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Duke University has a need-blind admissions policy, which means that our Admissions Office evaluates each student's academic and extra-curricular credentials without knowledge of a family's financial circumstance.
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Duke</a> Financial Aid | Frequently Asked Questions | General Financial Aid Questions</p>
<p>So why does it ask on their application if you're applying for financial aid or not?</p>
<p>And by the way I know for a fact that Duke does not send out additional correspondence to those who plan on applying for financial aid.</p>
<p>I think the common app asks if you are applying for fin aid. That is because many schools that are not need blind use it. Also, it gives the admissions some idea of your socio/eco. A pragmatic reason is that if you are accepted, the app goes directly to the FA office so that a package can be put together. Chances are, your app will be given a grade of sorts that would indicate the type of package you will get. The top grades get the merit within aid goodies. The lowest grades do not get packages as generous. </p>
<p>I don't know about the additional correspondence business. I know a number of kids who applied to Duke, and did not hear a murmur about them not getting correspondence that their peers who were not applying for aid did.</p>
<p>No school is need blind in the sense that it does not care about how many students on financial aid it admits. However large the finaid budget may be, it is always set in advance and therefore a school has a target number of students on financial aid that it can enroll in any given year. </p>
<p>It is no different from colleges trying to maintain gender diversity. Schools are gender blind in admissions but will try to maintain a male/female ratio as close to 50/50 as possible. This does not mean that colleges explicitly discriminate against one gender or the other. It could mean though that if female applicants vastly outnumber the number of male applicants as is the case at many LACs, the admissions office may have to search harder for qualified male students in the applicant pool. The acceptance rate can therefore be quite different for male and female applicants. The same thing applies for full pay versus financial aid students. The aceptance rate can fluctuate based on how much money is left in the pool at a given time. Generally waitlisted students are the ones least likely to get accepted if they need financial aid. By that time, the money is most often long gone.</p>
<p>while cellardweller is somewhat correct, need blind means that it wont affect whether you get accepted or not. meaning if u dont get accepted you can't blame it on the fact that you applied for financial need.</p>
<p>My ds was accepted to Duke with real financial need. They offered him a great package that gave him 100% of the cost of attendance in non-loan aid (a small amount of work study was included). So... our experience is yes, they are need blind - at least in our case.</p>
<p>Just because a school is not need blind does not mean it should be off someone's list who likes the school. Some of the best fin aid packages come from those schools. It does not mean that every single kid is assessed on a need basis. MOst of such schools do most of their admissions on a need blind basis, and then go the last batch when the money is running out and take need into consideration only for those apps. So a strong student can do very well in aid from such schools. Also just because a school says that it is need blind and gives 100% of need, does not mean the fin aid package is going to be so generous. You can get a lot of loans in there. Better to get more grants and get your own loans on a lesser amount than a package that is comprised mostly of loans. Easier to get loans than grants by far.</p>
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<p>no college is "truly" need blind.....</p>
<p>^^ I think that's false... schools like Harvard really are truly need-blind, but want a socio-economically diverse class. Their looking at socio-economic factors is not in the context of "Will this person need $$ to come here?"; it's in the context of "What opportunities has this student had, and what diverse experiences will the student bring to our school?"</p>
<p>Any school that said they had need-blind admissions but didn't would have a public relations, and perhaps legal, nightmare on its hands.</p>
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