When a student applies to a need-aware school where the financial aid may factor into a decision, does admissions base their decision off the fact that the applicant applied for financial aid or do they look at the actual amount that the student would be awarded?
They look at your financial need.
Some don’t look until later in their cycle, when some amount of funds has been disbursed. Some may use it as a factor when weighing similar candidates. Can depend on the college.
It depends on the college. In many cases, admissions does their part first then turns over the students they want to financial aid. They crunch the numbers and will respond with whether it’s do-able or if they need to cut son high needs students and replace with low need applicants.
For two students, their stats put them at the 25th percentile of admitted students: the 0 EFC student may be denied while the full pay student may be accepted.
They may look at both – the need for aid and/or the amount of need required will be considered along with the relative desirability of that candidate. So it will tend to work mostly against students who are borderline for admission.
Essentially when a college is need-aware for admissions, their need-based aid ends up also having a merit component. They are deciding somewhere along the way whether that applicant is worthy of the dollars that it will cost to bring the student on campus.