<p>Would someone care to give their opinion on what effect being full pay has on college acceptances? Will the applicant at the 25% range be accepted because of ability to pay?</p>
<p>Unless you are a “developmental admit” (likely that you or your parents will give LOTS of money to the school), the fact that you are “full pay” will not improve your chances at any of the top 10 school (assuming that you mean 25% range as lower 25%).</p>
<p>If you are applying to a true “need blind” school, then it won’t make a difference.</p>
<p>If you are applying to a “need aware” school, it could.</p>
<p>For example… last year at my nephew’s Catholic high school, many applied to Santa Clara. It was odd who got accepted and who didn’t when one compared stats and ECs. The parents concluded that some of the “full payers” were chosen over those who had indicated that they were applying for aid. However, some of the super-stat need kids were also accepted (but a few didn’t get the aid they wanted 
)</p>
<p>It may not make a huge difference at some schools, but some think that if a “need aware” school has 2 applicants with rather similar stats/ECs, that they will choose the “full payer” over the “need” student at that point.</p>
<p>If you are really asking about top-10 universities, I think the answer is pretty clearly “no”. The ability to donate millions of dollars (note the “s”, and two wouldn’t be enough) could have an effect, but merely paying full freight tuition wouldn’t.</p>
<p>My certainty rests on two bits of analysis:</p>
<p>First, despite terrible endowment losses, all of these institutions remain very wealthy, and are deeply committed to need-blind admissions and full-need aid. Relaxing those goals would be a major philosophical reversal, but unless they were completely jettisoned they would not produce enough additional revenue to make a difference. A school like Carleton, which explicitly reserved 10% of its class for full-pay students only, operates on a much smaller budget than these major universities, and the extra $1.25 million or so that change brings in makes a real difference. If Harvard did the same thing, it might yield another $5 million, which is a drop in the bucket of its $3 billion annual budget. You don’t compromise core values for 0.2%, and they are nowhere near the level of economic trouble that would make them reverse the core values to get more meaningful revenue gains. </p>
<p>All of these universities are large, complex organizations (well, maybe not so much Cal Tech), and there are plenty of efficiency gains that can be made after a string of 8-9 fat years. Need-blind admissions will not be up for re-examination until the kinds of budget cuts they are talking about hurt a lot more than they do now.</p>
<p>Second, let’s assume I’m wrong, and that covertly all of the admissions departments at these universities have been given word on the QT to admit 10% or 20% more full-pay students without publicizing it. Where are they going to find those full-pay students? At the top or the bottom of the admissions pool, stats-wise? I submit that those additional full-pay admits would be drawn from the top of the pool, where plenty of full-pay students were rejected under the old rules to fill any new slots that were opened for them. Remember that in general test scores correlate with family income, and that these colleges only accept at most half of their applicants with 2300+ SATs and top 5% class rank. If they were going to substitute full-pay for no-pay students, I have to believe the full-pay students would come from that pool.</p>
<p>At most of these colleges, special admits – recruited athletes, great musicians, disadvantaged minorities – seem to account for most or all of the bottom 25% in grades and test scores among enrolled students. Also, that bottom 25% of enrolled students represents only about 15% of admitted students, since yield among this group is much higher than it is among the pool of admittees who may be choosing among four or five top-10 institutions. I don’t see the universities reducing their appetite for those groups of students, who probably contribute disproportionately the universities’ culture than any of the middle quadrants, or even the top one. The composition of the bottom 25% would likely remain the same, and higher-stat full-pay applicants would be substituted for other high-stat low-pay applicants.</p>
<p>So: It ain’t gonna happen, and if it did it wouldn’t happen that way.</p>
<p>Top ten, no difference - unless you are fabulously wealthy.</p>