From what I have seen, I do believe most schools are need blind in admissions. The less selective schools, the larger schools just gap. They make no guarantees to meet full need.
As for the selective schools that guarantee to meet full need or meet most of it, and say that they are need blind, the reason that Ivycoach gives for them not possibly being need blind is that if " 95% of an incoming class needed financial aid, that college would be in major trouble." That argument sadly doesn’t hold water in the least. The fact of the matter is that in education, there is such a strong correlation between wealth and academic achievement that for those in the running for these selective schools will primarily be students from upper income/asset families. The sad fact of the matter is that exceptions and special consideration are often given for those coming from challenging enviornments. Ironically,selective schools are NOT truly need blind in admissions because they do take into account the privileges, benefits, hardships, challenges students face, and such admissions officers do not tend to like the “silver spoon” kids. They LOVE that they can make holistic decision on those with hardships and give that kid who wasn’t handed everything by parents a bit of a boost. Yes, I’ve seen that directly When I was on scholarship councils, we gave the same boost. We took environment into consideration, but not the way you would think.
If you read Michelle Hernandez’s book from years ago, “A is for Admission”, she addresses this reverse favoritism that those who are not so annointed with privilege get. SHe even outright says to down play Mom and Dad’s job titles, etc so a student doesn’t come off as so privileged.
I’ve known many who have worked in admissions and know all kinds of not so great stories about what has gone on there, but giving full need kids a boost at those schools that say they are need aware was not one of them. Quite the contrary. Those working in admissions are not particularly sympathetic to the apps of kids whose activiities, schooling, etc are likely “bought” and parents who can afford for a year of college costs than said admissions employee even makes in a year.
Not always the case, of course. GWU was caught lying. But I feel that most of these schools are telling the truth from what I’ve seen.
Yes, @TopTier, I did read your post # 11, but I have read other posts from other CC members as well, not just yours. I do believe that some have presented an equally “clear and unambiguous” case for the proposition that some adcoms, at some schools, are not turning as “blind” an eye toward socioeconomic status as they publicly proclaim. Do I fault them? Not necessarily. Endowment preservation is critical to the ongoing viability of a university. Adcoms are employees who are undoubtedly mindful of the economic climate at their respective colleges. As someone stated above, you just can’t keep eroding your endowment and expect to be around for the next 50 years.
@cptofthehouse- Judging kids unfavorably because their apps made them look advantaged, while judging other kids favorably because they appeared disadvantaged, is not “need blind” in my opinion.
Moreover, as the cost of college at elite institutions approaches 65k and 70k per year, the pool of no-need applicants is extremely tiny. The vast majority of even “advantaged” students will require some institutional aid, or the school will be unavailable to them. Therefore, I must conclude that the vast majority of applicants to these schools will be seeking some sort of aid. Maybe not full COA, but certainly a hefty discount.
And, therefore, that tiny pool of applicants who need no financial assistance whatsoever (and whose financial status is made obvious through their app/essays) could indeed be extremely enticing to many “need blind” schools whose adcoms may be personally sensitive to the economic needs of the college.
@prospect1: Use of the term"endowment preservation," in the context you employed, seems to indicate that you may not entirely understand how endowments operate – and with rather strict contractual and managerial strictures. An endowment normally is a contract between the donor(s) and the university. Use of an endowment’s funds is rigidly limited by this contract. In addition, the university’s leadership generally allows only a small percentage (perhaps 5 percent, on average, annually) of endowments to be expended in any year (and only for the purpose delineated in the contact), thereby ensuring the perpetual nature of endowments.
Therefore, for example, even if every leader at university X agreed that it would be wise to withdraw major capital from their aggregate $7.5B endowment to increase massively need-based scholarship, they could not do so because a great deal (probably, a lot more than half) of their endowed capital was donated for other purposes (e. g., professorships, athletic scholarships, maintenance of certain facilities, library enhancements, and much more). More specifically, financial aid officials consequentially have a defined amount (endowment withdrawals plus annual giving) that can be awarded in any year for grants and scholarship. They could not exceed this limit, even if they wanted to.
Accordingly, the “erosion” you suggest really is unlikely, if not impossible.
Obviously, a serious financial market downturn can – and will – adversely effect an endowment’s value. However, market upturns restore and increase endowments. To illustrate, endowments at many of the most-selective institutions have already more-than-regained all of the losses suffered in the market decline of seven years ago.
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.
@prospect1: Many schools that claim to be need-blind are, but do not or can not meet full-need. Key difference.
And yes, there must be a healthy proportion of full-pay students at all colleges (besides Harvard and maybe YPSM and the WASP LACs, who have a stupendous amount of endowment per student), but the percentage of the pool of students who are competitive for the Ivies/equivalents (with the near-perfect test score, near-perfect GPA, and amazing ECs) who are no-need is not a tiny percentage. The composition of the pool of students who are competitive for the Ivies/equivalents is far different from the composition of the US HS population as a whole.
Depending on where you grow up, you may not realize this, but there are a lot of upper-middle-class and rich families who’s kids are competitive for the Ivies/equivalents.
Just consider this: Few kids would turn down a private Ivy/equivalent for UC-Berkeley or UMich, yet the admission standards of those schools for OOS applicants are now close to that of the lower Ivies (or at least Cornell), the number of OOS students each of them take in is equal to the entire undergraduate population of a bigger Ivy, and the vast majority of the OOS students attending those publics do not get any meaningful FA from those schools.
So just below the Ivy-level are 2 whole Ivies’ worth of no-need students (not to mention the no-need students going to ND, Georgetown, and Tufts). Is it so hard to imagine that there are a ton of impressive no-need applicants at the Ivy/equivalent-level as well?
Plus, note that the vast majority of international students at most American universities are full-pay.
These measures do not require explicitly considering financial need in the admissions process. Many characteristics correlate to high income and wealth, so adjusting the weight of characteristics can be done to adjust the neediness of the admit class downward. For example:
All academic criteria tend to correlate with higher income and wealth. Test scores and large numbers of AP courses in high school are probably stronger than others in this regard. Requiring SAT subject tests may screen out poorer students who may not realize in time that some schools require them (since their high school counselors may not be that aware of such requirements so that they can remind the students).
Legacy applicants are not first generation by definition, and less likely than average to be from low income and wealth families.
High achievement in many types of extracurriculars is expensive, such as travel to high level competitions, expensive equipment, etc..
Requiring recommendations disfavors poorer students, since they are less likely to attend high schools with counselors and teachers who are aware of recommendation deadlines and can write good recommendations.
Requiring interviews disfavors poorer students, who may not have the upper-middle to upper-class socialization that alumni interviewers may be accustomed to.
Giving less regard to first generation status disproportionately disfavors poorer students.
Giving less regard to work experience as an extracurricular achievement disfavors poorer students.
So, the bottom line is that applicants to the most exclusive schools are overwhelmingly no-need, or low-need, due to the nature of the selection process itself. The best-scoring, highest-achieving students will be skewed wealthier. This does make sense to me.
However, when you hear of 30,000 - 40,000+ students applying to each of these schools, it just is not possible that the majority of these students (even if they are high scoring and high achieving) can afford a quarter of a million dollars (and up) for undergraduate education.
Are there really that many applicants whose families can afford this level of tuition?
About 42% of Harvard undergraduates get no financial aid, paying list price of about $63,000. Of the other 58%, the average financial aid is about $47,000, leaving an average net price of about $16,000. That may seem like “high need”, but if you play around with Harvard’s net price calculator, the parental income and wealth to get to that net price is in the upper range of the income and wealth distribution in the US (also note what levels are needed to get no financial aid). I.e. even the financial aid recipients skew toward the upper income.
In any case, it is not necessarily true that the family financial background of applicants is the same as that of admits or matriculants. The fact that the scions of wealth have many advantages in terms of achieving desirable college admission credentials means that they are likely to be overrepresented among the admits relative to the applicants.
@prospect1, consider that 1.5% of US households make $250K or more. There are about 4M births in the US each year. So 60K would be from those households. That’s not counting the internationals and foreign-born who are full-pay. Now, not all of the applicant pool are so well-off, but they don’t have to be. The elite privates provide fin aid to about half their students (give or take). Kids in high-income households are overrepresented in the group with high stats and impressive ECs. The total undergrad population at all private Ivies+equivalents is about 100K. 25K/year. Roughly half have to be full-pay. 12.5K. Take out internationals. Then consider that a good chunk of the full-pays are “doughnut hole” families who make less than $250K, don’t get any fin aid, yet still manage to stretch to afford full-tuition.
Looking at the math, it doesn’t seem like the Ivies+equivalents have to lower their standards to get a sufficient number of full-pay kids to fund their fin aid programs and so can afford to be both need-blind and meet full-need.
Go lower down the totem pole and that’s definitely not true.
@prospect1: “only funds earmarked for the purpose of institutional financial aid assistance can be tapped to meet this need.”
Actually – and just to provide you additional, pertinent information – endowments generally are a great deal more specific than “institutional financial aid assistance.” For example:
Some year’s ago, my wife and I endowed a scholarship at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business that can ONLY provide FA to U S Veterans.
We also contributed to a scholarship endowment that can ONLY be used to support undergarduates from the Carolinas.
Similarly, we contributed to several scholarship endowments that can ONLY provide FA to African-American undergraduates.
And so forth (obviously, there are literally thousands of entirely reasonable conditions that could be specified in scholarship endowment agreements).
I highlight this because it is most unlikely that there is a single, extremely large “undergraduate scholarship endowment” (etc.); rather, there will be thousands of capitalized, individual need-based (merit-based and athletic, too) scholarship endowments – some very sizable and others fairly small – each with their own, highly-specific terms and conditions.
Fin aid is one of the biggest categories that donations to university endowments are earmarked for, however. When it comes to alumni donations, I believe that it is the biggest category, so it doesn’t suprise me that the universities and colleges with the biggest per-capita endowments can spend so much in fin aid and thus afford to be need-blind. In fact, they have to spend substantial amounts on fin aid every year.
@PurpleTitan: Fundamentally, I agree with your point in post #32. However, birth rates tend to be lower among couples with high (top few percent) incomes, in comparison to the overall population (for one thing, we all know a couple with advanced degrees – in areas and from universities that generally command “big bucks” – is very likely to be in their mid-thirties before children become reasonable, either financially or time/schedule).
@PurpleTitan (re #34): Most (not dollar value, but quantity) alumni donations (for scholarships and everything else) are unrestricted “annual fund” charitable gifts and do not add to endowed capital. Many endowments (and this was my overriding point in post #33) include specific, binding terms and conditions for their use.
Thank you all for your insightful posts. So I guess the general consensus here is that the very top schools can afford to be need-blind while the schools that are slightly less selective that claim to be need-blind generally are not need-blind?
The Crimson poll of 2018 Freshmen reported that 15% said their family earned over a half million a year. That’s at least 15X higher than the US average.