<p>Is this “10% need aware” a random 10% of the applicants?</p>
<p>Presumably, it is the “bottom 10%”.</p>
<p>Now that I am thinking, it may be hard to accurately quantify this. For instance, last year Wes enrolled 800 Freshman and had an yield of 33.6%. What does this 10% mean? 80 students? 240 students (80/.336)? Also, who are affected? Only the 10% accepted under this policy or all of those who are displaced? So suppose when Wes is finishing up their admissions decision, there are X qualified applicants per available slot. If Y persons are admitted because of financial consideration, this can potentially impact Y*X applicants.</p>
<p>Some times small numbers like this 10% may indeed have a cascading effect on the application pool.</p>
<p>I believe it’s the last 10% … not the “bottom” 10%.</p>
<p>Roth explained this in a video I saw, recently. My recollection is that he said applications would be reviewed chronologically, and as the number of new admits reached 90% of the number needed to yield a new class, the remaining new admits would be selected on a need-aware basis, depending on how much was left in the financial aid budget at that point. If no money was left, that would mean all new admits would have to be full payers.</p>
<p>One side effect from this may be that Wes begins to place more emphasis on test scores. Since the full payers in the last 10% would have less incentive to yield, those that did choose Wes would probably tend to have somewhat inferior credentials. To keep the average SAT scores from dropping, Wes would then have to place more emphasis on higher test scores in the first 90% of students admitted (the ones admitted need-blind).</p>
<p>So, if you’re a poor student who wants to go to Wes, it may be that you need to be sure NOT to wait till the last minute to submit your common app, and that you’ll need to get even higher SAT scores.</p>
<p>That’s the unfortunate part. The wealthy get the break, and wealth makes up for lack of merit, as we see in so many other ways in conservative America these days (an ever-more-entrenched upper class and diminished social mobility for the rest of us).</p>
<p>This is ironic and doubly sad given that its Wesleyan University we’re talking about, here.</p>
<p>I’m confident that once Roth’s capital campaign raises the targeted $200 million ($60 million was raised last year alone), need-blind will be back at Wes, hopefully in just a few years.</p>
<p>Roth says Wesleyan’s recent shift to being 10% need-aware should affect only 15-20 applicants each year:</p>
<p>[Wesleyan</a> ends ‘need-blind’ admission policy - SFGate](<a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Wesleyan-ending-need-blind-admission-policy-3926596.php]Wesleyan”>http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Wesleyan-ending-need-blind-admission-policy-3926596.php)</p>
<p>This figure is not accurate. For a more thorough response, consider this comment on Wesleying: [News</a> Coverage Round-Up: Need-Blind – Wesleying](<a href=“News Coverage Round-Up: Need-Blind | Wesleying”>News Coverage Round-Up: Need-Blind | Wesleying)</p>
<p>Looking at the ex-post number misrepresents the impact of the policy:
Suppose three people are running for the last spot. Two equally qualified students from less-wealthy families and one slightly lesss-qualified student from a wealthy family.
If the wealthy student gets the spot, 3 students were affected by the policy, not 1.
In addition, to compute the number of students affected, one need to look at admissions “pre-yield”. So to get the 15-20 figure, one may assume that 45-60 wealthy students are admitted based on financial considerations, given that Wes yield is around 33%.</p>
<p>Unless a school will reveal precisely how they are doing admissions, it’s impossible to know how the need aware policy is being affected. I know of one school who does it by simply accepting students on a need blind basis but rating them, and then sending that list to financial aid. Anyone not applying for aid is ignored but those on the list are given packages based on their rating. All of the "1"s will get most grants and the best packages as those are the crown jewels. The "2"s will get configurations less generous. The "3"s will get what money is left and those that can’t fit the budget will get cut. If the cuts make it so that there are too few students accepted, the admissions office will go to the waitlist and bump up the most promising candidates who are not asking for aid. </p>
<p>A lot of time enrollment management is practiced when allocating need. That means accepting 10 kids with $5K of need rather than one kid wiht $50K of need. So a full need kid in Group “3” will probably get cut whereas if he were in groups “1” or “2”, he would not. By the same logic, a kid needing $5-10K will probably not be affected even in group “3”.</p>
<p>Good point, mountgilmor:
At the “last 10%” the yield is probably much higher than 33%… Altough it is unlikely to be 100%.
On the other hand, if you believe bell curves, and considering that Wes admits less than half of students that applied, the close you get to the last 10% of admitted students, the more is the regions of overlapping among similarly qualified students, and thus the stronger is the “butterly effect”.
What I mean is this: At the top 10% of Wes admitted students, applicants have near perfect GPA and test scores, and impressive ECs. There is probably a small number of other applicants that “match” this group profile. When you go down to the less 10%, then you are talking about good-but-not-great GPAs, scores, and ECs. By the bell-curve proberties, it is more likely that there are many more applicants who would match this profile.</p>