<p>It’s an old debate here, are need blind schools really need blind? I personally don’t believe the Smith’s of the college world are. Simple fact–they come up with a very consistent number of full payers every year and this year it will be harder to get those.</p>
<p>Another constant debate–do you apply for aid at schools when you know you won’t get it? My personal answer is no, unless it’s a school that says they won’t consider you equally in future years if things change. And few 100% meet need schools say that.</p>
<p>Well, hmom5, let’s hope you are right and D will get a “hook” by being full-pay (or very close to it). I do not know enough to be able to debate the topic anyway.</p>
<p>Those of us on the one side of the debate believe your DD will get the biggest advantage by not checking the ‘yes’ box for aid and not filling out the paperwork. You might want to let them think you’re not on the cusp of needing it and imagine you may be a family who can give in addition to being full pay.</p>
<p>Barnard took my D after deferment with significant FA, whereas Smith didn’t. Smith has more Pell grant recipients (most needy) but Barnard has more students on FA. Smith has publicly said it would no longer be need-blind, Barnard has not.</p>
<p>I would always apply for FA in the chance it might be needed. Schools award FA this way: returning students on FA, new students requesting FA, and returning students requesting FA for the first time.</p>
<p>I have found Barnard to be truly need blind in many, many anecdotal cases. And all schools are facing endowment losses.</p>
<p>The letter we received from Barnard was very insistent that all policies would remain in place. In fact, it was much less panicked that the letter we got from Williams where S attends. Barnard essentially said, “We’ve lived on a shoe-string before and we know how to do it.”</p>
<p>You can overthink things. Keep it simple. If you may need FA or think you may qualify now, apply. If you do not want any FA or are sure you don’t qualify, don’t.</p>
<p>Queen’s Mom: Feel free to PM me with any Barnard specific questions or anything else I might be able to help with.</p>
<p>The problem is (at least at Smith), even if D does not need nor would qualify for FA her first year, I am not willing to take the chance that things will not change before the next year. We were worth a lot more before last year’s melt down…and of course, you are right that EVERYONE’s endowment (including my family’s) has shrunk. </p>
<p>I recently donated to my alma mater based in part on the fact that they are still need blind (which IMO all schools should be).</p>
<p>This varies from school to school. Many 100% meet need schools treat students with new new need the exact same way they treat students who got aid in the past. The only way to know is to ask at each college.</p>
<p>Not surprised to hear Smith won’t be need blind this years. Many schools that have been won’t, but all won’t announce it loudly. Or they’ll say they will just be need blind after the point when it becomes necessary. Believe what you will…</p>
<p>Everyone needs a strategy they are comfortable with. But if I knew I wouldn’t get aid and I knew the school would treat my child the same if our need changed, no way I’d check the ‘yes’ box right now.</p>
<p>Many families who don’t get aid feel they need it. What I’m trying to say is if you’ve done the homework–run calculators, had the school clarify any questions–and your EFC is still above COA.</p>
<p>I think Smith;s getting a bit of a bum rap here. I’m not sure they’ve ever claimed to be 100% need-blind. Two years ago my D & I visited there and the admissions officer in the info session was very clear in saying they were “95% need-blind.” Now it’s a little unclear exactly what “95% need-blind” means, and many might wish they were 100% need-blind, but I think it’s a little unfair to accuse them of being dishonest about a need-blind commitment they haven’t actually made. I think they’ve been pretty straightforward about this: at the margins, full-pays are going to have an advantage in admissions there. </p>
<p>I do think they make every effort to meet 100% of demonstrated need for admitted students, but that’s a different question; add the two together and it it means they know how much money they have in their FA budget and when it’s all committed to meeting 100% of need of those they’ve already committed to admitting, they’ll turn to admitting full-pays to fill up their class instead of more students with need.</p>
<p>QM, I think in your case a double-barreled ED strategy might make sense. Your D can apply ED1 to Barnard, her #1 choice; she’ll either be admitted, denied, or deferred to the RD pool. If admitted, fine, it’s a done deal, dreams come true. If denied or deferred to the RD pool at Barnard she’ll know by December 15, in plenty of time to apply to Smith ED2 by their deadline of January 2. Alternatively, if deferred at Barnard she could apply RD to Smith and wait and see what happens at Barnard. As a full-pay, she’ll have an admissions edge at Smith even at the RD stage, but certainly also at the ED2 stage. </p>
<p>Either way, I say she should reach for her dreams at the ED1 stage. But just to be clear: both Barnard and Smith are terrific schools, and if your D gets into either one, she’s doing very well indeed.</p>
<p>RE 95% need-blind: I think Carleton went to that this year, and explained precisely what it meant. It would admit 95% of the class on a need-blind basis, but would reserve 5% of the slots for need-aware admissions (which in this context would clearly mean full-pay only). At the same time, it reiterated its commitment to meeting 100% of need. I think that is a fairer and more honest approach than having fully need-blind admissions but not meeting 100% of need for all admittees.</p>
<p>95% need-blind means need-aware. This is how need-aware schools distribute FA. They’re need-blind until the FA budget is allocated, then they take full payers.</p>
<p>Well, I understand the “95% need-blind” concept in general, but there can be big differences in how it’s administered. One way would be to go truly need-blind for the first 95% of acceptances, letting the chips fall where they may on what kind of total FA commitment that means; then after that point, doing exclusively full-pay admits. There are risks to a cash-short school in taking that approach, because they might end up with a bigger FA commitment than they anticipated.</p>
<p>Another approach would be to say, “Well, we think we can cover full financial need for about 95% of the entering class, but we need to mind our pennies; so we’ll keep a running total on the FA commitments we’re making, and we’ll stop offering admission to kids with financial need once we’ve fully allocated the available FA funds.” That approach provides more certainty on the FA expenditure side, but “95% need-blind” could turn out in fact to be 92% need-blind or 97% need-blind, depending on how far the FA budget goes. </p>
<p>A third approach–and I believe Reed did something like this, if I understand the recent NY Times story on it—would be to go ahead and identify your ideal group of acceptances, then work backward from that list and selectively cull about 5%, all with financial need, and replace them with full-pays from the next cohort who just missed the cut on the first round. In this approach, it’s probably a combination of weaker students and highest-need kids who get bounced out of the class—because the higher the need, the more FA you’re saving and the fewer kids you need to bounce out.
But it gives the school the ability to finely control its FA expenditures. It may also end up harming the kids with the highest financial need.</p>
<p>These approaches would produce very different results. Each could plausibly be described as “95% need-blind.” That’s why I say it’s unclear what a school means when it uses that term.</p>
<p>bclintonk, your scenarios are interesting, but I’m missing something - what do you see as the difference in outcome between #2 and #3? They look the same to me in terms of outcome. In both cases, don’t we assume that they stopped being need-blind for the last about-5%?</p>
<p>I am pretty certain, at least as I understand it, that Carleton took the first of your three approaches. Neither of the others could really plausibly be called “95% need blind”, although the second may come pretty close.</p>
<p>If your normal, “need-blind” (it needs the quotation marks, since need-blind is never blind to many factors that correlate well with income and wealth) admissions produces a class where 60% of the students receive aid averaging 1/4 of COA, and at the end of the process you strip out 5% of the class with above-average aid, you wind up with 9% fewer aid recipients, maybe 30% less total aid, and a 25% reduction in average aid. Which might be necessary and prudent, but not what I would describe fairly as “95% need-blind”.</p>
<p>In general, I would think that a college would be able to anticipate fairly accurately what its total aid bill would be from a normal need-blind admissions process. The smaller the college, the more variation there would be on that, but I still think the range would be pretty predictable, or would have been before this year. Now lots of colleges must be worrying about whether, under current conditions, their models will be accurate as to the family incomes and wealth, and also how many full-pay families will slip into need territory going forward. Being prudent and cautious is the right thing to do, for the institution and for the students. But if a college is looking to cut 30% of the aid budget it would have on a fully need-blind basis, I think it should be a little more forthright.</p>
<p>^ The difference between scenario #2 and #3 is in who gets culled from the herd. In #2, a cut-off point is set based on cumulative FA commitments, and no one with need gets admitted after that point. Applicants with need either make the cut or they don’t, without scrutiny of their individual financial situation entering into the decision. </p>
<p>In scenario #3, more people with need make the initial pre-admit list, but then the school goes back and selectively knocks out 5%, all selected for culling on the basis of need (i.e., cost to the school). But they’re not necessarily the last 5% added to the pre-admit list. The adcom could look at Candidate A and say, “Hmmm, maybe she’s not such a terrific candidate but on the other hand she’s only going to cost us $5K/year, whereas Candidate B has basically similar credentials but is going to cost us $40K/year; so lets eliminate Candidate B, because if we’re eliminating people like Candidate A we’re going to have to cull more than 5% to get back within our FA budget.” Read the NY Times story on Reed. It sounds like this is just what they did. Pretty horrific, but they felt they had to do it.</p>
<p>It’s probably much worse than I described, though, because my example effectively assumed a 100% yield, when in fact most of these LACs have non-ED yields that are more like 20-25%. So 5% of the admitted pool is a lot more than 5% of the class. And it’s not the same full-pays who get in – for every high-need marginal applicant excluded, another full-pay even-more-marginal applicant is accepted, who wouldn’t have been accepted otherwise. What’s more, I’ll bet yield is generally lower for full-pay students than for full-aid students, so in order to fill the class every full-aid applicant crossed off the list probably has to be replaced by one-plus-something full-pay applicants.</p>
<p>Why do you think full pay yield is smaller? If they are more marginal candidates and money is no object, wouldn’t they go to the best school that takes them and that presumably will be the school that they only got into due to full pay?</p>
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