Need blind

Parents Forum
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<p>Yes, but sometimes (often) this can be determined from the application information...not the finaid application information.</p>

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<p>I think this post explains best what "need-blind" means:</p>

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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.

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<p>that's the way I've always understood it. I think one can undermine people's perception of it by going for the literal meaning and then complaining that some "need-blind" schools give a tip to students from low SES, but I guess my question, Mini, is--what would you want to? Isn't that a good thing? And no, it's not the meaning of the two words, literally, but by all accounts, it's the accepted meaning of the term.</p>

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<p>If schools were truly needs blind, their finaid expenditures would swing wildly from year to year. The fact that these expenditures are fairly stable indicates there is a target amount and for a school to stay within that target amount/range, it can't admit any number of students regardless of need. At some point, the school has to say, "that's all, folks." Or, I guess the school could continue to ADMIT students, regardless of need, but not fund them.</p>

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If schools were truly needs blind, their finaid expenditures would swing wildly from year to year.

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<p>Actually they would not. See my post above. </p>

<p>For the same reason that the SAT scores of the applicant pool, or the GPA's do not swing wildly year to year. The people who have the academic and extracurricular qualifications for Harvard do not change that much from year to year, and the criteria applied heavily favor well to do students. Knowing this, one can budget for financial aid without needing to set a cap on the awards. Places with much less money than Harvard can budget as well, but have to be careful about going over because they cannot afford to make up the difference. That is why they are not need blind.</p>

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<p>I agree with Afan. As I stated earlier, often leeway has to be given to kids who need a lot of financial aid in order for them to be competitive for entry. The situation is not such that there are all of these kids with high test scores and great academic stats who are eligible for financial aid and are not getting accepted at the highly selective schools. Many kids who need full financial aid packages are viable candidates at schools that will give such awards and will not qualify for merit money either. The schools can pick and choose who they want to make exceptions for and stay on budget.</p>

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<p>And this is why some people object to merit awards. Plenty of the kids admitted to Harvard could get merit awards elsewhere, even if they are among the majority who could pay full freight. So when a college that is not need blind uses some of its limited aid funds to pay a student to attend it has to deny admission, or aid, to a truly needy qualified student to do it. Even worse, some colleges carefully offer smaller merit packages to students who can afford full pay in order to get them to come. The top colleges are not in this game, but many places are. So the aid budget is used to enroll an almost full pay student who does not depend on the money to be able to go to the college. And the needy students, even if better academic candidates, are left out. </p>

<p>Harvard, specifically, can attract a huge number of highly qualified candidate, and enroll those it admits. They have been trying hard to get more applications from lower income students who have a realistic chance of getting in. Not clear whether the average income of their applicants has shifted down. The proportion of students on some sort of aid has crept up, but given how expensive it is, and the increases in support to higher income families lately, it is not clear whether they actually are enrolling a higher percentage of lower income students.</p>

<p>For the most part, after 18 years of growing up poor and perhaps with poorly educated parents, most people are way behind that upper middle class kid with two parents with advanced degrees. That they can pay for the college education is hardly the only difference the background makes.</p>