<p>What is a need blind school? One of the other threads/forums mentioned that CC had a list of need blind schools. I'm new to the forum, and don't know where to find this list. And what exactly is a need blind school?</p>
<p>Does checking off that you will be seeking financial aid diminish your child's chances of getting into their school of choice?</p>
<p>Need blind means they admit kids w/o regard for the need component of their situation; other schools may admit kids and consider whether they have enough finaid available to assist the student or not</p>
<p>D checked off FA box on all her applications. We might have been wrong but it sounded that she needed to check it off to be considered for MERIT Scholarships, since it seems to be handled by the same FA department. We did not qualify for Need based, D received a lot of Merit $$ at every school that she had applied. Needless to say she got into all of them.</p>
<p>My S did not check "financial aid" box and still received merit scholarships at most schools. You can tell how much a school wants you based on the money they offer.
Checking the box could diminish your chances at a school, but what is the alternative?</p>
<p>If the school is "need- blind", checking the box should have no impact.</p>
<p>Also, if you need the aid, no point pretending that you don't. One of the most frustrating things that happen all the time is when kids get into schools the families can't afford, and are forced to choose financial safeties.</p>
<p>There isn't a "need-blind" school in the country (other than maybe Cooper Union and, to some extent, the military academies). The open quesion is the degree to which they use the assumption of need in making admissions decisions.</p>
<p>^^ I believe you could add the Curtis Institute of Music to the list of need-blind schools, even going along with the assumption that only tuition-free schools are truly need blind.</p>
<p>"One of the world's leading music schools, Curtis provides full-tuition scholarships to all of its students, ensuring that admissions are based solely on artistic promise."
- The</a> Curtis Institute of Music</p>
<p>Additionally, Olin Scool of Engineering
"Scholarship Policy:
Every admitted student receives a four-year, full tuition scholarship valued at approximately $130,000 "
- Olin</a> College : About Olin : Overview</p>
<p>Just google "need blind colleges" and you will be given sites that have lists. Make sure you double check that the info is current. </p>
<p>Unlike Mini, I believe that most colleges are need blind. They do not bother to check how you are going to pay for the costs, nor do they give you any assurance that they will. However, there are a number of selective schools that are need aware. These schools are selective in admissions and tend to give financial aid close to what the need is. They do not want to accept students who cannot afford to go to their schhols. However, they do not have the money budgeted to give all accepted students the aid they need. So they are not need blind, in that they work their accept numbers around what they have to give in financial aid. For many of these schools, it may mean that they will accept top candidates until the money runs low and then have to accept based on what else they can fund. Most of the time it is not a matter of whether you are applying for financial aid that is going to affect the admissions but how much need you show. There is a big difference between accepting someone who needs a full ride and someone who comes up with $5K of need. Many of these schools give merit money to the students they most want in lieu of financial aid to more kids. It is not as simple as just avoiding schools that are need aware if you need aid, because some of those schools may well be the best deal for a student. I know a number of kids who got their best offers from need aware schools. They got far more from some such schools than they were offered from their need blind schools.</p>
<p>The best description of "need blind" I ever heard was from the head of admissions at a top college. He said, "It means that being disadvantaged will not disadvantage you in admissions decisions." It also generally means that the admissions office does not talk to the financial aid office as part of the decision making process.</p>
<p>sorry posted in error</p>
<p>Some of the most selective schools in the country are not only need blind, but actually give a tip to those students coming from households more that are economically challenged. It is the need aware schools that operate more along the lines of what you have described. It is true, however, that because all colleges have wants in terms of student talent, and much of student talent is "bought" by years of private lessons, club sports, and other money related activities, the entire process does favor those with money more than those without. More of the special categories are filled with kids who come from well to do household. However, I do know a number of folks who work at universities that are need blind, and they do NOt go through a process where they deliberately separate out the apps by need. The fact of the matter is that there is a direct relationship between high income families and great college app profiles. Often those kids who are in need of full aid need more than just fin aid concessions to make entrance criteria compared to the rest of the apps. Therefore that is taken into account in admissions, favoring the lower income kid. Believe me, most admission reps from the more selective schools despise the silver spooned kid who has had everything spoon fed to him in that silver spoon.</p>
<p>Sorry, cptofthehouse. I'm not buying what you're selling. I wish I could, but I know what I saw.</p>
<p>"Some of the most selective schools in the country are not only need blind, but actually give a tip to those students coming from households more that are economically challenged."</p>
<p>An oxymoron. They are not only NOT need-blind, but actually look at financial status in providing a tip. (I think you've made my point for me.) The only open question is how and to what extent they use need status in decision-making.</p>
<p>(They don't have to separate out applicants by need status. They are pretty well up on zip codes.)</p>
<p>The acceptance boat is automatically tipped towards those who are on the economic plus side. The need blind schools make focused attempt to tilt it a bit to the other side. Does it work? Only somewhat. The best candidates are those who come from the upper middle income households because they are better prepared and have the great extras the colleges seek. So the system is inherently biased towards those families who can provide more for their kids. I would not argue that for a moment. For the most part, those kids who do get the rich financial aid are kids who come from families that are economically poor but have educated, knowledgeable parents who are focused on cultural awareness and education. A lot of Asian immigrants fall into this category. Though the economics of the household are poor, the parents may be well educated and want their children to get the best education possible. Much of the family focus and assets are put into the children's education. Such families make up the vast majority of those kids who do well, but are not in high income families. </p>
<p>Because of the fact that the slant is very much on the side of the well to do families, no financial bias is needed to select need free kids. It automatically works out that way. The difficulty is getting kids from lower economic brackets who can come up with the course load, experiences and ability (as measured by SAT and other tests) that makes them competitive for a selective school. It just does not happen automatically. You don't need zip codes to separate applicants, nor do you need their financial aid statements. The SATs, course load, transcript does all of that for you.</p>
<p>However, at those schools that say they are need blind, they are in the sense that they do not base the admissions decision by whether they are requesting financial aid nor by how much they need. Some of these schools actually give a boost to those who are economically challenged in that they are given more leeway in terms of rigor of course load, SAT scores, ECs.</p>
<p>People get hung up on the term "need blind" and think it should be called something else. Hence claims like </p>
<p>
[quote]
There isn't a "need-blind" school in the country (other than maybe Cooper Union and, to some extent, the military academies).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>There are plenty of colleges that are need blind. The problem is that the term does not mean what people think it should mean. It does NOT mean "the admissions office has no idea whether you are likely to need financial aid". It DOES mean "the admissions office operates without a financial aid quota, and hence offers admission to students without regard for individual likely need". The consequence for the school is a bit more uncertainty of annual financial aid budget, but all such colleges have a good idea what their applicant pools look like and can estimate what their aid budgets are likely to be. </p>
<p>At need aware schools a typical maneuver is to accept without regard to need until the budget is used up, then trade needy students against one another after that (if a student offered aid turns down admission then that frees up funds for another scholarship student, a full pay slot only opens a position for a full pay student). Another approach is to admit all students with an eye to what they can pay, and try to maximize bang for buck in aid money by recruiting the most favored admits. Here, ironically, small grants to nearly full pay students can bring in a stronger class, and more tuition revenue, than large grants to a smaller number of high need students. In effect the needy student compete with each other in a separate pool from the full pay applicants.</p>
<p>So the claim "there are no need blind schools" really means "I know what need blind means, but I think they should have called it something else, so I assert that by my private definition need blind does not exist"</p>
<p>The highly competitive colleges manage to be need blind, as admissions offices use the term, because most of the students who would win the competition for admission come from financially well off families. High income families produce students with higher grades and test scores. They send students to better public schools, or to good private schools. They also can afford the music lessons, summer sports camps, and foreign travel that look so good on applications. If you use these as criteria, then you are selecting for a high income group. That does not mean the colleges are lying when they say the individual decisions do not disadvantage lower income students. America disadvantages lower income students.</p>
<p>"It DOES mean "the admissions office operates without a financial aid quota, and hence offers admission to students without regard for individual likely need".</p>
<p>Every school I have heard of has a financial aid budget, and a specific charge from the President and Board of Trustees to use that budget in service of its institutional mission. That might include "increasing diversity" (in which case, they would take race and ethnicity into account) or "increasing economic diversity" (in which case they would take "need" into account), or in ensuring large contributions to the endowment (in which case they would take "development status" - i.e. financial condition) into account, or in ensuring that they stay within budget (in which case they would be expected to do just that.) In each case, they are not only aware of "need", but take "need" (or lack thereof) directly into account when making admissions decisions.</p>
<p>Then there are the "soft" uses of "need", and how admissions officers use them, which have been well-described above. </p>
<p>Taken together, with the few exceptions noted, there isn't a "need-blind" school in the country - the only question is how and to what extent need is used in decision-making.</p>
<p>There are about 50 need blind colleges/universities. Most of them have huge endowments and generous financial aid programs. They do not consider need when considering application. The applications are reviewed without the financial aid issue being considered at all.</p>
<p>Now...does that mean that the application folks can't figure out at least something about the finances of a student just by reading the application (info like address, parent employer, etc...which IS on some applications can give tons of financial information). But the need blind schools do not look at the financial aid calculations prior to admitting a student...or at least that is what they say. I have no reason to doubt them as, as said earlier...they are amongst the wealthiest and most generous with finaid schools in most cases. They can afford to be need blind.</p>
<p>"The applications are reviewed without the financial aid issue being considered at all."</p>
<p>At my so-called "need-blind" alma mater (Williams), a reporter actually sat in on the admissions process (and had his article published in the alumni magazine). Not only were they NOT need-blind, not only did they have a budget for financial aid, the director of admissions actually counted the number of "socio-ec" admits as they went through the process (they clearly had a "target").</p>
<p>Did they actually look at the amount of aid requested as they went through the process? No. They didn't have to. But they were far from "need-blind". (and, frankly, other than the duplicity, I don't think that's a problem.)</p>
<p>Often the socio-ec admists are counted because they want a number of them. Many of them tend to be on the lower end of the stats in terms of test scores and course difficulty, and some leeway is given so that too few are not accepted. </p>
<p>I agree fully that the entire process is intrinsically biased towards upper income kids. I do not believe that the colleges that are need blind are rationing out the acceptances for these kids. Instead they are SEEKING such kids through a variety of programs to try to get such kids that can meet their standards. </p>
<p>My alma mater, Mini, is not 100% need blind, nor does it guarantee 100% of need to be met. However, admissions has no relationship with financial aid until after the admitted students list is given to FA. Admissions has no idea who even qualifies for fin aid; they just know who is applying for fin aid, and they know this only because of the check box on the app. THe kids can have an EFC of zero or in excess of COA for all admissions knows. Those kids who applied for fin aid and are on the accept list are then given number work ups by FA with packages commensurate to an internal score the admissions office has given them to rate them as candidates. The most highly desired candidates will get all need met with few if any loans. The ones with the lower scores may not get need met, and if there are too many of them needing full aid, FA will discuss the situation with Admissions. Those kids are at the lower end of the acceptance spectrum before fin aid has even assessed their need. In my time there, and I worked in both offices at various times, never did I hear of any discussion of a kid being turned down because of need in Admissions, and the discussions would get heated between FA and Admissions about funding the kids on the accepted list. No one felt good about a kid who did not get an acceptance due to budgetary reasons, and it was rare it would happen. Rare like a couple of times in a 5 year period. </p>
<p>Now this is NOT the case for international students. Though they too were accepted and rated without regard to financial, only the very top ones ( and there was a quota of sorts , not strict, but there) got full need met. If a student's need were high, and his selectivity rating low, he would be rejected. In many cases, those kids were way up there in academic achievement as compared to some of the kids who were admitted and given solid packages but were not international students.</p>
<p>There is a difference between a quota and a budget.</p>
<p>Again the argument is not whether some colleges admit students in the way we have been describing, but whether this approach should be called "need blind". Mini does not like the term, but that is the nomenclature admissions offices have adopted. When these colleges say they are need blind this is what they mean. Of course they can make a reasonable guess as to who is likely to need aid and who is not. But that has nothing to do with the meaning of need blind, so the fact that this information is on the application has nothing to do with whether a college admits need blind.</p>
<p>To be a bit more explicit: Top colleges know their admissions priorities and their applicant pools. These do not vary that much from year to year. Before looking at a single application Harvard can make a very good guess as to what the financial status of an admitted class will be overall based on the likely incomes of people who have the credentials it is looking for and who will apply to Harvard. They can make a budget based on these projections. They can then admit their class ignoring need, open the envelope and find out how close they came to their estimates. If they are over their budget, they spend more on aid. They do not go back and adjust the admissions decisions to meet the original budget. </p>
<p>That is what need blind means. If you don't like the term you can propose another one. But many would ask why bother? Everyone who cares knows what it means.</p>