Having now gone through the college application process with both of my Ds I thought I’d give a little back to anyone new or still learning the ins and outs of the college admissions game. My tip in this post relates to NEED AWARENESS in college admissions. I can’t speak for the rest of the world but when my wife, Ds and I began looking for the best college fits it seemed easy, based on the abundance of data to be found, to evaluate college selectivity (which then drove our evaluations of how realistic - or not - individual schools were for them) on the basis of the schools’ ‘stats’… percentiles, GPA, test scores and the like. These are important metrics to be sure, but rarely in the multitude of sources that provide this information is much mention made of the role that need awareness plays in admissions. It can be a BIG deal and informed families should absolutely be aware of it in their school evaluations.
Need awareness in this case refers to a school’s inclusion - in its admissions decision-making - of how much financial aid an applicant will need to attend the school (as opposed to the actual aid grant once admitted - that’s another kettle of fish). Pretty much every school that offers aid requires families to complete the FAFSA, which in turn generates an Expected Family Contribution to send their kid to college. The EFC level plus loans, work study, outside scholarships (and perhaps others that weren’t in scope for us), subtracted from the cost of attendance constitutes the student’s demonstrated financial need to attend a particular school. For many schools, the presence and size of this need amount is a real and influential factor in the admissions process. The reason is basic economics: The health of schools’ endowments coupled with current, non-aid draws on those endowments (capital projects, etc.) ultimately define how much student financial aid a school has to offer in any given year. It’s a budget item, varying from one year to the next, that the admissions committees at need-aware schools are VERY aware of when evaluating applications. The admission profiles of well or even exquisitely credentialed students absolutely can be diminished by a substantial need level!!
Philosophically I can’t argue with any school’s decision to be need aware. Budgets are just as real as anything else in the college world and the priority given to the preservation of endowments is the schools’ decision to make. So be it. But from our experience this is a substantially under-documented admissions factor (with data tough to find), one that we as a family desiring to be well-informed would definitely have benefited from knowing more about, if for no reason other than to appropriately temper our Ds’ admissions expectations for target schools which happened to be need aware.
Bottom Line: If your family will be needing financial aid to make college work, make sure that you’re aware of your kids’ schools’ need awareness in their admissions processes. What seems like a comfortably credentialed application, and the expectations that can unavoidably come with it, may in reality be a bigger (perhaps much bigger) stretch than your family realizes because of how much help you need from the school. If you’re not sure whether it’s a factor or not, call Financial Aid offices and ask! If nothing else, you’ll be a more knowledgeable consumer (and your kids’ expectations more realistic) if you do.
We removed any need aware school off son’s list before applying. There are already too many factors involved when speculating why a child is/is not accepted to any particular university and we certainly didn’t want our lower middle income to be yet another factor. Thankfully need blind top schools were happy to accept him!
So are there any statistics on need aware acceptances, especially of your average middle class NOT URM, NOT from an UR State, NOT an athlete. Very curious. Would love to see those. For those of us waiting the week before decisions come out is not the time to call the financial aid office to ask. I would feel better if some of my WL/rejections were based on need.
I have a friend who is applying to LAC and has a fairly uncommon family financial situation so the NPC was very different, some places were almost 50% in finacial aid and others were less than 10k, based on the NPC, if she did not qualify for at least X in aid, she either did not apply or applied without FA, as a backup (and will get loans or spend what she has the first year and hope she qualifies the next year). With some of these she is hoping to get merit aid or was at least, does not look like it is happening. It will be interesting to see where she gets in and if FA plays a role
Stats on this are nowhere to be seen, at least in my experience. It makes sense, to me anyway, that from the colleges’ standpoint there’s plenty of reason to keep admissions need-awareness on the down-low. Outcomes from it ultimately boil down to favoring wealthier kids over equally-credentialed needier ones and what school wants to admit to (much less publicize) doing that?
By the way, the issue becomes even more magnified for FA families who have multiple kids in college. For the second (and beyond) kids the FAFSA EFC numbers become lower and lower, making the younger kids’ demonstrated financial needs higher and higher. These younger sibs are thus up against even higher barriers to admission at need-aware schools.
There’s nothing fair about it, but it’s real nonetheless.
This may be true, but there is no advantage to gaining acceptance at a private OoS need-blind school only to be offered little aid and huge loans.
Out of curiosity, other than asking “Will you need FA?” on the application, how can acceptance decisions consider EFC when apps submit in October and FAFSA in February?
One thing to keep in mind is that not all need-blind schools meet 100% of demonstrated financial need (some need-aware schools do). It might also be worth checking to see if a school’s website explicitly states that aid won’t change year to year (unless circumstances change dramatically). Some schools are rumored to have less favorable aid once you are past your freshman year.
collegedata under ‘admissions’ lists whether finances are considered in admissions.
if you know which colleges to consider, look at their websites. some explain exactly the nature of their ‘need awareness’ (perhaps just final 5-10% of admittees are need aware, etc).
also look at the percentage of pell grant recipients. the highly selective schools that have ~20% or more pell recipients are serious about expanding their socioeconomic diversity. this is not a large list of schools. Looking at various schools admit/deny threads you definitely can get a feel for the schools that are need aware (but you have to specifically be watching that school - you could always look at last year’s threads to see what happened for low income applicants - Dickinson’s 2015 EA thread is an example).
also, some schools use the waitlist heavily (like 40% of applicants - see Richmond as an example). they are need blind for regular admissions but need aware on the waitlist (last year they initiated a fafsa correction for my d in May while she was on wl).
Thank you for starting this thread MinnRick. At least some colleges are now voluntarily disclosing that they are actually need-aware in admissions. It’s worse when a college pretends to be “need-blind” but in fact is actually “need-aware” as this Chronicle of Higher Education uncovered in 2013:
My experience this year with a 0 EFC has been 4/5 need blind 0/13 need aware. All schools meet full need or come close. I wish I had a stronger GPA so I could more confidently blame need awareness. I do get that feeling that being anywhere close a to borderline applicant gives me little chance and I get the feeling need is a factor for a large percent of students. I think it helps to look at the last years financial aid budget from the common data set to get a sense of how generous a school may be. Additionally percent of pell grant recipients can help as already mentioned. Many schools I applied to were LACs with under 15 percent pell enrollment and low in diversity. I think it’s logical to assume that these schools spend the majority of their financial aid trying to improve diversity but maybe that’s untrue.
I do not go into a Lexus dealership looking for a car. I go to Hyundai or Ford, knowing that I can afford (with financing) to purchase a car from a less expensive dealership. What is the point of being accepted at a college that does not give out generous enough financial aid to make the school affordable?
Schools are not charities. They cannot afford to accept every student needing financial aid. If they were truly need blind and somehow ended up accepting an incoming class that is 75% in need of full aid, for example, the school would be in a financial mess.
My kids would have loved to go to schools other than the ones that they did attend. But they applied to schools that they knew they could afford with as little debt as possible. If my oldest had applied to and been accepted by her dream school, it would only have broken her heart even more than it was by not being able to apply.
Well most of the colleges where need awareness is a problem meet full need. Also Berea manages to accepte 100 percent students with financial need but I agree that in most cases schools have to be need aware to meet full need of students and not go bankrupt.
in response to KK, you must know that we’re all quite ‘cost conscious’ if need-aware is an issue. it would be great if college admissions was like buying a car (even a Lexus) … that you knew exactly how much it would cost and even that they’d ‘let you buy it’. unfortunately that’s not the way the game works. thus as cost-conscious players in the admissions game, it’s good to know all the ins and outs.
the following quote from a cc blog may be of interest. But it behooves us all to remember that ‘need-aware’ admissions are a real factor. We’re not complaining that the schools must protect their endowments, just making sure future applicants remember all the factors that should be considered.