https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/02/15/cornell-be-need-aware-international-students
So the question is: For an international student, is it better to be offered admission at a school that you can’t afford, or to be rejected outright?
(I mean, there’s no answer to this question - it varies by student - but it’s an interesting thing to consider.)
Verifying the financials of overseas applicants is problematic.
I interview applicants overseas for my S’s boarding school. It’s jaw dropping how some of the applicants arrive in a Mercedes and have posh addresses and tell me they’re applying for FA.
Of course the best combination is need-blind and guaranteed to meet full demonstrated need for internationals, but there are only a few in that category, and they are highly competitive. I’d say the second best choice is need aware but guarantees to meet full need. Many private colleges offer this arrangement to internationals.
The complication for internationals is how to gain understanding of how a college will calculate demonstrated need. Net price calculators are fairly worthless in most cases, and currency fluctuation, opaque tax policies and cost of living disparities make it difficult for internationals to estimate their estimated family contribution.
If the family is clearly low income, then the good news is that if a student gets admitted, they will most likely get enough funding from colleges that guarantee to meet full need. If the family is middle class and/or from a developed country, then it’s hard to predict.
Bummer, but understandable.
Something’s gotta give if Cornell is going to meet full demonstrated need from a fixed amount of money.
So who are the winners and who are the losers in this policy change?
I would think the winners are kids with relatively low (or no) need, but who are near the borderline (maybe even just below it) for admissions. A few kids who would have been rejected would displace a few high-need kids who would have been accepted (but who may not have been able to attend anyway.)
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Verifying the financials of overseas applicants is problematic.
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Very true…and I think we’ll see more schools becoming need aware for int’ls.
I personally know an int’l who got lots of need-based aid because they only showed one of their many bank accounts…and the one they showed only had a modest amount of money in it. The other accounts had 6 times the amount. There was really little/no way for the university to know that this family had other accounts. And, when you consider that residents of a number of countries often earn a good bit of their income “under the table” it can become ridiculous.