Hello.
I am an international student, and I applied for financial need to Haverford College. I know Haverford only gives financial grants to limited number of international students, and all admitted students who applied for needs get grants. I am wait listed there, and I contacted the admin officer last night, asking some questions. She emailed me back that I probably won’t have any chance getting admitted, and she told me to move forward with the college I’m already accepted at (Grinnell college). Haverford is my top choice and I don’t want to give up, but do you think it’s worth it to wait for official notification from Haverford?
Send your deposit to Grinnell.
As it is May 5, the Haverford Admissions office already has a good idea of its yield, whether it will use its waiting list, and to what extent. If the Admissions Officer told you that you are unlikely to get admitted, it is a polite way of saying you will not be admitted. The deadline for notifying Grinnell is May 1, so you may have already lost your spot there. If you wish to attend Grinnell, you need to communicate immediately to them that you are accepting their offer of admission.
With regard to financial aid to an international student, Grinnell is a far wealthier college than Haverford on an endowment per student basis ($1.1 million v. $0.4 million) and is therefor in a far better position to offer you aid. Please also note, while Haverford may be willing to offer a limit number of admitted international students financial aid, they have probably used up those limited resources on admitted students. Even if they were in a position to offer you admission off the wait list, it is unlikely to include financial aid.
Grinnell is an outstanding college. I wish you the very best.
Thank you for the info! yes, I forgot to mention that I already made a deposit to Grinnell weeks ago. 
I am delighted to hear that you are set at Grinnell. It doesn’t hurt to wait for a response for Haverford in the very unlikely case they do admit you. However, you may want to focus on falling in love with Grinnell. I am sure you will have a wonderful experience there!
As a data point - S was waitlisted at Haverford and just found out a few minutes ago that he has been accepted.
Grinnell is a wonderful place - I’m familiar with the community as it was my mother’s home town.
@SriKuncoro Congrats! Is he going to attend? Was he notified by email? I’m so anxious haha…
Haverford and Grinnell have more in common than they have differences – intelligent students who are responsible for creating their community, Haverford through the Honor Code and Grinnell through Self-Gov. Grinnell has amazing facilities, especially in the sciences, and generous merit aid. Celebrate your admission to Grinnell, and move on.
Flurite: Yes, S is thrilled about the news from Haverford! He couldn’t wait to tell them YES!!!
On the notification process: S is living internationally; I don’t know if US students would have a different experience. But they emailed him on 5 May asking if he was still interested. He was worried for a while because the email came in while he was in final exams, so he didn’t see it for about 7 hours. But of course he responded the moment he read it. And it all worked out.
My sense is that this is typical of the waitlist experience; not just for Haverford, but for a lot of schools. If they are interested in a student on the waitlist, they will email or call to find out if the student is still interested. They will make the offer after hearing an affirmative, because of yield rate issues. (Crazy, but that’s the world we live in.)
@SriKuncoro That’s so exciting! Do you know if they sent the email during the day (EST)? Or did they send it between like 3 and 5, after school?
@SriKuncoro , I thought the process of calling first was about yield but a friend who worked in admissions (not Haverford ) said they do it this way to get the class filled as quickly as possible. Your phone answer of yes isn’t binding (you’ll have 72 hours from receipt of an email in most cases), but if you say no, theres no email and they move on. As time passes, people get more committed to the choices they’ve made, so it gets harder to get things settled. The schools want it done so they can do things like housing assignments and scheduling. Congrats to your DS. Great school!
@Flurite - sorry for the late response. It seems that the email was sent between 5 and 6 pm Eastern Standard Time. I don’t know whether that was deliberate or just chance. In any case, it gave S a little breathing room - he responded as soon as he saw it, and while the email had been sitting in his box for a few hours it was still night on the East Coast. Presumably his email was waiting for the Haverford admissions office when they woke up the next morning.