Does the office of financial aid make a FA package for each applicant before admissions make decisions? Or does admissions send the info of accepted students to the office of FA after committee review?
Which colleges? I assume that they award financial aid after decisions, as for some colleges whether or noy you need aid is part of the decision making process.
At the university where I used to work, the financial aid office processed everyone who sent the school their FAFSA or who qualified for an automatic merit scholarship. They did not wait for admission decisions.
Other schools may handle it differently.
Sounds like you were contacted by the FA office at some school, and you’re wondering if that means you’ve been accepted :-). The same thing has happened to us (my son is applying to schools this year). It does make some sense – why bother working on someone’s FA package if they’re not going to be accepted? From what I’ve read about it, though (e.g., on school sites), it doesn’t mean anything – because of timing issues, the FA offices start working on FA packages before admission decisions are completed.
Still, if a school accepts only a fraction of the applicants (say, 1/N), you’d think they’d do things to avoid N times as much work. So maybe they’d at least not bother doing it for applicants that are clearly not going to be accepted.
I guess I’d say it’s possibly somewhat encouraging, but by no means definite.
Where I work basic FA packages are run/created for all students that complete their application and send in all required FA docs. Admitted students then may get revised FA packages due to merit offered or whatever reason is seen fit.
@greenstudent I was thinking Pomona College specifically.
It is rather likely that basic FA for common financial situations is done by computer for all applicants without waiting for admission decisions. Human review would be used only for those flagged as unusual. After admission decisions, FA may be revised for admits offered scholarships.