your preferred option.</p>
<p>WOW! Since we are poor, we made the ‘meet the 100 pct need’ the number 1 selection criterion, NOT knowing that they might reject you so that they can keep their pledge of meeting 100 pct (which of course looks like is really an empty and misleading promise if they are rejecting you outright ).</p>
<p>Ouch ouch ouch. we missed the early actions already, and my d feels that she has too many schools in her q so she will be resistant to adding more. problem is - that they are mostly 100 pct meet need and so could be all rejections.</p>
<p>So the only ones who would benefit at a ‘meet 100 pct need’ school would be the ones who do not have any (significant) financial need. The exceptions would be the need blind schools which are pretty rare and admissions are accordingly rarified (and beyond us ).</p>
<p>we hv kenyon, carleton, wes, mac, oberlin - all not need blind and where my d’s stats equal or exceed the std admission criteria . she also has vassar and grinnell ( at my insistence and the chart here says they are need blind), but unfortunately, tho her stats are ok for them, she is not that thrilled about them.</p>
<p>interesting article . reed did all this work to get the exact character and balance for the incoming class, but then the Fin dept came back and said the college cd not afford it and to drop 100 needy kids and replace w/ FPs.</p>
<p>I think you have some misconceptions about financial aid. Yes, schools may have to limit the number of students they can accept who need financial aid; except for a few heavily endowed institutions, they don’t have unlimited resources. That shouldn’t be surprising. But it’s not true that “…the only ones who would benefit at a ‘meet 100 pct need’ school would be the ones who do not have any (significant) financial need.” Many students with significant need are in fact accepted at numerous colleges where they have their full need met (keeping in mind, of course, that “need” is determined by the school, not the applicant).
You know the price before you apply and can figure things out then. </p>
<p>As for your last question (one which, for some reason, comes up frequently on the international forum), there would be no point in not asking for financial aid in hopes it would secure admission if you do in fact need financial aid to attend. Your financial aid package will be part of your acceptance. If you don’t ask for aid when you apply, you don’t get any, and unless there has been some significant change in an applicant’s financial circumstances since the date of the application, there are no do-overs.</p>
<p>What you want is a college that is both need-blind and meets 100% of determined need. There are at most about 50-60 of these. Almost all are very selective private schools. The following page has a list of them (along with explanations of these terms):
[Need-blind</a> admission - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“Need-blind admission - Wikipedia”>Need-blind admission - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>There seem to be a few errors in that list.
For example, according to Lawrence University’s Common Data Set, for 2013-14 on average it only met 89.1% of demonstrated need. According to the Knox College CDS, for 2012-13 on average it only met 90% of demonstrated need. According to the US News college site, the University of Rochester on average only met 86.2% of demonstrated need for students entering in one recent year. </p>
<p>I think a better explanation (placing the emphasis where it belongs) would be:</p>
<p>“A need aware, or need sensitive, policy means that that school makes some of its admissions decisions after considering the students need for college money. In other words, they may deny admission to some otherwise qualified students who are unable to meet the college programs full cost of attendance (COA) without the need of large loans, grants or scholarships.”</p>
<p>As I understand it, the point of a need-aware policy isn’t to give a hook to borderline full-pay students. The point is to avoid the costs of supporting all high-need applicants who otherwise would be admitted.</p>