All of this convinces me more that many schools that claim to be need-blind cannot actually be so in practice. At some point, measures must be employed to ensure that admission offers are not made to too many needy students. As much as adcoms would like to reward the neediest students, the list of who qualifies as “needy” is growing larger every year. There must be a healthy proportion of full pay students to offset the demand for financial aid. And if Top Tier’s analysis is true, these colleges cannot just dip into any old endowment to make up the shortfall; only funds earmarked for the purpose of institutional financial aid assistance can be tapped to meet this need.
Need-blind schools who do not meet full need must also be sensitive to an applicant’s ability to pay. Otherwise, they will end up making too many offers to students who can’t pay-and therefore won’t attend-thereby hurting yield.
I’m sure “need blind” can be trusted at many schools, but at the margins, I remain utterly unconvinced of it.