@kokotg I was going to say that if you have financial need, it’s pointless to apply to a need-blind school that doesn’t meet full need, but such a school might meet full need for a few, just not for all with need. But you correctly mention a third group of schools that I left out, need-blind schools that meet full need of all applicants. Yes, those are most attractive, but accept a very small percentage of applicants. Congratulations to your son!
But they do it all the time. Student is admitted and has to turn down the school because there isn’t enough FA.
Sorry, by manage their yield, I meant colleges want to have as many admitted students come as possible, so the school seems desirable and because yield is one factor used in some rankings. So, AOs would much rather have 70% of admittees attend than 30%. And, I think those percentages do tell you something about a school.
I didn’t mean manage their yield in the sense that they had no idea how many would end up accepting offers, of course pretty much all schools can do that.
And I meant they send out acceptances when they don’t know if the student can afford to attend or not.
I believe the schools when they say they are need blind and do not issues acceptances based on whether the student can afford to go or not. If they don’t want to be need blind, they should (and do) just say so. What do they gain by saying they are need blind and having admissions raid the FA office at night to look up need? A few more applicants? They can get more applicants by giving out application fee waivers.
Extrapolating, considering the 84.5% (of 1,732) “need-blind” schools, 61% (of 4,298) US colleges are public or private for-profit institutions (according to NCES) which are clearly need-blind, leaving 23.5% of US schools as need-blind private non-profit, and the 15.5% as need-aware (private non-profit). But beware of the extrapolation!
Define need?
Student A is from a high EFC family but doesn’t get financial help from them and has to pass on all of his 10 top school to go to a not so good state school he hates for full ride scholarship. Is he needy at Ivies?
Student B is from a 0 EFC, he can attend any school for free. He rejects 7 Ivies and goes to Harvard. He doesn’t have to go a school he doesn’t want to. Was he needy at Ivies? He also had full ride at his fantastic state school but doesn’t care for it because money is not an issue.
Both have no money, both got in their dream schools, one can’t attend any, other can attend any.
Define need?
The “F” in EFC stands for family. Having parents who refuse to help pay college costs, even when financial aid submissions say they should be able to, does not confer upon the student a greater “need” that will result in more need-based aid. Otherwise, all parents would refuse to pay.
Having an EFC of $0 does not mean that a student can attend “any school for free.”
Very far from the truth, since most colleges give poor FA, and even the best FA ones like Harvard expect a student work earnings contribution, as can be seen in their NPCs. And if the parents are divorced and uncooperative (not rare), the student may get no FA from many of the good FA colleges.
Also, EFC = $0 families are generally unable to deploy money to enhance their kids’ opportunity to earn merit for more selective colleges, and are less likely to be able to confer unearned advantages like legacy.
Of course, if you are student A’s parents, you can give away all of your assets and take low paying jobs to put him/her in the position of student B.
These are big endowment Ivies, with a 0EFC, you don’t have to pay.
Question is about students, not parents. They aren’t the bosses for their parents.
See if you can get a net price of $0 in https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculator after selecting US or non-US citizenship.
The eight Ivy League schools are hardly the same things as “any school.” And as ucbalumnus has pointed out, a student contribution will very likely still be expected, however small.
It’s quite clear that parents are part of the need-based financial aid puzzle, whether or not they can be bossed around by their child and whether or not they choose to contribute to college costs.
Plus…you don’t get a nickel of need based aid from those Ivies if you aren’t in the sub 10% of applicants who get accepted.
No school is truly need-blind. And no school is need-blind for the wait-list.
And your proof of this is…?
Well, for one, at need-blind schools, AOs can still see whether a student has applied for financial aid or not. Further, SAT scores are highly correlated with wealth. Even if an admissions office is officially “need blind”, they still have pretty accurate ways to measure the applicants’ resources - parent occupations, expensive extra-curriculars and summer programs, wealthy school districts (or parents with the means to send kids to private schools). Come on, let’s not be naive.
The average FOO income of Brown is $204K. The average FOO income at our state flagship is about $110K. The average FOO income from one of our state’s directional universities is $66K. It would be great if schools were required to publish acceptance rates for full pay vs. those applying for FA vs. those requiring different levels of FA.
Some very high endowment schools are doing a slightly better job than others with that average family income (MIT and UChicago come to mind). If you google on this topic, there are plenty of articles about how schools work through admissions to skew to the level of FA they can afford to give out. I tried to link some and get an error doing so. Paid consultants that are watching every admissions cycle regularly state need blind is a marketing gimmick to get more apps.
Admissions officers may not even think they’re taking it into consideration. But if you’re prioritizing golfers, those with years of private music training, kids from high end private schools, politician/CEO’s kids, etc. you are naturally skewing to a wealthier demographic. They can see zip code, parental education, etc. And I’m not saying schools aren’t and can’t be generous with some students. Which is great. But I think it’s good to go into the process eyes wide open.
Trivial examples of need-blind schools where there is no question that admissions does not consider whether an applicant applied for financial aid:
- California State Universities, which (except for CPSLO) admit strictly by an eligibility index of recalculated GPA and SAT or ACT scores (or just college GPA for transfer students) within buckets defined by major.
- Open admission community colleges.
Yes, colleges can emphasize or de-emphasize characteristics that correlate to high or low FA need in their admissions process to tip their admission class toward higher or lower FA need. But that is different from being need aware for any individual applicant.
Schools are also using reports like CollegeBoard’s Environmental Context tool to help sort applications by whatever factors a school wants to use. This particular one includes socioeconomic data down to the neighborhood, among other factors. https://www.collegeboard.org/membership/all-access/counseling-admissions-financial-aid-academic/more-numbers-context-matters-peek
I’m not sure about this. It’s my understanding that at least at some schools, applicant information that the school considers relevant is stripped from the application and made available in a separate format to the admissions officer who is considering the applicant. This could easily mean that the answer to the “are you applying for financial aid” question is never seen by the admissions officer at a need-blind school.
Also, need aware schools consider the level of calculated aid you need…not whether you are just applying for aid…or not.
We were full pay (except for some merit awards, and Direct Loans). Our kids checked the YES box for applying for aid…but our family contribution exceeded the cost of attendance…so when calculated would have had NO impact on admissions because the schools wouldn’t have needed to give us a nickel of aid.