Hi, I’m interested in top colleges, such as Ivy leagues and Stanford
I was wondering if has the exact same stats(same ethnicity and gender), how their socio-economic background would impact to which extend for the top-colleges’ adcoms to interpret the app.
Furthermore, for the top 30 private colleges, such as Rice, Washu, Pomona, and so on, how will it affect differently?
Most of the type of colleges you are considering are “need-blind.” They admit students without consideration of their level of wealth. They do not look at your finances when making admissions decisions.
That is true for students with United States addresses.
International students’ admission, however, is sometimes need-aware at some but not all of the top colleges, meaning that sometimes students who can pay most or all of the sticker price may have an advantage. (This info will be on each college’s website.)
Students from low SES backgrounds commonly have more limited opportunities (lower quality high school, worse college-prep/application counseling in the high school, recommenders who are less experienced in writing recommendations for college admissions, fewer test-prep resources, unable to do extracurriculars that cost money, etc.), so those from high SES backgrounds commonly have advantages in being able to craft more impressive college applications in these subjectively graded aspects than those from low SES backgrounds.
Some college admissions readers may apply some subjective compensation in seeing that achievements from a low SES background are more impressive than the same level of achievements from a high SES background, because the former student had to overcome various disadvantages and limitations to reach that level of achievement. However, at the most selective private colleges, this may be relatively limited in effect, since they tend to have about half of their students with no FA (i.e. top 3% or so), and a majority of the rest without Pell grant (i.e. rest of the top half of the income distribution). Most of them want a lot of no-FA students to keep their FA expense down, so their admission criteria and practices are designed to statistically result in relatively few high-need (Pell grant) students, some moderate-need (FA but not Pell grant) students, and about half no-FA students.
@TheGreyKing how about the students with green cards? will they be considered international?
I am sorry I am not sure of the answer, but I think it matters where you are a citizen. You can call an admissions office and ask, or maybe someone else can respond to this post who knows the answer.
@ucbalumnus “However, at the most selective private colleges, this may be relatively limited in effect,”
Could you give me examples of the “most selective private colleges?” Especially for stanford, even though it is one of the most selective private ones, still I don’t think SES consists of top 3% over 50% in their class.
Stanford has “only” 40% of students not getting any financial aid grants.
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=243744#finaid
Even though that may be a little less than 50%, that still means that students from the top 3% or so income families (that can afford the price without financial aid grants) are very overrepresented there.
I have been under the impression that generally a green card holder is treated like a citizen at most schools. You would want to see if their websites say anything. But you have to actually have the card, not be waiting for it.
The random college websites I checked said that permanent residents are treated same as citizens.
Here is a quote from Stanford about need-awareness:
Stanford is need-blind for all U.S. citizens and legal noncitizens, regardless of where they attend high school.
This could vary from school to school so you should search the websites of each school you’re interested in, and if it’s not crystal clear, call or email them.
So the college is need-blind in the sense that they won’t reject someone because they have exceeded the financial aid budget. However, they are definitely need-aware in the sense that they look at candidates in context and attempt to determine whether they have made the most of their opportunities. They expect applicants who come from wealthy, well-resourced private schools to have had and taken advantage of more opportunities for both advanced academics and extracurricular activities.
But, the financial aid formulas are whack. There is subset of families that consider themselves “middle class” for which the formulas return a net price that is a huge strain or even impossible to pay. I think it’s smart for these “donut hole” families to take themselves out of the running for these types of schools.
If you are middle class, it is important to run the net price calculators to see if the school is affordable to you.