Interested in your thoughts: Applied to a "need blind" school, but on the Common App they asked if

you were applying for financial aid. If they are truly need blind don’t you think they shouldn’t be asking that?

I understand that the admissions officers do not see that information. It helps at the end in coordinating financial aid packages with admissions offers. But the AO’s do not see that info during consideration. (I also wondered about that, and asked.)

You know…applying for aid doesn’t give an amount of aid you will need or receive. A need blind school admissions office won’t know if you are ELIGIBLE for aid or what amount you will,need to attend…so that won’t be considered when your application for admission is considered.

How do they know which students should be providing info to the FA office if they don’t ask? You are letting nerves get the better of you.

This question has nothing to do with nerves. I just thought it was weird to ask on the Common App. It means they are not need blind. If you answer no they know you are full pay.

Yeah, don’t believe the need-blind stuff, they’re need aware even if they claim they’re not. They may not know individually but every school has a budget and they need some part of the class to subsidize the other part.

Well-endowed schools are need blind because they can afford to be. Other schools (like NYU) are need blind but give lousy aid and don’t fully subsidize needy students. Most US college students attend need-blind state schools. For private schools, as an applicant you don’t even care if a school is need aware or need blind. If you like the school, the NPC suggests it’s affordable, and it’s a good match for you, you should apply. Aware/blind just affects the chance of admission (up or down), and then usually only if you’re on the cusp.

For schools with very large endowments, not so much. And going back to my question. If they don’t ask you when you apply, how would the FA office know that certain students have FA paperwork due to them? Colleges don’t wait until after admissions to calculate aid. If they did, everyone applying for aid would be scrambling to provide info after acceptance, and wouldn’t really know if the school was affordable at the last minute. Do you think you should somehow link up directly with the FA office, but they shouldn’t know which student they are providing aid for or something?

I take most schools that say they are need blind at their word. Even for schools that say they aren’t need blind, some only look at need for students on the cusp of admission. In fact, most schools are need blind. They don’t bother to try to meet your need, they just gap you and assume you’ll figure out a way to make up the difference if you really want to attend.

Schools already know for the most part who the development applicants are (those whose parents can do a lot more for the school than just pay tuition). But the box on the Common App isn’t what identifies those students.

Also, admissions often has a hand in who gets merit scholarships if they are offered. There isn’t much doubt they coordinate those with the FA office. (No point in giving $20K of merit to a kid who is getting $30K of need based aid if they don’t let the aid stack – that just annoys everyone). So schools that give merit need to do some coordinating so they offer their merit where it is most likely to tempt a student they want to attend.

There is no reason for colleges claiming to be need blind to be lying about such a thing, at least in the narrow sense of not looking at and considering the FA numbers for any individual applicant.

However, colleges should be expected to be need aware for the entire class, and setting admission criteria can tip the admission class more or less FA-needy as desired. For example, to tip the admission class less FA-needy, a college can:

  • Increase emphasis on legacy.
  • Increase emphasis on test scores, since higher SES applicants have more prep advantages and are more likely to attend good quality high schools where they learn more material that also happens to help with test scores.
  • Increase emphasis on preppy sports and other higher SES extracurriculars.
  • Decrease emphasis on working or caregiving to help support family, which is more common among lower SES applicants.
  • Require more application items like SAT subject tests, recommendations, CSS Profile, interview; many of these are additionally advantageous to higher SES applicants (e.g. their counselors and teachers are probably more experienced writing recommendations, and alumni interviewers are probably higher SES).
  • Require CSS Noncustodial Profile to eliminate probably half of FA-needy applicants who have uncooperative divorced parents.

False. The FA info goes to the FA office and not to the admissions office. If they violated that, they’d be in very deep trouble. In many, many years I’ve never seen any hint that need-blind schools are dishonest about the process.

I just assumed if a question is asked on the Common App then it is seen by the admissions staff

“Need blind” means that level of financial need is not taken into consideration in making individual admission decisions. It does not mean that the admissions readers are not aware of relative financial circumstances – every part of the application provides information that provides clues about the student’s relative economic circumstances. Parents’ occupations, if parents went to college & where they went; the community where the student lives; the school the student attends; the nature and extent of EC’s; what the student writes about in essays; what may be said in LOR’s.

But the point is that the need-blind schools will not consciously or deliberately use their impression of financial need in making an admissions decision. They will use other, more objective factors – but as @ucbalumnus points out, some of those factors tend to be associated with economic status.

A need-aware school, on the other hand, will actually put some applications in the “maybe” pile and then review those later and make decisions based on finances. Essentially, for a certain percentage of the admit pool, financial need will be the difference between acceptance or placement on a waitlist or outright rejection. A need-aware school will also take into consideration level of need – $50K of university grant money goes a lot farther if divided among 5 middle-class students each getting $10K than to 1 lower-income student getting all $50K. And a student with a higher EFC who will qualify only for loans and work-study-- but won’t need grant money – is actually a student who is bringing federal dollars with them.

I’d add that there are some schools that are need-blind for admissions purposes but do not provide full need to all students, and in those cases the admissions department does communicate with the financial aid department as to the level or tier of aid that might be appropriate for that student. That is, the students the admissions department values the most highly will be awarded preferential aid packages; whereas other students will be gapped.

We attended an online Q&A session with a school that meets full need and is need blind. They showed us what the common app looks like to admissions …on their end…once it is received. Every FA question is blacked out…admissions doesn’t see any of the answers. Those answers are available to the FA office and are not blacked out.

It is always interesting to me that my kids’ college consistently have X% of students who are full pay. It’s surprising to me they don’t blow throw their FA budget on some years. I think even if a school is well endowed, they must have a budget for FA, salaries, and other operating costs.
My kids’ GC advised us not to apply for FA unless we have to.

No, I do not believe schools are need blind (sounds good on paper), but more like need aware.

@twogirls That answers my question. Thanks so much. And everyone else, thank you for the very helpful information. I learned things I wasn’t sure of.

Remember that checking the box doesn’t tell them how much aid you need, or even if you are eligible for aid at all — some people apply “just in case” or because the calculator doesn’t work in their situation or because they have hints of a possible financial downturn in the future & don’t want to lose out at a school that might not like to give aid later to families that don’t apply as frosh.

And the aid calculation is what the college thinks you should pay, not what you think, So the college determines that some people who check the box get no aid or only a small amount.

So — checking the box can mean multiple things and have varied results. In itself, all it means is that you are asking them to calculate an aid offer. That is all. And I think that is how they look at it.

That is probably the vast majority of colleges. For example, consider almost every non-flagship state university, many of which probably just admit by a stats formula (need-blind and everything-but-stats-blind), but which do not give any FA to out-of-state students (and, in many states, may not meet need even for in-state students, for whatever reasonable definition of “need”). Community colleges also – although their relatively lower cost makes them more affordable for many, they may give no aid of their own, leaving it up to the student to figure out if Pell grant (if any), direct loan, etc. covers their “need” after considering tuition, books, living costs, and commuting costs.

Remember also that “meet need” depends on the definition of “need”, and each college that claims to “meet need” may have a different definition of “need”. See the older example in http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1675058-meet-full-need-schools-can-vary-significantly-in-their-net-prices-p1.html (numbers will not reflect current policies, due to the age of the post). A college whose FA is not that good can claim to “meet need” by defining “need” less favorably to the student so that its FA budget can meet it.

Therefore, the “meet need” distinction that seems to be so important on these forums may mean less than what most posters think it means. Use the college’s net price calculator instead to see what the college may offer in FA. If the parents are divorced, see http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/2083835-faq-divorced-parents-financial-aid-and-net-price-calculators.html . If the parental finances are unusual (self employment, small business, etc.), be aware that some colleges’ net price calculators may not account for those aspects and be less accurate, and college definitions of “need” may be even less obvious to the applicant.

A college can stay within its FA budget without its admissions people having to look at individual applicants’ FA numbers by adjusting its admissions criteria as described in reply #8. I.e. it can truthfully be need-blind for individual applicants, even though it can be need-aware when deciding what its class composition should be.

I may be a bit more cynical than many CC posters on this topic. Wall Street banks also claim to have a Chinese Wall between their client-facing business and their proprietary business, and they’re even regulated. Guess what? That wall is leaky, and certainly not 100% effective. Imperfect humans are behind all these operations. It’s probably a bit leakier at some schools than others. The wall is probably more effective at EA schools since there’s no need for their FA offices to look at an applicant’s FA application until the applicant is accepted. ED schools, on the other hand, must look at all applicants’ FA applications concurrently (and so a lot more people are involved on the FA side at the same time as the admission decisions are being made). Some schools are known to highlight applicants with high need.

I am also cynical. I think it is a marketing thing and just a lot of yada, yada. Colleges are run like a business, why would it benefit them by being completely need blind. It sounds good for marketing purpose.