<p>...by telegraphing to the admission's office that this applicant is a 'non payor'?</p>
<p>Absolutely not! The schools that participate in the QB College Match do so specifically to seek out low income, high achieving students to add to the overall diversity of their school.</p>
<p>Let me confirm the obvious, only a QB finalist can select this box, correct?</p>
<p>What are the possible outcomes of a QB application?</p>
<p>Is the following correct?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>you are a QB finalist; you can therefore select QB on a college app …
…and can avail youself of all the benefits of being a QB college applicant such as better financial aid which ranges from full ride (about 5 pct of the QB applicants (268 out of ~5000)) to ‘generous FA’ (about 20 pct of QB applicants (~1000 out of 5000 Qb applicants).</p></li>
<li><p>sorry, you are not a QB finalist; you cannot check the QB box on a college app …
…and therefore you cannot avail yourself of the benefits of a QB coll. app; when u applpy to college you just apply like any old other person (whether it be EA, ED, or RD).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>If you’re a non-finalist, you can still use the QB application to apply to some schools that even waive the fee. I recommend applying through QB.</p>
<p>From my experience with QuestBridge, I think mostly highly qualified/URM/first generation QB applicants benefit from applying through QB. Approximately around half of finalists do not get accepted to ANY QB partner colleges. </p>
<p>Also, it might be more advantageous to apply ED to your first choice college rather than ranking the school for the match.</p>
<p>^^See I was wondering about this.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if it would be better to apply ED to my first choice (Penn), thereby telling them that they ARE my first choice OR to apply through questbridge, thereby standing out a little bit and let my difficulties be highlighted…</p>
<p>Mm…</p>
<p>^You are competing with other qualified low-income students, so would applying through the match really make you stand out?</p>
<p>During a Q&A session at a QB partner college, the admission officers explicitly stated that if their college is truly your first choice, you should apply ED rather than through QB match. This was only one college but I can see why schools would prefer ED; finalists can rank up to eight schools and adcoms do not know where their college stands in a student’s ranking.</p>
<p>I can see the point Muffinish makes about ED, but I see it differently. Sure, applying through QB lumps you in with all the other low income applicants, but applying straight ED, you are lumped in with athletes, legacies, URM’s, and most likely a lot of kids from top prep schools. Of course it would vary from school to school, but you need to consider the % of ED that is taken off the top from those groups, and then figure how good are your chances after those slots are taken. I’d rather my kid take her chances in the QB pile, but of course that is JMO.</p>