If I use a fee waiver, AO can asume that, if I can’t pay for an application, I can’t pay for the Tuition?
I mean that’s a fair assumption on their part, but it certainly didn’t seem to hurt my daughter.
I really doubt that a AO actually knows that you used a fee waiver.
No. They could care less. Different teams. And they don’t get a low income master list to cross reference. If anything if you are pell eligible, the recent change to usnwr rankings that uses this as a metric, it might actually help.
@privatebanker but, if you are an international applicant and the College is need aware, probably don’t care too, because they check the financial aid application at same time than academic application?
If they are need aware, then they are looking at your whole financial need. Yes, that can impact your acceptance. That is what nerd aware means.
I doubt they care. The colleges themselves give them out for a variety of reasons, not just low income. One of our local colleges gives fee waivers to anyone who attends they large open house events, my oldest was given waivers to a few of the schools where she applied as a recruiting tool - including the school she ended up attending - because they valued her as an applicant.
@Eeyore123 I understand need aware means. But do you think that if we use a fee waiver, the College need aware probably don’t bother to check the applications, academic and financial? Thanks.
They are not going to reject you because you use a fee waiver. Your application will get the same decision if you pay the fee or not. Don’t pay the fee because you think it will improve your chances.
If they are need aware they will care about one’s ability to pay tuition.
It will have nothing to do with using a fee waiver for the application, which was the question.
You could pay for the application and they would still care if you pay.
Need aware can mean a lot of different things. International students are almost always vetted for financial need. So paying the application fee is not going to get you admitted if you are an international student who needs money.
In a need aware situation , just applying for aid, qualifying for aid by FAFSA, PROFILE, or other calculators, doesn’t eliminate you from admissions consideration. There is SOME financial aid available at most schools. It gets distributed to the students each school wants/needs the most, and also budgeted to spread the aid dollars the furthest.
So if you qualify for $10-20k of financial aid, or less, you could be in better shape for admissions than a student who needs a full ride or close to it. Unless that student who needs all that money has something that a school really wants, in general, for many schools that student has little chance of acceptance.
Some schools just rate their students, A, B,C or by whatever system and those with the higher ratings get the money first and those at the tail end may get no aid or denied.
So it’s not auto reject because you need financial aid.
Many colleges offer fee waivers to high stats kids.
The Harvard admissions reader documentation explicitly mentions that fee waivers requests are included the application file and says in bold for the reader to keep the fee waiver requests in the admissions file. The readers can use this fee waiver request in conjunction with parents occupation and other file information to estimate which students are financially “disadvantaged.” Getting this “disadvantaged” flag from an admissions reader was associated with an increased chance of admission compared to a similarly qualified applicant without the flag.
Of course, there are also many colleges that do things differently from Harvard, some that favor lower income applicants and some that do not. I agree that whether the student requests a fee waiver is highly unlikely to change the admissions decision at the overwhelming majority of highly selective colleges.
Use the fee waivers if your kid is eligible. Your kid is going to have to cast a very wide net in order to get the financial aid that is needed. What you save with the waivers will help cover the additional cost of the extra applications.
Agree this is the process for US applicants - that an indication of being financially disadvantaged increases chances of admission to top selectives. Wonder if it’s the same boost for international applicants, though? I suspect not. Would be interesting to see the data on that.