Or $840k per year, in the top 1% in the US.
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Interesting, PMed you a question.
I found a couple of good articles on this topic.
“The vast majority of US colleges are need aware, at least to some degree. There are thousands of colleges in the US, and only slightly more than 100 are completely need blind.”
Schools do not generally advertise that they are need aware, but will advertise being need blind.
You can scroll down in this article to see a list of the need-blind universities in the United States in 2022. Being a full pay applicant at these listed schools will not offer even a slight advantage.
(Note that for international students almost all schools in the US are need aware or need sensitive).
Note - the article is almost exclusively private schools. I do think most , if not all publics, are need blind. They also, with few exception, don’t meet need - especially if OOS.
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Just because someone wrote a web page that says so does not mean that it is true.
Indeed, there are many hundreds of community colleges which are open admission and therefore trivially need blind for admission. There are also many colleges which are somewhat selective by stats only and therefore also trivially need blind for admission.
However, what may be more true is that even colleges which are need blind for individual applicants are aware of how much financial aid need they can cover for the entire class, and may adjust the weighting of correlates of financial aid need (e.g. legacy, first generation) to meet the target.
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This can be hard to suss out, but being full pay can definitely be an unspoken advantage at some schools. I would assume that if the school does not specifically say they are need blind then it will help. For example, Bowdoin is need blind but Bates is not- full pay kids will have a slight advantage there whether they admit it or not. Trinity is another well known example. I am not sure about public schools but I think probably they pay more attention to this than you would think, especially for out of state students. Colleges will say this is not a big factor, and for most it probably is not.
Most of the top CS schools are need blind or they are public flagships so need for out-of-state applicants is irrelevant.
My family was in your position in that we could afford to send our daughter full pay pretty much anywhere (we don’t have your income, but we are fantastic savers!). We did not view or try to use funding as a particular advantage (see paragraph above) and indeed it did not seem to make a difference in her outcomes.
In the end, though, she opted for the fourth highest ranked college to which she was accepted. Surprise! It came down to money after all. Even though we could have stretched to send her to one top college at $84,000 a year, it made no sense whatsoever to do so. A second college was $13,000 per year more than the one she ultimately chose. While she had a tough time turning that one down, they were so similarly ranked, both in overall rankings and in CS rankings, it just wasn’t worth $52,000 more over four years. We told her we would bank that difference for her for grad school. The college she chose wasn’t her cheapest option, but it was the right fit option financially, socially, and academically.
So you may think you want the most prestigious college to which you can get into. You might think now that two or three or ten or twenty numbers in the rankings matter. When it comes time to write the check and maybe graduate school enters the picture (or suddenly becomes affordable if you go with a less expensive undergrad option), well… you tend to see things a bit differently.
One of the top kids in our high school this year got into Harvard at $30k/year. He turned it down for a full ride to UIUC’s Grainger College. Why not? $120k is $120k. That’s grad school paid for right there. And UIUC is ranked ahead of Harvard for both CS and engineering anyway.
My point is that where your head is now is not where you or your parents’ minds will be when making a decision next April. Apply to some UCs and apply to some private schools. Keep your mind and your options open.
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OP, do you have the stats and EC’s for a top CS school? With the amount of money your parents earn, I’m guessing that colleges will expect that you have had a lot of advantages such as private school, tutors, expensive summer camps, private training/sports coaching, etc. If you don’t have top stats and impressive EC’s with all that money, the money probably won’t help that much because there are more than enough 1% families who can also afford to send their kids to top CS programs and whose kids did manage to achieve top stats. Plus, not all slots at top CS programs are going to kids from 1% families - colleges want diversity and can afford to pass up a bunch of full-pay kids to get it.
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I was wondering about OP’s credentials.
One doesn’t just buy their way to admission - well - legally anyway.
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My niece got into her first choice with lower than average stats. She is a legacy, and the college did ask for confirmation that she would be full pay.
Yes, there are schools that if you are full pay, you can get in.
There are schools which award based on legacy - in fact, the top schools do. That’s a question that is asked.
I was simply saying - you don’t “flash” a check short of building a building or endowing a scholarship - and have a top school - which clearly OP is gunning for say - sure - the Felicity Huffman’s of the world are welcome here.
Legacy is a hook if you will -but OP did not ask - but OP will be asked about his parents education on his app, etc.
Although a close relative donating the cost of a new large building can give a substantial advantage at many colleges.
Yes - I stated this - short of building a building or endowing a scholarship
The OP would not be asking this question if the OP’s parents had endowed a full professorship in Robotics in the engineering school at a particular college. Those gifts involve years of meetings, planning, etc. The summer before senior year is a little late in the donation game!
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Yes, I think it’s safe to say - OP is simply saying - will full pay get me into some schools. And the answer is likely yes - but not the schools the OP is looking to leverage.
The rest of it - is over the top silliness.
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I’ll admit that I am hoping my D’s full-pay status will give her a tiny boost, so OP you are not alone. I’m sure the responses in this thread have already let you know that it’s rude to ask about such a thing so hopefully no one else chastises you for having done so. They always say there’s no such thing as a stupid question but no one ever tells you that there are socially-inappropriate ones so sometimes you end up learning the hard way. At least here it was anonymous.
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OP, many others have asked this same question on CC (and, yes, it generally elicits similar responses to the ones that you’ve received here).
Use the CC forum search bar to search “need aware” and “need-aware” to find those threads and also Google search the same terms. There are many articles on this topic and also lists of need aware and need blind schools. Even on Wikipedia!
I disagree that OP was chastised per se or made to feel not to ask the question.
The question is uncomfortable and the responses may be something OP didn’t want to hear - that it’s uncomfortable and that it’s likely unhelpful unless his stats are amazing (he mentioned Tufts and that’s the kind of school where it could be). Or that it sounds like they’re trying to bribe their way in. That’s how people might feel - so it’s a fair response. It doesn’t mean someone is saying the question should not have been asked.
Telling someone that the question is uncomfortable or the situation is unlikely to help at the top schools is not disparaging at all. It’s answering a difficult, cringeworthy question with an answer that may also be cringeworthy or uncomfortable to give.
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I don’t think the question is out of bounds, and I don’t think the responses were rude in any way.
But facts are facts. And the extra 80K per year in tuition for Harvard, Stanford and MIT is NOT meaningful to those colleges. And the top CS publics- UIUC, U Mich, etc. where theoretically a full pay out of state student means less of a discount vs. an instate student- those schools are so competitive already, that you need “the full package” to even get to the point where an adcom realizes (or cares) that you are out of state aka full pay.
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and many state schools have in-state quotas, thus making it harder for OOS.
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