They may not necessarily be specifically looking for SES in reading individual applicants’ applications, but the design of the criteria and process can be done to produce an expected SES distribution of the admit class.
In addition to legacy preference, other things that can tip the results to a higher SES distribution:
Requiring more application items, such as SAT subject tests, recommendations, CSS Profile means that those in low SES schools with few going to colleges needing those things may not hear about needing them in time.
Recommendation quality is likely to be better at high SES schools where recommenders have more practice.
CSS Noncustodial Profile screens out many from divorced parents, who tend to be poorer than average.
Preference for expensive ECs over paid work can favor high SES applicants.
Even the most socio-economically diverse need-blind schools don’t achieve anything close to true balance in their student body profile. They just tend to be more diverse than similar tiered schools that practice need-aware admissions.
As @ucbalumnus points out, even if schools aren’t gaming the system by looking at zip codes, etc, successful applicants will still skew towards wealthier students whose stats and achievements reflect the advantages of not growing up poor.
Colleges also front-load their applicant pool with high SES students by having admissions officers visiting mostly private high schools and just a few select public ones. Counselors at non-elite public high schools also play a part by focusing on getting their top students into in-state flagships and honor colleges.
Need blind/meets full need highly competitive schools do offer people with the same need different packages. I have no idea how they select these students or make this desire from admissions known to FA but there can be a substantial difference in institutional grants including grants with various names. In knowing friends with grants from these different named sources among my son’s friends at his school and other highly competitive schools his HS friends attend there is a noticeable pattern. If a school wants you more for whatever reason they may give you more need based FA, it is not an exact science at many schools where equal need means equal award. Some schools will negotiate need based awards too. The need blind schools may say that but when they recruit mainly from very expensive private schools and certain zip codes it’s clear that there is some at the very least minimal recognition of a students probable need. I would highly doubt that when some of them changed to need blind status that the amount of kids with need changed that much either.
Another admissions practice that tilts the admit class toward a higher SES distribution is admitting lots of Early Decision students. Students who need to compare financial aid offers between schools may not want to apply Early Decision, so it is likely that Early Decision applicants come from families who can and will pay list price.
For comparison, note that University of California schools are need-blind in admissions, but have relatively high percentages of students on Pell grants compared to other schools of similar admission selectivity. Admission criteria and practices are pretty much the opposite of those described previously, presumably by deliberate policy:
No CSS Profile.
No Early Decision.
No consideration of legacy.
SAT subject tests are not used, except for some divisions/majors at some campus (even then, not required).
No recommendations, except optional at Berkeley for applicants invited to send them (even that has been controversial, due to the belief that recommendations may put low SES applicants at a disadvantage).
Some of the essay prompts are those that low SES students can more easily write a good, true, and believable essay on (e.g. "Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?").
Unless you are monitoring your kids friends tax returns and brokerage accounts, you have no idea why two families are getting different needs-based packages.
My family lived well below our means for most of my kids childhoods. You could look at the clunker cars and make whatever assumptions you wanted to about our assets and you’d be wrong. We saved aggressively for college (and were happy we did so) but to make a wild guess about how much aid we’d get based on our jobs and our lifestyles would be a waste of time.
Acdchai- do you really know to the dollar how much these families have in assets that you can claim preferential packaging? Do you have a clue as to whether a great grandparent left money in trust for the benefit of one of the kids? People can live relatively modest lives and still have a chunk of money available JUST for tuition- not for vacations, not for fancy home renovations, JUST for college.
We live in DC where a huge majority of my kids friends parent’s work for gov’t/military so salaries are very transparent. Yes there certainly can be differences with grandparents gifts, savers vs spenders but just in terms of basic FAFSA income numbers we know almost exactly what our kids’ friends parents earn and vice versa. Housing costs in our zip code are incredibly close to an average as well. It’s a weird thing but normal for here. The kids who were most in demand in terms of the most acceptances to the best schools and best merit offers were also the ones getting substantially higher need offers from the 100% need met schools. There isn’t anything anyone can do about it but thinking things are exactly 100% equitable based only on numbers doesn’t appear to be the case among the people we know. Having substantial money in savings/investments doesn’t really adversely effect need based FA at these very expensive 100% need met schools because you are only expected to use somewhere around 5% each year towards college via the calculators. People who I hear whining about credit card debt all the time and have shiny new cars every other year are not ones who I expect have been maximizing college savings anyway in our income bracket
@acdchai I think your reasoning is faulty…but believe what you want to believe.
Unless you are seeing all the financials for a family, you do NOT know their true financial picture.
As an example…we do NOT whine about our credit card balances, and we do not have shiny new cars every year. We also did not ANY college savings…and our kids did not get need based aid.
OP, you make a good point about some schools offering a variety of aid/grants/merit. But I’d suggest that awards are generally tied to (implicit or explicit) institutional priorities – so there is some rationale behind the practice, and it will differ depending on the school.
Consider 2 students, Joe and Mary, who have identical ACT scores and GPAs, comparable course rigor and ECs. Assume both are full pay. Both apply to College X, where the posted merit guidelines indicate that each is eligible for an academic merit award of $15,000-20,000/year (the maximum offered by College X).
Scenario 1: Joe attends a Catholic high school and his uncle is a priest of the same order that founded College X. He is offered $17,000 in merit plus $1,000/yr for going to a Catholic HS plus another $2,000/yr for the family connection ($20,000 total). Mary is a public school student with no priest relatives, and she is offered $20,000 in merit, so same bottom line for the students. In this case, there was no preference shown in funding; the money just came out of three different pots for Joe via the designated scholarships, vs. academic merit alone for Mary.
Scenario 2: Joe is from an underrepresented state. He plans to major in statistics, which happens to offer a department scholarship. He visited. And College X is 60%+ female. So perhaps Joe is offered $20,000 in merit (because of gender, geography and demonstrated interest), plus the $3,000 noted above, plus $2,500 for the stats department award. Now his offer is up to $25,500.
Meanwhile, Mary’s HS is an hour away from College X and funnels a dozen students a year there. Mary didn’t visit, and she applied for nursing, which is College X’s most popular major among females. Her offer is $15,000, since while her stats earn her a scholarship, she doesn’t tick off any “extra” boxes for Admissions.
That $10,500 is a pretty big annual difference for two similar (on paper) kids, and I would agree with you that it represents preferential packaging. However, there was a formula behind the combination of awards that Joe received, and they were available to other applicants. They just didn’t happen to apply to Mary.
To get a sense of whether a kid will be treated more like Joe or Mary, I’d suggest looking closely at schools’ Common Data Set and the types of awards that are available. Also, I’d be cautious about estimating how much more money will appear for “students the school really wants.” Sure, a college might award a full $20,000 in merit when stats indicate $15-20,000, and maybe they’ll even find a couple of other awards to improve the offer. But that $15,000 is not going to turn into $45,000 when merit maxes out at $20,000.
Two caveats: My S is not looking at “top” colleges, so perhaps practices are different at top 50 schools. Also, there might be more “play” in need-based aid than in merit.
Certainly, schools that offer merit aid package and distribute that aid in the way that best attracts the type of student they want in order to enhance the mission of the college. But I don’t believe that it’s a common practice for schools to adjust need-based aid for factors other than the financial condition of the applicant’s family.
