<p>i've been hearing lots of stuff and i thought i should find out the truth.</p>
<p>it depends on the school and the situation.</p>
<p>If you are not a U.S. Citizen or Permanent resident, very few schools are need blind to international students so your ability to pay will be a factor in admissions.</p>
<p>no doubt, being able to pay full freight does make a student attractive especially at schools that are not need blind.</p>
<p>Need sensistive or need aware schools do take financial aid into consideration when making their final decisions. If it comes down to 2 similiarly qualified applicants, the tip will go to the student that has the least amount of need.</p>
<p>You don't apply for Financial Aid until after you're accepted.</p>
<p>Your income or your family's income has no bearing on if you get accepted or not (although of course million dollar donations seem to help but that's another story)</p>
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You don't apply for Financial Aid until after you're accepted.
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<p>absolutely not true. At many schools (especially privates)you recieve your financial aid award letter at the same time you get the admissions letter or a few days later. If you use this approach then it is highly unlikely that you will recieve no aid because it will all be allocated by the time you apply.</p>
<p>Please check the financial aid deadlines for the schools which you are interested in attending and make sure that you submit all required documentation well before the deadline.</p>
<p>
[quote]
absolutely not true. At many schools (especially privates)you recieve your financial aid award letter at the same time you get the admissions letter or a few days later. If you use this approach then it is highly unlikely that you will recieve no aid because it will all be allocated by the time you apply.</p>
<p>Please check the financial aid deadlines for the schools which you are interested in attending and make sure that you submit all required documentation well before the deadline.
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<p>at the same time you get your admissions letter... exactly. </p>
<p>You can apply for FASFA beforehand and get your EFC, however none of it is applied until you're accepted or enroll.</p>
<p>there seems to be a bit of a disconnect.</p>
<p>Are you stating that one does not have to apply for financial aid until they are accepted to college?</p>
<p>Most students who receive a financial aid award letter with their acceptance or shortly after are the same students who have filed their paperwork by the college's deadline.</p>
<p>Most schools especially for incoming freshmen require that the financia aid forms be submitted in early february. For returning students the paperwork is due later.</p>
<p>FinAid isn't processed until an applicant is accepted, the package comes either right away or very soon after admission.</p>
<p>You can apply for a pell grant and probably some federal loans beforehand, but it probably won't be checked until after the student is admitted.</p>
<p>This is through several phone calls and conversations with several university admissions and Fin Aid offices.</p>
<p>And to answer the question, I don't see how financial aid will affect one's chances of admission.</p>
<p>There are some schools that out and out say that requiring aid could have an impact on admissions. Usually it is for the tail end of the applicant pool, after the budget has been depleted, and it tends to affect borderline candidates who need a lot of money. If a school does not say it is need blind, that possibility exists. These tend to be private colleges that are selective, but without the large endowments that the top schools have. The larger colleges and state school and less selectives schools tend to be need blind but they often gap since they give no guarantee of meeting aid, and often do not.</p>
<p>JCambell,
When the college application is submitted, the student is required at that time to indicate whether they will be applying for financial aid, so the admissons committee does in fact know if a student is also applying for financial aid when they are considering an application for acceptance. This can be a big factor in deciding whether to accept a student at colleges that do not state that they are "need blind".
Deadlines for financial aid applications for most colleges are WAY before the student actually receives an acceptance, usually in Jan or Feb. [EA,ED being the exceptions] IF YOU WAIT UNTIL AN ACCEPTANCE LETTER ARRIVES in April, you won't qualify for aid because you will have missed the PROFILE or FAFSA deadlines, which colleges require for considerarion of financial aid, even if the aid is totally supplied by the college.. And you should know, sybbie is the CC guru on financial aid, and in 4 years of reading posts written by her on financial aid matters, I have never known her to be wrong.</p>
<p>to be honest - it depends on the school.</p>
<p>For most schools, even the need aware schools, applying for financial aid will not affect your application. The need aware schools tend to be fairly competitive schools that just do not have either the budget, endowment, or priority to give every admitted student what their financial aid app results say they need. They do not want to gap, as they want the control as to who is likely to come to the school. If you gap across the board, you can lose some highly desireable kids. So they have to manage their enrollment. Top candidates and any kids who do not need a lot of aid are accepted without regard to need. Once the school gets down to the last bunch of kids, they do take need into consideration. A borderline applicant who needs a full package is not likely to be accepted unless he has somethng the college really wants. A student slightly outside the desirable circle might get accepted since he is a full pay, or maybe a bunch of kids who need just a little bit of aid that will cost as much as that full need kid, may get accepted in lieu of the one who needs all that money. These schools also often offer merit aid as sweetners to entice those whom they want. So you can get the situation of these kids getting merit money who don't really need it, and it is kind of doubtful they really earned, whereas a better qualified applicant who needs a lot of money is denied. In schools that are needblind but do not guarantee 100% of need, a full need kid is not going to be much better off because even if he is accepted, he'll get an unfavorable financial package full of loans and likely to gap big time. Of course, he will then get the choice of whether he wants to take on the debt and scrimping and go, or to choose a school that costs less. </p>
<p>All of this calculating needed for enrollment management requires a lot from the admissions and financial aid offices. So most of these schools are smaller schools with careful admissions process. Most schools accept without regard to financial aid needs, and then financial aid has to distribute the funds according to how admissions rated the acceptee, giving the most highly desired the best packages and gapping those who are on the tail end of being accepted.</p>
<p>thanks for the explanation; it makes sense and meshes with what I've heard from colleges. For example, I asked Scripps College about this and they said they are basically need blind until the very tail end of the applicant pool...meaning when the money has already been given out, it could hurt your chances of acceptance.</p>