<p>We're about to tackle the FAFSA and I'm trying to figure something out. I've read that schools can see the list of other schools a student is sending the FAFSA to, that students often end up listing schools in preference order, and that schools can then take this presumed preference into account in making admissions and financial aid offers, in order to protect their yield. Is this really true?? Just seems so wrong to me. Are we then supposed to try to maneuver the system by listing schools in alphabetical order, or sending the FAFSA out multiple times, with similarly ranked batches of schools, or something? Or listing the schools in preference order, as some kind of back-channel first choice signal?</p>
<p>I have the same question. This is particularly problematic because I applied to over twenty schools! I would do them alphabetically if there’s no way to send it multiple times.</p>
<p>Now that you mentioned it, i want to know too! I did mine randomly…</p>
<p>You can send the FAFSA to, I believe, 10 schools and can only add additional ones after the original 10 have been processed (the experts here can correct this if I’m wrong). You are correct that the financial aid administrators at these schools will be able to see the other schools to which you’ve sent it. However, there is nothing on the form that indicates a school preference or ranking, so I highly doubt that financial aid administrators have the time or ability to try and read into it any sort of preference order.</p>
<p>I tried adding more after mine was processed and i didnt delete any of the colleges except removing one and add in one more. and send it. I might want to change the order now…</p>
<p>If it makes you feel better, then you can put them in alphabetical order or file multiple times, but in my 30 years or more of interest in college apps, I’ve never heard of any issues about this.</p>
<p>I guess that would be the least bad alternative, but I don’t see why the schools should get to see that information at all?</p>
<p>I don’t think they look at that info. They arrive in batches to financial aid, and at most schools financial aid and admissions are not the same department. Admissions goes over the apps and send the list of kids accepted who have checked the fin aid box on the app to fin aid. SOme schools will code the desireablility of the each accepted student and the fin aid will be so apportioned with top kids getting the better awards. But it’s not as though admissions has the financial aid list. It just doesnt’ work that way, not even in the few need aware schools.</p>
<p>I agree though, that there is no reason to send that info to the colleges. All</p>
<p>Cpt, it was this old WSJ article that triggered my question. [Glass</a> Floor: Colleges Reject Top Applicants, Accepting Only the Students Likely to Enroll - WSJ.com](<a href=“Glass Floor: Colleges Reject Top Applicants, Accepting Only the Students Likely to Enroll - WSJ”>Glass Floor: Colleges Reject Top Applicants, Accepting Only the Students Likely to Enroll - WSJ)</p>
<p>The answer is that it is possible that it could make a difference and may in some situations make a difference. However, knowing many, many kids who were accepted to schools like F&M, Tufts (I know literally hundreds for Tufts) who also applied for financial and who also applied to ivies and other more selective schools, I have to say that it isn’t something examined carefully on the application. For these schools, “interest” in the school is heavily considered. If you apply to schools like Rhodes College, F&M, Emory, Connecticut College and do not visit, make contact with Admissions and show interest, you are not likely to get accepted. The way admissions works, for selective schools most decisions are made very quickly. There is no way sustained discussion and thought can go into each application. Just look at the number of applications these schools receive and the number of people working in Admisssions, and the time they have, and you can very easily see that an application does not get a lot of time. There are a category of applications in the maybe pile that go to committee and more attention is given to this small number of apps than the vast majority of decisions that are much more quickly made. The fact of the matter is that it is very difficult to gauge who is going to be accepted at schools, like the ivies. I know a number of former admissions folks who are now counselors at high schools, and they will tell you that they can’t predict with much accuracy as to who will get accepted to those schools. So to turn down these top students on the possiblitiy that they will be accepted to a higher ranked schools is absurd. You’d be cutting down on your own admissions pool stats. And if you go to Tufts or like schools, you’ll find a lot of kids who applied to the ivies, in fact possibly a majority.</p>
<p>These schools also tend to be need aware, so those who are asking for aid, especially with high need may not make the cut that way. </p>
<p>The other issue kids have that they are often not aware is how they act at schoools not high on their list. I’ve had heated discussion with my kids who swear they were not acting like they did not care, when I could clearly see it when we visited some schools that were not high on their appeal list. DS1 was an athletic recruit at Tufts and his body language and way he acted were obvious to me and likely to the school that he didn’t like the place. The same with my other son at another school. For admissions directors whose very job is to see these thing, I have no doubt that they can tell if someone really doesn’t care much for their school. For those kids who can show the demonstrated interest, having an app in at HPY isn’t going to hurt, simply because getting into those schools is anyone’s guess, a lottery ticket, and it would boggle the mind trying to figure out who will get in where and turn down another school.</p>
<p>If your read Michele Hernandez’s “A is For Admissions”, there is a section where she discusses this fear of schools second guessing if a student is “too good” for a school, and why it isn’t done. But, absolutely, admissions directors look for demonstrated interest. These days with the common app and with kids applying to so many schools, that becomes a very important component of the the application. </p>
<p>I was not able to get into your article, but my guess is that the idea that colleges will peruse the financial aid form to see where else the applicant has applied is something that a student has suggeted, not something any admissions worker will say has a bearing. I mean seriously, to eliminate those who have applied to schools more highly rated than yours will seriously bring down the quality of the students at your school. And those applying for financial are often the ones for whom you can make a vie for with a superior package. It does not add up.</p>
<p>Makes sense - it’s more about the demonstrated interest. I went back and looked at the WSJ article again (I guess you can only see it in Google cache), and it looks like an inference that the writer was making, way back in 2001 - here’s the quote: </p>
<p>"It helps colleges to know the competition. Applicants to Boston University, Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., for example, are asked to list other colleges they’re considering. This question offends some guidance counselors so much that they advise students to leave it blank. But if applicants are seeking scholarship money, college-admissions offices can glean the same information from the federal financial-aid form that most schools require.</p>
<p>Although the form doesn’t ask students to rank schools by preference, research by Maguire Associates, a Bedford, Mass., consulting firm, shows that most students do exactly that. Admissions officers also often call a guidance counselor and simply ask whether their college is an applicant’s first choice. If it isn’t, the counselor may avoid answering the question – though evasion may be tantamount to confirmation". </p>
<p>With the number of applicants these days it does seem highly unlikely that schools would have the time to do this.</p>
<p>That does happen at schools where the guidance counselors and colleges have a close relationship. Two of my kids went to such a high school. The College counselors at that prep school used to work in college admissions offices, and this particular school has a lot of applicants to the selective LACs. Also it gets a lot of visits from college admissions officers and some of them know the school, teachers and staff very well over a period of years. I have seen kids get accepted despite their grades and scores not in the mid 50% and some kids get WLed when it made no sense. I’ve also seen more than one would expect and much more than I have seen at public school, of kids getting in from the WL. When a small LAC get 20-40 apps from the same high school, it will seek info about the kids from the counselor when a relationship is there, and who knows what info is exchanged. </p>
<p>Usually kids list the schools by prestige. If you are applying to HPY, that is the order that you will list them HPY because that is the natural cadence. If you are applying to Princeton, Wellesley and Dickinson, that is the order that most people will list and yes, that is the preferane. I have a kid who applied to Dickinson and Gettysburg, and honestly, he had no real preference and all factors equal, it would have been a coin flick and the mood of the moment as to which one he would have picked. $5K more in award money would push the balance to one or the other. Now if Princeton were in the mix, I think it takes no research to figure out which is preferred. The thing is, getting into Princeton is such a lottery ticket that it would be very foolish of a school like G or F or F&M to cross off those kids with the stats to get into PRinceton… But a kid with a chip on his shoulder during the interview or who just tacked G and F and other such school on the list because mom and GCs told him he had to, when he is set on the most highly selective schools…well, that kind of attitude will seep out during interviews and such a kid could get a WL for that, not because he preferred the ivies, of course he preferred them, but the way he showed that preference. </p>
<p>I went to a school where just about everyone there had applied to schools ranked higher than my school. Most of them were rejected from such schools, but others picked my school due to merit awards and also a stellar specialty program there. One sees that in schools like CMU where kids will turn down IVy and even HPY for the presitigious computer science program. So to eliminate kids with high stats and have applied to more selective schools makes absolutely no sense. Just think about what kind of guess work and matrices would be involved. More likely F&M or such schools peek at the financial aid info to see what it would cost to admit certain candidates applying for aid because it and a number of such schools are frankly need aware. You need a full ride or close to it to attend. Unllikely F&M will want to offer that one up unless you are on top of the want list and they think you are coming. Yes, need aware can be an issue. But just because you are applying to UPenn and Brown and Tufts as well as F&M, No. I absolutely do not believe Admissions is going to have a strike against you for that. You might not get into any of them even with top stats.</p>
<p>Well… I did that part of the FAFSA, and just did it alphabetically. 
And every college KNOWS that kids are applying to other schools.</p>
<p>Agreed, Intparent. And when a school gets a sterling applicant with top test scores, grades and parents being ivy alums, what the heck kind of guess would ANYONE make as to where else that applicant is applying? </p>
<p>Having had kids doing college apps for nearly 15 years now and seeing the crop each year with college acceptances and rejections and waitlists, I can honestly say that I don’t see a lot of denials that are not in some sort of order. In other words, hardly any, in fact, no kids I know who were accepted to Harvard were denied at schools like Gettysburg, F&M etc. From MIT and Yale and Princeton and Stanford, yes. And many who were denied at certain, schools that were a bit closer in some rankings, one can often tell why. Kids with a definite attitude towards a school, with full need and not being up there as top applicants, and the other thing I did see was GC bias from certain prep schools and hooks. Yes, legacy counts for a lot. Hooks can make a big difference. There might be some ???s each year, but really not a lot. The wait list situation has ballooned these days to a ridiculous proportion. it used to be a some shot at getting into a school if WLed. Now, there are hundreds of kids WLed with single digits clearing it. </p>
<p>My son’s best friend is a Harvard grad. He was accepted to all of the schools to which he applied and got full need met packages, generous ones from all but the state schools. Yeah, they gapped even him! And he did need a lot of aid and applied to 15 schools. He visited and spent a lot of time with every single school on his list because he HAD to get the money to go away to school and his top choices were lottery tickets as far as he was concerned. He actually spent the least amount of time wooing them as his parents and GC were clear, that Those schools could not care less about demonstrated interest. They KNOW everyone loves them. It’s the other schools where you need to show the love and interest. And when you need $50K a year, you had better show a lot of love.</p>
<p>Most schools are “need blind” so the adcoms aren’t ever seeing your FAFSA, so they’re not seeing any order. The FA people are seeing it, but they’re not the ones who are admitting or denying admittance.</p>
<p>Maybe a concern might be for Need Aware schools…so maybe use strategy with those schools???</p>
<p>With need aware schools, what the concern is how much need the student needs vs how much there is to allocate and how much a school wants the student. One of the strategies that is often recommended is to apply to rival schools to up the ante. It might be a good thing for a school to know that there is an interest in certain like schools. </p>
<p>I really don’t think that the financial aid list makes the difference. I just can’t see admissions trying to process that info in the matrix of all of the factors that need to be considered in putting together the best class possible. But the money is a real constraint, and, need aware is just that. Some schools will take into account the amount of need and the desirablity of the student whereas some just draw the first line with who is in the applied for aid category. Unfortunately I am seeing more of that in the last 5 years. It used to be just border line kids getting denied for need reasons, but as budgets are tightened, there is more of this going on, and I no longer know how schools are dealing with this. I do know that it is crazy when it is the peak of admissions at those schools that have selective admissions, and trying to figure out factors other than who is a good admit and who isn’t becomes is done as efficiently as possible. All that committee stuff that one sees is really just for a tiny portion of candidates.</p>
<p>It just seems ridiculous, after strategizing with guidance counselor about how to best answer the common app question “which other schools are you applying to” (for the schools that ask this), that we have to go and list all of them in the FAFSA. D’s schools are for the most part not need blind so I guess we will list in alpha order and not sweat it. She has made the effort to demonstrate interest, and genuinely does like all the schools on her list, so I hope it will be okay.</p>
<p>Great thread Daisy;) Had no idea.</p>
<p>FAFSA is provided via the government. From their viewpoint they have no need to change the software so it doesn’t send to all the schools listed. Why would they care? You could always do the schools one at a time (add and delete). More work but you can determine who sees what.</p>
<p>Really, you can alphabetize all you want. I think it is pretty clear what schools are more desired than others And with like schools, the strategy is to let the schools know that you are applying to direct competitiors for a chance at better packages. </p>
<p>And yes, do the schools one at a time and delete over the month, if you are really concerned about this. I truly do not think it will make difference. </p>
<p>You have NO idea what the GC will be telling the admissions offices if a call come out. If you go to a school with a lot of kids applying to selective colleges, and there are groups of kids applying to certain schools, there are phone calls. That is going to make a big impact on your acceptance. The check sheets for admissions for schools with selective admissions almost always has a weighted category for references from teachers and GCs and a direct conversation can make a big difference in outcome. </p>
<p>With computer technology the way it is these days, both FAFSA and PROFILE should be set up so that each school only sees the info absolutely needed to make an award. The others schoools should not be listed on it. It’s a throwback from the days when it a lot more trouble to edit SAR info. It would quell concerns like this one.</p>