Right, that is my understanding too, that schools that are need-blind during the admission season are not need-blind for admitting off the waitlist.
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Donât want to bring the thread back to legacy admission. But I still think legacy will go away in the near future to balance the SC decision. then colleges will silently remove need-blind wording to compensate for lost donations. No financial aid becomes the new legacy.
My guess would be that the pool of applicants not asking for financial aid may be too large for that to be the case. I imagine that the pool of legacy apps is significantly smaller than the pool of full pay apps. Many top-50 (or whatever) have no shortage of full pay students. (*caveat, I have no data to back this up whatsoever; this just a hunch)
Not all but many need blind schools are need aware for the WL.
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Iâve commented elsewhere on the irony that need-blind, forever a wonderful thing that schools would understandably trumpet, actually makes it more difficult for schools to focus on SES in the wake of the SCOTUS decision. Yes, of course there are all sorts of tells in an application, and, need blind doesnât mean need ignorant. But it still would make life easier for schools if they could just request e.g. two years of tax returns and a schedule of assets/liabilities.
On a semi-related note, one of the schools my kids are looking at for this application cycle is one which goes from need blind to need aware for WL.
Iâd add that it is immaterial if schools are need blind if they donât meet full need, or if they are very conservative when determining how much a family can pay. An acceptance without the necessary aid is another form of rejection.
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Well typically these statements are made and go hand in hand. At least IME.
But as for âunderfundingâ aid, thatâs certainly a thing anecdotally, though at least there are EFC calculators. Iâve not heard of too many cases where the calculator says youâd have to come up with $X where the school comes back later and says âoops no itâs 1.3 x $X.â Which is of course different than the school saying âyou can afford $Xâ when the family thinks they can only afford .5 x $X.
What do you think of using AI for admission essays? Iâm not talking about blinding asking chatGPT to write a 650-word personal statement, but using Grammarly AI, and chatGPT as an editing tool.
During the senior night with counselors, they mentioned donât use chatGPT to write essays but use it as a tool for brainstorm or for skeleton.
At what point, does it become a problem?
I wouldnât. You want the essays to be as authentically you as possible. If your student is having a difficult time brainstorming or creating a skeleton, they are better off asking someone who knows them well, such as a family member or teacher.
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I would not suggest using AI: Some universities specifically say not to use. See below for Brown University says:
https://admission.brown.edu/apply/how-apply/integrity-application-process
Artificial Intelligence in the Application Process
As per the Common Appâs policy linked above, their definition of application fraud includes: âsubmitting plagiarized essays or other written or oral material, or intentionally misrepresenting as oneâs own original work: (1) another personâs thoughts, language, ideas, expressions, or experiences or (2) the substantive content or output of an artificial intelligence platform, technology, or algorithm.â
Brown affirms this definition and reiterates our own independent policy that the use of artificial intelligence by an applicant is not permitted under any circumstances in conjunction with application content. All essays, short-answer questions and any other material submitted by an applicant must be the work of that individual, unassisted by artificial intelligence."
Genuinely curious what the benefit is to state universities to attract in-state students when they can charge OOS students more for tuition? Many of S24âs schools are now doing auto-admit for in state kids with top grades, scores, etc. to attract more in-state students. And those kids would then be eligible for higher merit based on GPA/Test scores. Curious why they want to draw in more in-state?
Many publics have it in their mission to educate the students of their state. It also helps avoid brain drain and keeps talent in state.
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And of course their state funding is at least implicitly tied to their fulfilling this mission.
So at a high level, most state universities are internally balancing the extra net tuition from OOS students against making sure they are using that benefit for as many in-state students as practically possible.
But to the extent we are starting to see more public universities aggressively marketing to in-state students, I think it is because of this:
People donât talk about this much around here, but the total size of the the four-year college population in the United States has been declining since circa 2010, and it is logically affecting public university enrollment in many states.
However, some state systems are doing better than others. Sometimes that is because the state has better demographic trends, or is seen as more desirable for young adults willing to migrate (which is really two sides of the same coin). But sometimes that also involves a state system competing aggressively for OOS students with things like transparent merit programs, or just relatively low OOS tuitions.
And of course there are some ânationalâ privates also doing fine in terms of maintaining or even increasing enrollment. And to the extent any of these publics or privates are doing better, that means other universities have to be doing worse.
So in this competitive landscape, things could get pretty dire pretty quick for an in-state system which is not competing effectively for its own stateâs students against various private and OOS options. And so I think we are going to see more and more public universities ramping up their defensive marketing to in-state students.
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1st acceptance letter is in for D24.
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I am cheering for her, and I canât wait to do it for mine! 
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Congratulations!
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Friend of mineâs daughter has a 1480 SAT. Northeastern 50%tile is 1500. Would you submit? I think yes but what do others think.
I say submit.
Maybe Iâm out of touch with T30 applications, but I would doubt the quality of a school that, all things being very close between three students (with SATs of 1480, 1500, 1520), automatically eliminated the one who scored a 1480.
A 1480 says the student is qualified. With that score, the admission decision will be based on other factors.
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I fully agree with your comment in general, but have a different view specifically for Northeastern.
Theyâre a school that has been going to great lengths to craft an image of eliteness and selectivity (with hopes of becoming a T30), and published SAT scores are one of the things theyâre sensitive about. In fact, this past admissions cycle a parent reported here that at an info session, an NEU rep suggested submitting scores only if they were above the 75th percentile (which, of course, sounds silly because that would cause the published score range to keep increasing each year, but thatâs exactly what they want).
So my advice would be to skip scores at NEU.
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Yes I got the same impression. They went out of their way to say there is no need to submit if you are not above 75%. It was the only school that said that, repeatedly at every session.
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