<p>There’s never a bad time to be a smart rich kid. :-)</p>
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<p>“Colleges will reach the point where they’ve exhausted their financial aid,” Maguire said. “At that point, they are disproportionately going to go with students with little or no need.”<<</p>
<p>Interesting…I suppose that if you are a rich kid on the wait list, your chances are better this year of making it off.</p>
<p>I read this article in the Globe yesterday. In the following paragraph it would imply that colleges like the Ivys, M & S with large endowments would be able to be unaffected in their need-blind admissions.:</p>
<p>“Outside the wealthiest sliver of colleges, whose so called need-blind practices are not expected to change substantially, most institutions are struggling to balance the growing demand for financial aid with their budget constraints. In effect, they need more students who do not need financial aid to subsidize the rising need of those who do.”</p>
<p>While this paragraph potentially contradicts this premise and describes many of the problems that many of these wealthy schools are having.:</p>
<p>“That step gives colleges, which have been forced to lay off workers, slash budgets, and delay construction, some badly needed financial flexibility and allows them to protect or expand financial aid.”</p>
<p>So, I guess I wonder if of these elite schools will be able to be “blind” this year in their admissions process or not. Which of the above paragraphs apply in each of their cases?</p>
<p>I’m guessing that the need blind schools will follow their procedures, but natural selection (those who can’t afford will not enroll) will cause a larger proportion of the class to be smart rich kids.</p>
<p>I’m also guessing that the FA office may not be “need blind” in the way they award. i.e. partial awards to rich kids to entice them to attend (out bid the competition as stated in the article). Getting 75% from the kid helps to subsidize others.</p>
<p>Based on this article, I can’t wait to see the ED acceptance rates from some of the lower tier privates that don’t gap 100%…(i.e. the PA schools like Muhlenberg, Dickinson, Lehigh, etc…)…Can’t imagine a full-pay kid w/i the range of stats being rejected given the climate, unless there’s some glaring red flag…??</p>
<p>That’s the way it was when I was in college. The rich kids attended private schools and the rest of us went to state schools or commuted.</p>
<p>The way schools that are need blind and give close to or full need packages control a lot of costs is through the waitlist. Most schools do not have this need blind policy for those on the waitlist. And we have seen waitlists grow in the last several years to a ridiculous number. </p>
<p>I know a number of kids who cleared the waitlist of their top choice school but had to decline the offer when they discovered that they would not get a good financial aid package that they already had with the schools that admitted them RD. This was the case even with schools that generally met full need like Brown, UPenn, for example. Many schools are not need blind with respect to the waitlist when they are for RD candidates.</p>
<p>I am wondering how this might help our family. I filled out all the financial aid forms but FAFSA gave us an EFC of $99,999 for one child in college which my H interpreted as “we’re on our own.” We don’t think of ourselves as rich at all and I doubt my D’s applications made her sound very wealthy. We just managed to save money along the way. </p>
<p>I guess my question is at what point do the admissions people see your EFC? We checked off “will apply for financial aid” on the applications.</p>
<p>Different colleges look at the financial situations in different ways. Need blind schools do not take need into consideration, but if they do not tend to meet full need or even close to it, kids will be accepted but just not get the money. Need aware schools have different ways that they are able to come up with full pays. Some times the fin aid office and admissions work together in which case, your EFC is there for all to see. Other times a certain percentage of the class is accepted on a need blind basis, and everyone else is assessed as to how much aid they need.</p>
<p>**dsultemeier-- **that is an interesting question. I wonder how much more conversations and coordination are going to start happening between the admissions and financial aid offices?</p>
<p>As a previous poster indicated, the financial barrier to privates were known and tolerated in the 1960s and before. It will be interesting to see how this plays out now.</p>
<p>I’d think it over, but contacting the school to say you will be able to pay is tempting.</p>
<p>dsultemeier: I would consult others on this matter, but if it was our child, I would contact the schools he/she applied to asap and let them know you are no longer applying for FA (unless they are need blind schools)…</p>
<p>Hmm and I thought capitalism was supposed to work? Apparently it only works for the very wealthy, affluent, individuals now…</p>
<p>Good point CPTofthehouse.
My D was on a waitlist list last year. We declined the college counselor offer to call the school on her behalf.
We learned from other parents, that their kids who got off various waitlists did not get any financial aid.
I can’t help thinking that now, the top colleges are going to be even more homogeneous.
The independent schools are going to boast even more kids attending top colleges. JMO</p>
<p>This is very interesting. We’re another family that appears to be full pay on paper. I always thought that’s what we’d pay: the sticker price. Now, according to this article, schools might “give us a discount” in order to “make the sale.” </p>
<p>Whacky logic. Discounting us a little helps the needier kids. I guess we can’t argue with that. Just seems weird.</p>
<p>There has never been a better time to be a rich kid of any intelligence level. By rich I mean so wealthy that losing half the family fortune in “paper losses” doesn’t even put the butler or gardener in danger of layoff.</p>
<p>For the moderately affluent, doomed to work for a living, US society is becoming increasingly harsh, mean and unliveable. </p>
<p>I can remember a time when employers valued every employee because they could not hire enough people to utilize all the capital they had available. If they could hire more staff, they built more plants. Modern management does not know how to create wealth. They can only scam and game the system to steal bonuses.</p>
<p>dsultemeier, I’ve wondered the same thing. We applied for FA even though the FAFSA put us within a couple of hundred of full pay, because we had high med expenses. (In fact, PROFILE wound up giving us a better number than FAFSA, so it was a good thing we did apply for FA.) I’m curious at what point admissions and FA get together and look at how much FA (if any) a student will receive – and what about schools who want to see FAFSA/PROFILE even for non-need merit?</p>
<p>S1’s top choices were need-blind, but we didn’t really pay much attention to that at the time since we didn’t expect to get much aid. Now that S2 is going to be a senior in the fall, the question is a little more pressing.</p>
<p>my family is a ‘full pay’ family, parents do not even bother with the FAFSA. As I related in another thread a few weeks ago, my brother, with very average Stats for the colleges that he applied to, applied to 6 private liberal arts colleges(all in the top 40 but not top 10) has been accepted to 3 already(two were Early Action and one lets RD know on Feb.1). I suspect he will be accepted by the other 3 as well. One offered him a $5,000 “Presidential Scholarship” which my parents rightly interpreted as a ‘bribe’.</p>
<p>My opinion is not to check off financial aid unless you know you will get aid. It does make a difference. Even if you are eligible to get a few thousand $, the question is always the money or acceptance is more important. </p>
<p>Based on our GC’s advice, I contacted my D1’s waitlisted schools a few years back to let them know that we would be happy to pay full fare if she were accepted. We received favorable decisions from both schools in a few days. A good friend of my daughter over heard some adcom at her college talk about who they admitted off their waitlist (she was one of them), and they said they picked kids that didn’t need aid. It’s no surprise because many of LACs run out of aid after RD.</p>
<p>I have heard the same circumstances that oldfort reports. Waitlists (have been) and are going to be furtile areas for gaining admission by being able to pay the COA. </p>
<p>My question is: who does it make sense to take-- a full pay student or a need student with otherwise equivalent waitlist profiles? This will be particularly true where the school still cherry picks the brightest need kids for aid in the ED and EA process. Seems the most gifted need kids are putting pressure on the school to choose full pays off the waitlists.</p>
<p>"Hmm and I thought capitalism was supposed to work? Apparently it only works for the very wealthy, affluent, individuals now… "</p>
<p>Capitalism rewards those who work hard and work smart. That has not changed.</p>