<p>I apologize for bringing another need-blind thread into play, but my brother has just issued a "harrumph" while filling out the CSS Profile. He doesn't believe that Vanderbilt is really "need blind" although they say they are. He is concerned about his daughter's chances of admission being affected as he files for financial aid. I told him that I thought a school like Vanderbilt would stick to what they say they are and that the two decisions would not mix. Am I hopelessly naive? Opinions of you wise CC folks please. Do you think that "need blind" is for real or rather a case of "wink wink?"</p>
<p>I think that these schools are truly need blind for a few reasons. One, it looks very good to offer X% of students need based aid. Two, if an applicant is that good, giving him/her a full scholarship with need based money will also save money in the merit section for other top kids. Finally, these schools will not look at your FAFSA or CSS or any of that when looking at your application. Need based aid is iffy. One school may give you more than the other while your FAFSA says the same thing, just to attract you. If your brother can afford to pay the full way, or knows that he will not get a dime (like my parents are realizing) then it is not worth the time to fill out the forms. Vandy is not HYPS, in that it does not have the same amount of money to give in need based aid. I do not know all the specifics about Vandy's aid policy, but they may give more loans, or some other things that arent straight forward "you dont pay X" like Harvard does for people who earn less than 50k a year.</p>
<p>If the school says it is need blind, then the are not going to discriminate on an individual basis in terms of bringing in students during their regular admissions cycle. </p>
<p>Highly selective colleges do target higher income students in their marketing and admission practices, which ensures that on a group statistical basis they get a student body with the level of affluence sufficient so that their overall "discount" rate is not too high. By this I mean that they often target their mailings to more affluent zip codes, and that it is easier and more likely for afflent kids to meet their criteria for admission than it is for poor kids, who of course are less likely to have the funds to participate in many EC's or to attend high schools offering a lot of APs and honors courses, tend to have weaker standardized test scores, and cannot afford to pay for tutoring or repeated test administrations. </p>
<p>But in terms of the question will it hurt the student's chances to apply for financial aid -- the answer is no. It also doesn't really hurt at most need-aware schools, as long as the student is a strong applicant for that school.</p>
<p>I concur with Calmom. I think that schools like Vanderbilt are honest about being need-blind to the point of not penalizing an individual applicant.</p>
<p>As far as the whole class is concerned, they are going to get their desired percentage of full-fare customers, but that is not going to impact the odds for any one individual student.</p>
<p>And, even if it did, there isn't anything you can do about it. So, why worry?</p>
<p>I tend to believe that the schools which state they are need-blind are honestly need blind. But I also think that may be a "naive" belief ;).
[quote]
As far as the whole class is concerned, they are going to get their desired percentage of full-fare customers, but that is not going to impact the odds for any one individual student.
[/quote]
mini has made some persuasive arguments (to me) that the first-half of this statement is true. If it is, and year after year these "need-blind" schools come up with the same % of the class needing aid, how can it be true that there is no impact on the decision for individual students? He convinced me, but now maybe interesteddad can convince me otherwise. As I would truly like to take the schools' policies at face value.</p>
<p>Because, as noted above, the admission criteria tends to discriminate against lower income kids, who come in with weaker test scores, attend weaker public high schools, have less time for EC's because they have to work at jobs which are often menial, and for the most part are less sophisticated about the college app process. Many take up to 40% of their incoming class from the ED pool, and ED is heavily weighted toward affluent families because of the obligation imposed. Almost all of the need-blind schools are also the most selective --and they end up having to do outreach in order to avoid having an even more affluent student body. Vanderbilt's problem historically has been too many rich kids -- they are working very hard to counter the reputation of being a school for overprivileged white kids. </p>
<p>It is very, very difficult for a lower income kid to meet the hurdle of the stats required for admission at the top colleges. I think these schools actually engage in some affirmative-action type tactics to find and keep these students. So, in the sense that they may actively favor a low-income kid, they may not be truly need-blind -- they probably make allowances for weaknesses in the records of kids who clearly bear marks of being financially needy, such as kids who are the first in their family to attend college or who come from inner city schools.</p>
<p>Okay, that makes sense to me (probably doesn't to mini, but that's another story ;) ). So, that would support the notion that these schools are truly need blind. I believe mini would say they aren't because they have a budget to meet; it seems that what you are saying is that there aren't enough needy and qualified students to break the budget, so they are truly need blind. At least they can be until and unless the number of such applicants grows exponentially. Am I getting that right?</p>
<p>Several of our old classmates have gone into private college administration in various departments including admissions. When a school has separate admissions and financial aid departments, it tends to be as need blind as possible. Most adcoms in these private schools are idealistic and personally dislike the "silver spoon" kids or kids who have family hovering over them every step of the way. They tend to want to be champions of the underdog. Where the true conflict arises is not whether they have to take finances into account, but the fact that lower income kids, the truly needy kids, not only in money but in family, community, school support, these kids that they really want to help, do not tend to have the academic background needed to be successful at a rigorous college. Though you can give them a "bye" in the sophistication of the application, the quality of EC's , the support of the school and parents, the crux of the admissions criteria focuses on their fatal flaws for "making it" at a college. These kids simply are not prepared for tough college curriculum.</p>
<p>Mini has argued that the selective colleges have discriminated against these kids by making the criteria such that this group of kids intrinsically are unable to meet the bar. And those that get in with lowered standards do not make through college, because the colleges do not have the support system to hellp them succeed. He is right. Highly selective schools do not tend to have systems to help those who are academically needy. The one area of diversity that they do not have is in academic excellence. The prep school athlete with lower test scores and lower gpa, tends to be far more prepared for the rigor of a school like, say Williams, than the kid going to an inadequate highschool who has excellent grades. The motivation and determination necessary to overcome the lack of academic preparation that has been a lifetime condition for some of these kids, is at a level that kids that age just cannot muster and sustain. Many admission books have been written by Adcoms who sadly note this fact. They hate the idea that "Ms Daddy's Girl with the Daddy with the fat Wallet", may "buy" her way in with her prep school connection, Daddy's legacy and development contacts even though she may never have been considered without those factors. But begrudgingly, these Adcoms say that these kids are the ones who do end up making it through the college. Many of the kids that Admissions champion, including fighting for financial aid dollars, playing counselor and mentor, do not get through. As Mini notes, more needs to be done by selective colleges if they want to give more than lip service about increasing the number of disadvantaged kids.</p>
<p>So many of these colleges, even the non need blind ones, do not necessarily know how much money these kids will need even though they check off the financial aid box on the app. By looking at other admissions data, the adcoms can get some idea of who has been acådemically challenged and that socio-economic factors are reasons for their lack of preparedness for a rigorous college. Their job is more to determine whether these kids can even make it at their college. I do believe that the proportion of kids in that boat is deliberately kept low simply because the college does not want too many kids failing. I don't think it is because of finanacial aid rationing.</p>
<p>Most of the parents on this board do not have kids falling into this disadvanged categories. Their kids are not likely to need full aid by FAFSA and Profile standards, and some may not get a dime even though they check the financial aid box on the app and apply for aid. That category of kids is not going to be discriminated against for needing some aid, particularly when they may be getting mostly self help aid. When you get a kid whose family can pay 90% of the outrageous tab of å private college, that is still pretty danged good, and most colleges look at that as an admissions bargain. </p>
<p>What I am saying in my long winded way is that most of the middle income kids who apply for financial aid are not going to get discriminated against in admissions even at schools that are need aware. It's the kid who will need a substantial package and is also borderline or even under the academic line that will not fare well in admissions, and that is the case even in need blind schools because of the admissions and ongoing academic criteria.</p>
<p>Very informative, cpt.</p>
<p>And I think I may have misunderstood mini's point from other threads on related topics.</p>
<p>Exactly. Keep in mind that Vanderbilt (the college mentioned in the OP) also gives merit aid, sometimes in vary generous amounts -- and of course merit aid is entirely discretionary. So if the financial aid budget seemed to be straining because of a sudden influx of needier students, they could always cut back on some merit offers. </p>
<p>I think the well-publicized initiatives of colleges like Harvard and Stanford to eliminate loans and offer full rides to families with incomes less than a specified range ($40-$60K) is part of an effort to get the word out and solicit more applications. They probably get plenty of apps from needy candidates, but not enough that have equivalent stats and qualifications, and of course they also want to preserve their high end test score spreads and ranking level. </p>
<p>Now the interesting thing would be to look at how many need-blind colleges are willing to go test-optional. The SAT is a very quick proxy for family income level, and everyone knows it --while it doesn't tell much on an individual level, on a statistical, mass level if most of the students score above 1400, it's going to tilt toward affluence. Test-optional makes the large-scale predictors a lot more shaky.</p>
<p>Hmmm, I wonder how much effect test-optional would have on socio-economics at the highly selectives. I'm just thinking of Bates and Bowdoin in my backyard. Test optional (Bates for one of the longest times) and the affluence profile is probably pretty much right up there with other highly selectives.</p>
<p>Yes, but Bates and Bowdoin are off the beaten path geographically and are very small LAC's -- they probably have a hard time attracting lower-income applicants. In addition to the geographic location (harder/more expensive to travel to/from the college), young people from truly disadvantaged backgrounds tend to place a lot more importance on the college degree as a job ticket, so they tend to be less interested in LAC's, more interested in either the employment prospects associated with particular majors, or prestige levels which they assume will guarantee a transition into the middle or upper class. Bates & Bowdoin would probaby have to achieve much wider name recognition in order to attract a wider economic demographic.</p>
<p>Sorry to contribute to the slow drift off topic, but there's recent data from Hamilton and Mount Holyoke that shows fairly dramatic increases in minority students applying and enrolled (after the colleges went SAT-optional). You've gotta believe this corollates with socio-economic status. It's hard to imagine a school more similar to Bates and Bowdoin than Hamilton.</p>
<p>Back (closer to) the topic of the thread. There are lots of schools that can't afford to be 100% need-blind, but which do guarantee to meet the full estimated financial need of all admitted students, and use FA status only as a factor for the very bottom cusp of the admitted class. It's not as if there are stacks of superbly qualified, but low-income students being sent to the bottom of the stack in the admissions pot at selective institutions.</p>
<p>There's another practice of which posters should be aware.</p>
<p>Some colleges will say they are "need blind," but will provide a rating to the financial aid department indicating how much they want a particular kid. That rating will be used to modify the financial aid award, perhaps giving less in grants and more in loans, thereby "meeting 100%" but not in the best manner possible.</p>
<p>The effect of this is to drive low-income students into the arms of other schools ... if there are any other schools.</p>
<p>"As far as the whole class is concerned, they are going to get their desired percentage of full-fare customers, but that is not going to impact the odds for any one individual student."</p>
<p>"mini has made some persuasive arguments (to me) that the first-half of this statement is true. If it is, and year after year these "need-blind" schools come up with the same % of the class needing aid, how can it be true that there is no impact on the decision for individual students?"</p>
<p>Mini here. The reason we can't answer the second part of the question is that no college is going to release data on what percentage of students are actually accepted from each economic cohort. The easiest way to discriminate against students who need lots of aid is simply not to recruit where they are to be found, and add other barriers to a successful application. </p>
<p>But, as Princeton has discovered, and I think lots of other schools will soon go in this direction, it is very much to the school's advantage - both financially and in reputation - to admit significant numbers of applicants who have small amounts of need, and to meet that need. The percentage of those receiving need-based aid (it's actually merit aid in disguise) goes up, without much in the way of expense (and the expense is quickly covered in list price increases in subsequent years.)</p>
<p>Two years ago, I ran data on the top 50 schools (unis and LACs) seeking the supposedly most generous. It was an algorithm arrived at by taking the total enrollment of the student body and dividing by the amount of need-based aid given (it ignored differences in list prices, which generally don't vary by more than 5%). As it turned out, while the entire top 10 was made up of schools claiming to meet 100% of need, 7 of the 10 did NOT claim to be need-blind. Princeton was the highest ranking Ivy (at number 9). </p>
<p>But none of this would tell one about individual impact. In an article published in the Williams Record on the admissions process, it is clear that the admissions director kept track on the number of "social-ec" acceptances - there clearly was a target for low-income enrollees, but this could have worked either to the advantage or disadvantage of such candidates, depending on the number of applicants and the "target". As Interesteddad notes, I doubt there is a school in the country with an open-ended financial aid budget, so, for better or for worse, list-price enrollees (or those near list price) are highly prized.</p>
<p>I think mini has it exactly right, but also think that the most selective colleges/unis try to walk a fine line: they really do want to be economically diverse, and do make strong, good-faith efforts in that direction, but they have also made strategic decisions that other institutional priorities will constrain that effort in some measure. </p>
<p>The optomistic view is that schools are really seeking to enroll more low-income applicants; the cynical and equally true view is that they only want as many low-income kids as they've decided they can afford and that inevitably impacts individual applicants.</p>
<p>"And those that get in with lowered standards do not make through college, because the colleges do not have the support system to hellp them succeed. He is right. Highly selective schools do not tend to have systems to help those who are academically needy. The one area of diversity that they do not have is in academic excellence."</p>
<p>This is a slippery slope when it comes to prestige colleges. 70% of the students at UCLA or Berkeley have the stats to attend ANY of the Ivies or other prestige private colleges. Well over 30% are Pell Grant recipients. Arguably, it is more difficult to succeed at Berkeley/UCLA than in the more rarefied atmospheres of the prestige privates. But they do. Gordon Winston at Williams has shown that there are huge numbers of low-income candidates with the academic backgrounds to compete/succeed at the prestige privates. The reason they aren't there is because, for whatever reason, they feel they are unwanted or wouldn't feel welcomed.</p>
<p>This is anecdotal only... but my experience with 2 kids who needed substantial financial aid, but did not fit the socio-economic demographic that might be the target of an effort to recruit low income students, is that both were admitted to most of the colleges they applied to, including both need-aware and need-blind. My daughter very weak test scores but also did extremely well in the admissions process. </p>
<p>Again, I think there are all sorts of factors from recruitment to admission criteria that have at tendency to shape the class, and that go into the way financial aid awards are structure, but I think that on an individual level even need-aware schools only consideration of financial need to reject only borderline applicants. I think all colleges use some form of enrollment management, and they know very well what they are doing.....</p>
<p>But if the question is, "will asking for aid hurt my chances" I think the answer is, "rarely". For one thing, colleges are more focused on predicting yield than they are on dollars -- they routinely offer far more in aid money than they plan to give out, on the assumption that yield figures will be within projected ranges and only a certain percentage of students will take them up on the offer. My daughter received specific grant offers from 8 colleges totalling around $105,000 -- she turned down $77K, spread among 7 colleges. So while the college which made the mistake of offering the largest grant is now stuck giving her almost free tuition for the year, the others haven't paid out a dime. </p>
<p>The likelihood that a given student will accept an offer goes down in direct proportion to the strength of that student in the applicant pool -- that is, the stronger the student, the more likely that she will have attractive offers from competing institutions and end up going elsewhere. Thus it is in every college's interest to simply select the best and most desireable students who apply -- the better the student, the less the likelihood of attendance, so therefore the fractional cost, based on applying a probability formula to the offer, is less. Of course they also try to admit students who are likely to attend -- but they use other factors to try to hone in on likelihood of attending. </p>
<p>At the same time, as noted, the highest qualified applicants are likely to be the most affluent (as a group), so therefore the strategy to simply admit the best qualified/most desireable students by definition ends up to be the strategy that is also most cost-effective.</p>
<p>I think your arguments are logical, Calmom. Particularly, the last sentence. I do want to point out though, that just as airlines that overbook seats and as colleges overbook students, every once in a while, disaster occurs when too many show up. We know it happens regularly with the airlines. Volunteers are then asked to give up their seats in exchange for some renumeration. A bit difficult to pull that off in a college setting. And as for financial aid, that is a money problem. Many kids let their other schools know that they are not attending as they accept the one college's offer, often at the very last minute. I am sure colleges can bite the bullet for a year if they overextend the budget in terms of financial aid, but some head will roll if it happens too often. So, it is built into the equation that some kids are not going to accept the offer when the budget for aid is applied. That is one reason why wait listed kids often get nada in terms of aid. The bank is bust. Also they are the "borderline" acceptees. </p>
<p>I notice that though kids are hard put to turn down HPYS and MIT, as you go down the selectivity scale, money does become an issue. A parent may be willing to pass the hat, remortgage the house, and break the bank to send a child to the very top schools. The story is a bit different when you are comparing, say Binghamton to Clark University. Is the tuition differential worth it? As the cost of private colleges rises at this rapid rate, I am seeing some hesitation on part of the parents to offer carte blanche payment of any college costs. A full ride from Providence may well trump BC's offer of acceptance with out a dime thrown in. Parents who are suffereing heavy loan burdens may not want to have their kids take out a dime in loans to go to Dickinson over York. The flagship state schools like Penn State and Maryland are becoming tough competition for schools like CMU and Hopkins that cost quite a bit more.</p>
<p>I nominate this thread (my posts exempted) as one of the most informed, intelligent, and civil ever on CC. It's great to be able read the posts of such thougtful people.</p>