<p>Does the financial aid office know the decisions right now? As in on their financial aid database, if they look up your name, will they be able to tell what your decision is. They say don’t send anything until we ask for them, so what does this mean?</p>
<p>Did they ask you for info?</p>
<p>I mean they asked for my idoc (got an email from college board and Brown was on the list) and its on my FA page, but haven’t received a personal email directly from them, requesting the information.</p>
<p>If you look at other similar topics in this forum, you’ll see that a lot of people have reported being asked for their IDOC. It means nothing - the FA office is separate from the admissions office. It says nothing about your decision.</p>
<p>Financial aid most likely begins at least a preliminary review of everything before admissions makes its decisions, even if it’s just to decide form whom they need extra documents.</p>
<p>That’s what I thought! So late in the game, you think they don’t know?</p>
<p>What about this:</p>
<p>I know someone who was asked for some documents on their FA page and by collegeboard-when they called the financial aid office, the person said “He has all the necessary documents, his application is complete. Right now we don’t need anything but IF he were accepted we will request more information.” Apparently, this was today. </p>
<p>So my question: The FA office still doesn’t know the decisions—wouldn’t they ask for the documents they need now. As in if he called today and they said they don’t need it, does that indicate rejection? </p>
<p>Sorry just curious. Trying to see if there is a good correlation.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t try to read between the lines.</p>
<p>First of all, there’s nothing to be gained in doing so. If your guess is correct, you can’t do anything with a guess in hand. And if you’re incorrect, you still can’t do anything profitable…but you could do something to your detriment (like commit to another college assuming your first choice college rejected you because the FA office didn’t ask for your parents’ latest tax return).</p>
<p>Second, if they don’t know, how can they send out signals to you? You think they do know the results, but consider that the list they want is not the list of people who are accepted but, instead, the list of people who choose to matriculate. That’s the list that requires finalization. Your scenario has the FA office doing one level of review for all applicants, a second “middle” level of review for accepted applicants, and then a final review for matriculating students. Why do you think it is more efficient for them to get hold of the list of accepted students and add another level of review to the process? Because they have free time on their hands?</p>
<p>I recommend waiting for a decision from Admissions instead of reading tea leaves from Financial Aid.</p>
<p>In the many years I’ve posted on this forum and followed this process at Brown I have never heard of a single instance where an acceptance was hinted at, suggested, or leaked by Financial Aid before decisions were mailed.</p>
<p>My understanding of Brown’s implementation of being “need-blind” requires a strong, high wall is erected between Financial Aid and Admissions such that little to no information slips between those two systems that’s unnecessary. Given that they are both using Banner, I can say that there is certainly no way that the Financial Aid database is accessing information at this point that is being used by admissions-- that would almost certainly have been one of the first and most critical business rules in designing this system.</p>
<p>As has been the case 100% of my time on this forum, if you’re asking if receiving some document, phone call, change in status online, etc is telegraphing your admissions decision early, the answer is always, “No.”</p>
<p>Brown definitely hasn’t finalized decisions yet. They posted on the admissions blog yesterday saying:
[Prospects</a> & Providence](<a href=“Blogs Decommission Notice | Brown University”>Blogs Decommission Notice | Brown University)</p>
<p>^Admission offices don’t quite work that way.^ </p>
<p>The majority of applicants have already been rejected by now. I think the only ones who go to committee are those who are very likely or are in the middle somewhere.</p>