<p>Andover may be need-blind, but it’s the hardest school to get into. </p>
<p>You can also win $400 million dollars in the Powerball lottery, but your chances aren’t too good either. </p>
<p>Yeah, found that out for myself the hard way last year.</p>
<p>That would be better to be completely need-blind. If anything, Exeter should be, it’s the school with the largest endowment.</p>
<p>Exeter was “effectively need-blind” before 2009 but pulled back in 2009 because of the financial crisis. I suspect that with their endowment value coming back to the pre-crisis level, they may be back or close to “effectively need-blind” again. Even so, it’s easy to understand why they wouldn’t want to make that claim or commitment. </p>
<p>Significantly improved chances</p>
<p>I think it’s based on how much money the school has to offer. If we’re looking at Harvard, for example, 30 billion dollars… That could probably pay for the entire student class for the next 10 years.</p>
<p>For the super rich schools, the size of the FA pot is not based on how much the school HAS to offer, but on how much the school WANTS to offer. </p>
<p>The super rich ones (Exeter especially) choose to spend their money on other things (e.g., better sports programs/facilities, etc) rather than spending it on admitting even more FA students. With its billion dollar endowment, let’s say Exeter conservatively earns 5% income on it per year. If you divide that income by 1000 students, it comes out to $50k per student, per year. </p>
<p>But hey, it’s their money. </p>
<p>I see. I assumed wrongly. I guess it does make sense, improving facilities leading to more people who want to go, more people who want to go = more prestige.</p>
<p>Exeter, et al may be non-profit, but let’s not fool ourselves that these prestigious non-profit schools won’t do what’s best for their self-interest. And they’ve determined that what comes first is maintaining their image. </p>
<p>I understand that and I would accept that, and I’d also add that these improvements in the school benefits the students too. </p>
<p>Regarding how need-blind is “disingenuous”, keep in mind that an important rule of need-blind admission is that admission and FA are two separate processes handled by two different departments or at least different individuals. AO’s job duties or list of considerations for admission simply don’t have “ability to pay” (or have it in the “do not consider” list). Their job is to form a well qualified and well balanced class and leave the FA piece totally to a separate process. Think of it this way. If your company’s HR tells you to hire the best engineer out there you can find for a department of your company and don’t worry about the pay which HR will handle. Would you go out of your way to guess or find hints about whether a candidate may ask for a big salary? What’s the incentive for you to do that to sabotage the hiring goal of the company? Now, you may incidentally eliminate a candidate who you decide not a good fit to your team and he so happens to be someone who is very expensive to hire. But did you take the pay into your decision making? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>@Daykidmom: According to this wiki article, there are a total of 50 colleges that are need blind AND meet full demonstrated need for domestic first year applicants. Not a lot but enough to make a college list out of them.
<a href=“Need-blind admission - Wikipedia”>Need-blind admission - Wikipedia;
<p>@GMT: I see nothing sinister about a school being image conscious. They all are! They have to be - it’s the nature of the business. (See Harvard acting to protect its brand in the wake of, say, its cheating scandal.) Frankly, the most rabid image-conscious boarding schools our family encountered over the years were the smaller, less known schools trying to build a presence in the field. </p>
<p>I don’t wish to quarrel, but I just find your comments about Exeter’s purported “self-interest” and determination about “what comes first” to be gratuitously snarky and cynical – unless, of course, you are a trustee with inside knowledge about what they’ve been doing out there in New Hampshire since 1781. One significant thing they have been doing, and it’s admirable, is instilling their students with a genuine sense of non sibi (not for oneself). Whether they are doing that inside a beautiful newish science building or a laughably ugly mid-century gynasium that could use an upgrade matters not to me. And whether the % of kids on FA is 32, 35 or 41, I think it’s a pretty remarkable and brilliant offering.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, re FA, “need blind” sounds great but the unfortunate truth, especially at the B-school level, is that ad coms can gain a pretty decent sense of which candidates will/won’t likely need significant aid or have lacked advantages/opportunities just by reviewing their applications – certainly not precisely or in every case, especially these days, but the markers are often there. This has been discussed on CC in the past. How often it comes into play in “blind” admissions decisions is unknown and I’m sure it varies by circumstance, but the theory is that many schools are actually “need aware” at some level whether they acknowledge it or not.</p>
<p>@Valdog: Please don’t confuse AO’s effort in diversifying the student body and building a well-balanced class with the “need discerning” effort. It doesn’t matter whether it’s at college or at BS level, if they want to they can definitely find clues on which candidates are more likely to be full pay and which may have financial need. As a matter of fact, there’s this question right there on the application form asking if you apply for FA. But as I said in an earlier post, AO’s do their job following certain SOPs. They just don’t have the incentive to do what they are told NOT to do. Unless you believe there’s a systematic conspiracy in every need-blind institution? </p>
<p>As for Exeter, I think they have had a long history of being very generous in distributing FA, but they are not ready to claim or make the commitment of being “need blind”, which they have every right and (I suppose) good reasons for. </p>
<p>@Benley. Fair point. FWIW, though, I am definitely not confusing those concepts and I definitely don’t believe in systematic conspiracies. But many people, including those in the educational world and ad com business themselves, have voiced these concerns in the past. I thought it fair to bring that point back around here for others to consider in the context of a “need blind” discussion – knowing well that it is a controversial notion. As with most things in life, it probably isn’t as black and white as it seems but I personally have no inside track. Cheers.</p>
<p>Applying as a full pay, academically qualified, domestic applicant roughly doubles your chances, even at the need blind schools.</p>
<p>@neatoburito how are you getting to that math? Are you as saying FP and FA apply in the same proportions and the avg student body is 1/3 FA? Experience with FA and FA offices?</p>
<p>Yeah, could you explain that? I get that it improves chances, but I don’t think it would be THAT significant.</p>
<p>Well, few schools disclose just how many of their applicants are applying for FA so we don’t know exactly that being full pay would double one’s chance, but it seems true that statistically almost all the schools would take a bigger proportion of full pay applicants. For one thing, private schools like to take more graduates from private schools (considering significantly fewer students go to private schools in the first place), and we know families that send their kids to private schools tend to be wealthier. And one may argue that kids with more resources are better prepared for elite schools of next level and therefore have a greater presence. </p>
<p>I’ve said this before, so pardon the repetition…but my sense is that the difference between Andover and Exeter (two schools offering roughly the same amount of FA to the same percentage of students each year) is that it is equally hard to get in to the schools as an FA candidate, but easier to get into Exeter if one is FP. This is reflected in Exeter’s higher admit and lower yield rate (FA students tend to have a higher yield than FP students), and Exeter is pretty open about this. So “need blind” doesn’t really make a difference in terms of results for the FA students. For schools with a lower (30/70) FA/FP ratio, the difference in admit rate is bound to be even steeper. </p>
<p>Interesting, this is a very learnative thread.</p>