<p>
[quote]
The admissions office also stopped practicing a need-blind admissions policy toward the tail end of the process, a decision that affected five percent of applicants, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Lee Coffin said.</p>
<p>Admissions officers were able to first read every application in a need-blind manner, during which they did not consider an applicant's ability to pay. But with more families requesting larger amounts of aid due to the recession, officers suspended need-blind practices for the final 850 applications -- of 15,038 total -- when potential financial aid ran out.
<p>
[quote]
The target class size for May 1 is 485. The College then plans to add 10 more students who do not require financial aid and who may be either transfers or first years.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>There's no indication either seriously considered cuts to non-core, such as football, before deciding they could no longer afford need-blind admissions</p>
<p>It seems kind of disingenuous to end need-blind admissions in the middle of a cycle to me. On the other hand, I suppose it’s better than eating up their endowments and destroying their futures…</p>
<p>that’s still ridiculous. I don’t care how tight the money is you don’t just stop giving out aid. I feel terrible for those last applicants who were turned down because of thier financial status.</p>
<p>Wow, well, that’s really disappointing. Tufts is my first choice for when I begin applying to college next year, and I would definitely benefit from need-blind admissions. The article was somewhat ambiguous; is there any hope for a continued need-blind policy for the class of 2014?</p>
<p>Tufts never was officially need-blind in the first place. During the last few years, they had used a need blind policy (without shouting it from the PR rooftops). I like what they did here compared to, for example, CMU’s policy of letting people in then gapping them.</p>
<p>What do you want them to do? If they start spending their endowments, there will be even less money for aid next year.</p>
<p>I think they did the best they could, and I commend them for being honest. Many endowments have been decimated. As to not eliminating footbal, I would suggest the school regards football as a fundraiser, PR, etc.</p>
<p>Of course they shouldn’t spend their endowment, but they should just be upfront and do the math beforehand. If they know they have x amount available for aid and they evaluate say the first 100 to find percentage needing aid, they can determine the total aid required.</p>
<p>Based on that, they could decided to be need-blind or not. The point is they shouldn’t be partially need-blind. That’s unfair to the applicants who are judged differently than others.</p>
<p>Either you’re truly need-blind (which means you’d never resort to need-aware admissions) or you’re not. Either is okay, but don’t pretend to be something you’re not. Unfortunately, Tufts has a problem with and history of pretending to be more prestigious than it is.</p>
<p>But Tufts never “pretended” to be need-blind. In fact, they were need-blind for the past few years out of genuine idealism (not for good PR since they didn’t a big fanfare out of it).</p>
<p>They probably underestimated early in the admissions cycle to what extent the economy would increase the need for aid, and didn’t want to go back and reverse old decisions.</p>
<p>I’m guessing that Bowdoin will continue claiming to be need blind despite attempting to enroll “x” number of students who specifically don’t need aid. This one has “newspeak” written all over it.</p>
<p>this title is verrrry misleading. Tufts did not “suspend” need-blindness permanently, they only did it with the last 5% of applicants. Next year theyre going back to being as need-blind as possible. Hell, if they werent, I would have never gotten in.</p>
<p>Many more to follow. It’s simply financial reality. Others are talking about rolling back no loan policies and different ways of addressing their financial woes.</p>
<p>Yep. I figure there will be flood of major cost cutting announcements in May, just as soon as this year’s freshman class has signed on the dotted line. I don’t think it’s possible to emphasize strongly enough how important it is to look at college’s finances in making the decisions this month. Those budget cuts are going to significantly impact this year’s applicants over the full four years of their college experiences.</p>
<p>I think people should realize that pretty much every financial commitment that is ever made should be understood as a probability statement. If I show the bank that I have $500,000 in assets and I’ve been earning $200,000 a year for five years, they might give me a mortgage of $400,000 which I “promise” to repay. But what if my money was invested in bank stocks and I was employed in derivatives at AIG? So much for my promise.</p>
<p>Likewise Bowdoin and Tufts are acting within ethics by making promises which are based on reasonable expectations. But some unreasonable things happened.</p>
<p>If you are upset about Bowdoin and Tufts then you are in for a really big shock when you try to collect your SS or other defined benefit pension. (If you’re interested in details go to pensiontsunamidotcom.)</p>
<p>Kameronsmith: It’s not quite that simple. The article says that families were requesting more aid than was expected, and admissions is never as simple as that. The first 100 families they evaluated, maybe only 60% of them needed aid – then they look at the larger pool and realize that really 70% of them need aid.</p>
<p>And I don’t see how a school can “pretend” to be prestigious than it is. All schools tout how great they are, from OK state to Harvard. It is outsiders who put reputational designations on them.</p>
<p>This only affected 5% of students – in other worse, 95% of the students were given need-blind admissions. I’d say that’s a mostly need-blind policy and that they are not disingenuous in claiming that label. Everyone is feeling the pain from this recession. Bird rock is absolutely right – although schools can attempt to make predicitions, no one can tell the future, and no one could predict this. The richer schools can afford to stay need-blind in hard times, others can’t.</p>
<p>Tufts could never have actually had need blind admissions in the first place. Only 35% of the student body getting need based grants from the University?
My rule of thumb is that at schools with fewer than 40% receiving need based grants, the student body is not only wealthy, the administration is aiming to keep it that way.</p>