If a student is on the fringes of admissibility, applying for FA could indeed work against them. That’s what the 15% need aware statistic is all about. Most of the class is admitted need-blind, but as the class fills up, ability to pay is factored in. Whether, at that point, they are looking at the AMOUNT of your need, is anybody’s guess.
Also, be forewarned that “need-blind” is becoming a bit of doublespeak. Strictly speaking, and this is how the colleges themselves view it, it means that as they rate the application, financial ability does not factor in. What is not so widely known is that the colleges have many techniques to stack the deck toward families who can pay full fare. Do some googling to hear what college presidents and financial aid staffers have to say about it.
Some techniques used are:
- Heavy recruiting at private schools
- Focusing recruiting on certain “wealthy” zip codes
- I didn’t quite get this one myself, but one college moved their revisit day earlier because that attracted “the best”–those with a conjunction of high GPA, high SAT’s, and high class rank–a constellation which is highly correlated with wealth.
- Favoring legacies, who tend to have more wealth
- Not being need-blind for wait listers, transfers, or international students, and not feeling a need to disclose that
There was an interesting article by Macalester’s president from a few years ago about their financial predicament, and according to him, Mac was way lower on all kinds of student spending vs. Carleton, except FA. So his concern was that although they had this generous FA policy, they were working their way to providing all students a substandard education. http://www.macalester.edu/qualityaccess/letter.html