“Both the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) and ACT allow colleges a way to access a proxy for your college preferences.”
“Some schools even have strict rules based on this order; the dean of admissions at one highly competitive west coast university is reported to have said that data analysis has shown that students who select his school in any position lower than fourth on the FAFSA almost never attend, and so the university in question has stopped accepting students who list the school outside their top four.”
Put the schools that consider “level of applicant’s interest” high on the FAFSA list if you submit FAFSAs with multiple schools. Same with ACT score reports.
(But note if your state requires listing an in-state school first for state aid.)
We will never know the answer to this, but it wouldn’t surprise me if listing all 8 Ivies on your FAFSA didn’t at least slightly hurt your chances. If I saw that, and was evaluating your application, it would immediately set off my “Does this person really care about my school, or are they solely interested in prestige” and I might view the rest of the application with heightened scrutiny.
No evidence for this beyond the fertile confines of my own mind, but it’s something to think about.
Interesting. Never knew that about FAFSA, but on ACT, my daughters never put down schools for the four free scored sends. We always waited and paid to send the scores.
So if someone lists the schools alphabetically, and the school in question is fifth in the list, the school can safely assume the applicant would not attend because they too low in the alphabet? Perhaps that’s why my daughter didn’t get into Yale
Seriously though, my daughter did list the schools on her FAFSA alphabetically (in order: Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Smith, Wellesley, and Yale), and her RD schools could have reasonably concluded she had been accepted EA to one of HYPM (as Smith and Wellesley are RD schools, and there are no obvious backups in the list). However this conclusion may well have been incorrect, because it is possible to submit the FAFSA to more than one set of schools, and it could have been that she was accepted to none, and had submitted a separate list with her backups.
I sincerely hope colleges are smart enough to realize this and are not rejecting applicants based on potentially false conclusions.
D recently filled out some athletic recruiting forms that asked which other schools she was considering. I told her to list them alphabetically. I hope that avoided a problem, but who knows. I considered telling her not to answer, but it was a mandatory question on one of the forms, and I have heard that coaches within the same conference talk…
First…the Ivies and many other colleges are need blind for admissions. The admissions department does not know what is on your FAFSA or Profile. The admissions folks know about your application.
The financial aid folks know about your FAFSA and Profile. But @kelsmom…what do you think financial aid officers have time to do? Look at the list of where else the student applies…OR craft a financial aid award based on the financial info given. I don’t want to put words in @kelsmom mouth…but she has said…she really didn’t have the time or inclination to look at the other schools listed. Her job was dealing with financial aid awards.
OR do you think admissions folks at the need blind colleges (most of them, by the way) go,down the hall,and ask the financial aid folks what is listed? Or do you think the financial aid folks go into admissions and tell what is on applications?
Even at need aware schools, I was told by an enrollment manager…the admissions office has the student financial need as computed by the school…not access to the financial aid application forms.
If you are really concerned…do what another poster here did…and feels was beneficial. Her kid applied to twenty or more colleges. She submitted the FAFSA form for each college…one at a time…waited for it to process…and repeated until all 20 or so we’re done. Since it can take 3 days or longer for the FAFSA to process, just make sure you allot enough time to get them all done before the deadlines to do so.
@thumper1 - Or they can list all the schools alphabetically. I don’t really believe that schools with names starting with [S-Z] are rejecting qualified applicants simply because their name appears towards the end of an alphabetized list.
Ugh, this gives me a headache (and we are a year past the college admissions process, after the crazy-making high school admissions process in NYC, after the crazy-making NYC middle school admissions process, etc., etc., ugh!). We did list schools alphabetically on the FAFSA. My daughter was rejected by the school listed second (alphabetically) and last. But this is crazy talk.
If it’s such a problem for admission to the Ivies, why did it come out that several kids (maybe 10?) were admitted to all of them this year? And those are just the ones we know about.
List the schools alphabetically. The schools at the end of the alphabet accept students too. (ex. Yale)
We weren’t even aware of this concern when DD applied to college.
This is just adding stress to the college application process for no reason.
I’ve read many quasi-official sources saying this is true (and it is logical) that I believe it. That said, I think it is more true for the marginal/safety school than a high prestige school.
The only countermeasure I’ve heard on the FAFSA is using the alphabetical approach.
