Statistics re: Financial Aid and the Waitlist

Colleges & Universities A-Z Washington University in St. Louis
1

<p>People on several threads have speculated about a possible correlation between applying for aid and being put on the waitlist. I make no claims that the following data is representative of all WUSTL applicants (or even the WUSTL applicants on CC), and it can probably be interpreted in many ways. Through the first 8 pages of the RD thread (through binarybandit's post):</p>

<p>60 people reported being accepted.
15% did not say whether they applied for financial aid.
40% said they DID apply for financial aid.
45% said they did NOT apply for financial aid.</p>

<p>39 people reported being waitlisted.
20.5% did not say whether they applied for financial aid.
74.4% said they DID apply for financial aid.
5.1% said they did NOT apply for financial aid.</p>

<p>6 people reported being rejected.
50% did not say whether they applied for financial aid.
50% said they DID apply for financial aid.
0% said they did NOT apply for financial aid.</p>

2

<p>Woah, way to go and accumulate that! I’d be really curious what this same information is like for other colleges when they post decisions.</p>

<p>I’m just re-copying the following text from a post I made on the poorly-titled “elephant in the room thread”… if I had seen this thread first, I would have posted here, because I guess this is probably the more relevant thread for this kind of discussion. Oh well, too late now. I hope other people have other analysis, because this is really interesting discussion. </p>

<p>–
I don’t remember the exact stat about Wash U, but definitely over half of students here receive financial aid (I want to say at the chancellor’s convocation during orientation we were told 2/3, but don’t quote me on that). </p>

<p>Here’s my guess on what goes on with Wash U and the financial aid. Compared to the wealth distribution of the US population as a whole, there are proportionally more people applying out of the “wealthy” group than the “non-wealthy” group. Still, I think it’s more than fair to say that in pure absolute numerical terms most of the people applying do require financial aid, simply because there are far more non-wealthy people than wealthy people in this country by a long shot. </p>

<p>I don’t know how exactly Wash U takes into account financial need, but as with any larger represented group, you’re going to see proportionally more non-acceptances than acceptances than that same proportion of decisions from a smaller represented group. For example: if you only had 20 musicians applying, maybe 10 will be accepted because the school needs 10 musicians. But, when you have 5,000 musicians applying, the school still only needs 10 musicians. My assumption is that the financial aid process works the same… I doubt that your own individual income and financial aid requirements is considered, but instead they know that they can budget for a certain numerical amount of people that need money without busting the bank. finally, although Wash U has tons of people here from the east coast, we undoubtedly have more people applying from the midwest and south than do similar schools located on the east coast, and these regions have lower income levels and home prices for equity. Yet, our tuition is the same as private schools on the coasts. So, I think that Wash U’s applicant pool has even more people that need financial aid than other similar schools on the east coast, so it’s going to appear on the surface that it’s tougher to get accepted if you need money, because there are far more people from that pool to choose from. </p>

<p>And, at the end of the day, there are still more people coming here who need money than don’t need money. Not sure if this is the right answer or even if my line of thought is correct, but I think it’s a good way to think about what goes on based on the comments on this thread and the sample of data from decisions so far? If not, I might reconsider my Econ major :)</p>

3

<p>This whole “elephant” thread is ridiculous.</p>

<p>Let’s look at some stats from some schools that ARE technically need blind:</p>

<p>Duke: 40% receive fin.aid.
[Duke</a> Expands Financial Aid For Lower- And Middle-Income Families](<a href=“http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2007/12/financialaid.html]Duke”>http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2007/12/financialaid.html)</p>

<p>Johns Hopkins: 46%
[Johns</a> Hopkins University Office of Undergraduate Admissions - Financial Aid - Financing Your Education](<a href=“http://apply.jhu.edu/finaid/finaid.html]Johns”>http://apply.jhu.edu/finaid/finaid.html)</p>

<p>And my lazyness kicks in here.
Other comparable schools report anywhere between 40 and 80%.</p>

<p>So to say that WashU, just because it is not technically need blind (the claim is they’re need blind until the last 1% of admitted students), is admitting based on whether or not someone applied for fin. aid is ridiculous.</p>

<p>Especially considering we all know how skewed CC is compared the the rest of the population pool.</p>

4

<p>I would like to highlight that you’re attempting to draw conclusive results from a survey of </p>

<p>105/>28,000 people
0.375 percent. </p>

<p>That is absolutely absurd. College confidential is a very self selective handful, but even if an extremely diverse pool used it, it would still never even approach the percentage of applicants necessary to draw any sort of legitimate results. I am a WashU student getting a lot of money in grants, and I stand by my words, when I say that WashU is dedicated financial aid. It is unfair and honestly, ignorant to come to such ideas with such a small pool…basic statistics and research knowledge.</p>

5

<p>actually, from what I’ve learned from my marketing course, the minimum sample size is surprisingly small. For a group of over 10,000 people, we only surveyed about 300 with a 5% confidence interval. Well, just an FYI.</p>

6

<p>Yeah even though you need a small sample size, CC is still far too small. A randomly sampled pool from the ENTIRE applicant pool of say 800 people would be representative. Sampling based on the thread here is far too small and it is definitely NOT random</p>

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<p>Don’t forget that people who don’t apply for financial aid also tend to be fairly affluent, and therefore may have had access to opportunities that have helped them achieve high scores, good writing abilities, great counselors, stellar ECs, etc. There are other reasons for the “trend” you’ve noted besides Wash U taking financial need into consideration.</p>

8

<p>Like others have mentioned, the group of CC posters on here is too small and self-selecting for you to draw statistically significant conclusions.
While WUSTL is not technically need-blind, it is need-blind until its FA budget runs out. Once that happens they start taking financial need into account.</p>

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<p>I don’t think it can be compared like that. First of all, you would need to compare the results of those who applied for FA and those who did not, not those who got accepted/waitlisted/rejected. There may have just been more people on the thread who did not apply for FA. Secondly, People who don’t need financial aid have access to better schools, opportunities and tutors. They will have higher stats in general and probably be accepted in a higher proportion at any other school as well. Everyone who got in has their merits, everyone who didn’t has them as well and probably only the people who were borderline were decided based on whether or not they need FA (Supposedly WashU does somewhere between 75-99%, although I’ve heard ~90-95% most often, of their decisions need-blind). WashU does this because, unlike the Ivies, they don’t have virtually unlimited funds and they’d rather put some money toward improving their school and making sure that those who do need FA get all that they need to be comfortable at WashU.</p>

<p>I know WashU has funky waitlist practices and is not need-blind, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who got in only got in because they have money. Plenty of people get into Ivies because they have an insane amount of money too (i.e. pretty much anyone who donates a library would be accepted). Stop complaining, you’ll all go to great schools. WashU is obviously looking for something specific, and I see no problem with trying to accept people who they think would actually choose their school. As someone said on one of the other threads here, some people chose WashU over HYP. Obviously WashU did a good job figuring out who those people would be.</p>

10

<p>

Well you apparently didn’t pay that much attention, because you would know that for it to be relevant, it would have to be a RANDOM sample of the 10,000 (or whatever number you want to use).
CC is by no means a random sample of anything. It’s far too concentrated of certain types of students.</p>