<p>All of the schools you named are need blind in the admissions process. Each school uses the FAFSA and either the CSS Profile or their own FA form in determining how much need based FA a family is to receive.</p>
<p>The Ivies do not give merit money only need based FA.</p>
<p>So none of these school will favor an applicant who will not need financial aid over the one who need it.</p>
<p>Not necessary truy. See previous posts.</p>
<p>MomOfour: I can't get help getting a little suspicious when a school requires your financial info in order for your child to qualify for merit aid that is not need based. The only conclusion I can draw is that they can now determine who might afford to send their child even if they do not get merit aid. </p>
<p>Ultimately it is about yield. If a college is offering your child a spot, they want them to attend. They want you to agree to pay the tab. If they have a certain amount of merit aid available that is non-need based, I would expect them to help out the family with lower EC, not the highest. If all things are equal, I would give the merit aid to the family that just missed the cut off for financial aid--hoping that the merit aid will make the difference in getting them to attend. I would also conclude that finances (even without merit aid) might not stop the child from the "wealthier" family from attending. (Thus 2 yields by using merit aid smartly.)</p>
<p>Does anyone agree with this logic? Am I being too suspicious?</p>
<p>You are absolutely right. Money is used to influence people's decision.</p>
<p>Here's what I think. They want you to file a FAFSA to see if you might possibly be eligible to get free money for college from the government - a $1000 Pell grant or something like that. Then, if they want to give you a full ride merit scholarship, say, they know that they can save $1000 of their own money by tapping into govt money, yet still give you a "full ride." My husband said "can't we just write them a note saying we KNOW we are not eligible for financial aid?" but I guess it just doesn't work that way.</p>
<p>I never thought of the idea that they might be more likely to give merit aid to people who just miss the cut off for financial aid... Hmmm... That should help yield, shouldn't it?</p>
<p>We checked off NO for FA since we didn't feel we would get anything. We didn't when our first child applied. However, some of the schools (i.e. Harvard, Yale) came out with new policies during the admissions process and after the applications were already sent. We have a second kid in college right now and rethought the situation and decided to send in the info because we would have two kids in college simultaneously. There are savings for both kids but our income did go down for 2007. I am questioning whether we did the right thing. I don't want to hurt my son's chances for admission anywhere. What do you think?</p>
<p>Here is another advantage to having some rolling admissions or earlier admissions schools -- D got all her merit awards long before FAFSA was available or due.
If she had been applying to Harvard or Yale, I would have definitely applied in order to take advantage of their new policies. Admissions is such a long shot anyway -- I don't think I would have tried to use the "no FA needed" card to give me a potential edge. Maybe I'm naive.</p>
<p>We didn't apply. We didn't qualify for anything and felt he might get an admissions advantage by not needing FA. This did not prevent my son from getting merit $$. Both of his safer schools offered large awards and any school that could give merit $$ did. As far as I can tell, they all gave the maximum they could.</p>
<p>Harvard and Yale are true need blind. It wouldn't hurt your kid's chance. It's the small LAC where it's need aware that FA may come into play.</p>