Need blind college. Worth getting excited about admissions chances?
Nope. Usually the admissions office is working parallel to the financial aid office. The FA office wants to have everything ready for students so that when the admissions office says yes, the package is ready.
Did you mean need aware? Almost all schools are need blind.
That seems counterintuitive, twoinanddone. Wouldnât that be a huge amount work for the financial aid office, especially at more selective schools, to be working up financial aid packages for students that arenât going to get an offer of admission? This doesnât make sense to me, or have I misunderstood something.
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No thatâs correct. The FA office works up packages for students who apply. My daughters got their merit award letters very quickly after acceptance.
Maybe if you post in the forum for the school others will have better info for that particular college.
It should be irrelevant to applicants if a school is need aware or need blind. It doesnât affect how much you like a school, it affects only the chances of admission, and then only for a few applicants on the cusp. What is crucial for some is that a school meets full need. E.g., there are schools that are need blind but donât meet full need (a bitter disappointment for those accepted but canât afford it) and schools that are need aware (can benefit a few who donât need aid) but meet full need (imagine being needy and being accepted). There are a handful that are need blind and meet full need. Note that the story is different for internationals.
It would be better to check the net price calculator rather than rely on a âmeets full needâ promise. Different colleges defined âneedâ differently, and may also have different expected student contributions. See http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1675058-meet-full-need-schools-can-vary-significantly-in-their-net-prices-p1.html for some examples (though they are a bit older).
That is probably most colleges.
here are schools that are need blind but donât meet full need (a bitter disappointment for those accepted but canât afford it)"
Well the alternative is that the schools rejects all students whose needs they canât meet. Most Students applying for aid who they wonât meet full need for are rejected when their credentials are as good or better than those who are full pay. Schools do this so they can better predict yield,
It would be incredibly stupid for the elite schools to work up FA packages for all applicants when only 6%-10% will ever need them. D was a recruited athlete and learned that coaches are only allotted so many FA pre-reads by the FA office for their prospective recruits, so D had to assure them she was seriously considering their school and/or had to have already taken an official visit in order to obtain a pre-read. Why? Too much unnecessary work for the FA office! (And one Ivy got angry when she rejected them soon after receiving the FA offer, and the coach actually commented he had wasted a pre-read on her.) So while admissions may look at FAFSA and CSS data for more than the applicants who are ultimately accepted so as to balance their FA budget, that is not the same as actually asking for more information or creating the official package for everyone who applies.
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Exactly; it defies logic and common sense. I have no doubt that asking for more information this late in the game is better than the alternative. It means to me, that the app is still âaliveâ. By now, admissions has completely ruled out all of the auto-rejects and most of at the maybesâ. A college would be foolish not to have submitted that info to FinAid so they can continue to focus on the apps that are still in the running.
When S1 was applying, the one school that asked for additional financial information waitlisted him. For D1, she was asked for additional financial information from a school she has been accepted to. I believe it could go either way. I wouldnât read too much into it, youâll know soon :o)
Right, and that reinforces my point: still a candidate, and not (yet) in the reject pile.
At many schools, the Admissions office and the Financial Aid offices operate completely separately, by design. The Financial Aid office processes aid packages for ALL applicants and doesnât know which applicants will be admitted.
I worked at a university in IT and supported offices like Admissions and Financial Aid. Yes, itâs a lot of work to process financial aid packages for all applicants, but depending on the institutionâs policy, that does happen.
My D was asked for additional documents from schools where she was rejected. I wouldnât read too much into it. It could mean something, it could also mean nothing.
The exact nature of the request is important I would think. If itâs something like âwhy is form X missingâ or âwhy is nothing filled in for section Yâ, then it might not mean as much as a question that would only come up if someone had been going through the application with a fine-toothed comb.
My D16 has received several specific requests, outside of the usual required documents. One is from a single digit admit school where she has virtually no chance of acceptance. Two are from more match type schools. One of the match schools has asked us for numerous additional docs, and Iâm hoping that if she gets in, they might give her some (non loan) aid. But Iâm assuming that IF this means anything, it just means she wasnât in the automatic reject pile. Interestingly, one (match) school that she hasnât been accepted to yet has a financial aid offer for her on her portal.
Two years ago my D was asked for financial information from the only school that rejected her. As someone said previously, often the Admissions and Financial Aid offices operate separately. I donât think they are preparing financial aid packages for every applicant, but are making sure they have the required information from all applicants so they can put together packages in a timely manner for those applicants eventually admitted.
No, donât get excited thinking the request is actually a tip to an admission. The school is going through its process.
For schools that meet full need of all applicants, the financial aid office generally works independently of admissions office and they need to be ready with financial aid packages at or very soon after admissions decisions are announced. Part of that process is to assure that financial aid apps are complete.
It would not be surprising if many of the FA applications with common simple situations* were automatically done by computer, with only the more unusual ones being flagged to be looked at by hand. If the school can make an accurate net price calculator for common simple situations, it would not be surprising if the same computer program were used to make actual FA offers for those same common simple situations.
*Married parents or widowed single parent, mainly W-2 income with perhaps small amounts of interest/dividend income. Or school is FAFSA-only and piggybacks on the FAFSA EFC, though these usually do not give good financial aid.
Thatâs probably true. There is probably some sort of algorithm built into the CSS Profile that flags certain types of information needing to be reviewed by human eyes.
We received a request for more financial information from Dartmouth a couple of weeks before decisions came out. He was accepted. He was also accepted, rejected, and waitlisted at other schools that did not request more information.
I think that it is probably a sign that the app is still active, at least, but it depends how far out from acceptance day the request comes, and what the nature of the information requested is. As someone said upthread, if it comes fairly early on, and is simply a request for a missing form, I wouldnât get excited. 