In their criteria for acceptance, financial need isn’t part of the table, but extrapolating from the fact that geographical location as well as state, but not ethnicity and religion are considered, it is possible but unlikely that umich factors need into its acceptance. However, first generation is considered, and generally families that are not financially well-off aren’t ones with bachelor’s degrees.
But, if we think from an economic sense, there is no monetary incentive to having students who can not afford to pay as much as other students.
Michigan may indeed be “need-blind” for admissons but the admissons officers certainly know that families of high-stat impressive applicants from feeder public high schools in affluent towns out-of-state (OOS) and feeder tony private schools from OOS can pay full out-of-state tuition —the school knows they need to admit and yield a certain number of these full pay OOS students for revenue purposes and to offset the cuts in state aid. The adcoms are aware of all this and I am sure more of these full pay applicants are admitted than the applicants who the adcoms know (from demographic and family info) will need a lot of financial aid. After all, college is a big business. And a preeminent school like Michigan needs to maximize revenue from tuition dollars in order to maintain its position amongst its peer elite public and private colleges.
It seems someone have a different understanding of need blind. If UMich wants more full pay students, they have a large applicant pool to choose from. There is no need to increase the financial aid to OOS students. Their goal is certainly not to “maximize tuition revenue”.
UMich has the second, not third, largest endowment among public universities. It also meets the needs of the largest number of OOS students among all public universities now.
@trackmbe3 If Michigan was truly interested in “full pay” OOS students, it could adopt a policy like the University of California and expressly bar OOS students from receiving financial aid. Instead, it is doing the opposite, and the university is committed to meeting the full need of low-income OOS students. Moreover, at schools I have worked with, the percentage of students needing aid who are admitted has been higher than for those that said they didn’t need financial aid. For this reason, and also given the statements of the University given the priority it is attaching to OOS financial aid, I sincerely doubt that its admissions officers pay much, if any, attention to financial need.
Was deferred RD to LSA. Wondering if it is a waste of time to travel for campus visit in Feb.? Or wait to see if accepted and then do admitted students day. Is there a real difference in the visits other than what’s posted on site? Don’t have a ton of time in April to visit some of the campuses applied to and trying to be as practical as possible. Any “veteran or veteran parent” advice would be appreciated!
So, @trackmbe3 the crux of your argument seems to be they say they’re need blind but they’re not need blind. Again, large endowment (I believe top 10 in the country) and they’ve said they’re need blind and you have nothing but conjecture and perceived anecdotal evidence to back up the conjecture. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but in the absence of hard evidence to the contrary that’s not anecdotal, it’s hard to see why they’d lie about this, especially considering the potential political fallout if they did so.
@BigDaddy72@billcsho As a Michigan OOS alum with anecdotal evidence going back 30 plus years, my point is that Michigan admissions can be “need blind” but year after year they have a treasure trove of high stat full pay applicants (including legacies) to choose from a fairly large number of feeder public schools in affluent zip code areas of CA., downstate NY, NJ, CT, Fl., Illinois, OH., Wisconsin, Mass., Texas, and tony private schools, who it relies on year after year to fill up its class. It has regional admissions representatives who cover these states (a few states even have more than one regional representative --each covering different parts of the state). Why do you think? Because college is a big business–Michigan wants and needs to attract the full pay OOS applicants they rely upon. They may have the second largest endowment of any public university but receiving more than 3 times the in-state tuition from OOS enrolled students DOES matter. There is a reason why this public University flagship has the wealthiest OOS student body in the country. They can say “need blind” all they want but IMO when they decide who to admit they accept proportionately significantly more applicants from these areas than applicants who are from less wealthy zip codes/schools who presumably would need lots of financial aid to attend.
Your speculation is just not logical. They have been outreaching to more low income students to apply. What is the point of doing that if they want to admit more full pay students. UMich already has one of the largest proportion of OOS students in public universities. There is NO need to favor OOS full pay students in admission as there are plenty already when compare to other public universities. If it is a business, there is no reason to offer more and more financial aids such as free tuition and need met financial aids.
There is no such thing as “need blind” at any school. No matter what they say. They do not have to know what your family income is or whether you applied for FA or not. All they need is your zip code to make an assumption. It’s probably not always a correct assumption, but it almost always is.
@brantly so, under your definition, need blind doesn’t mean not taking your need into account, it means truly being in the dark about your need? Seems to me, for the reasons you describe, someone from certain Chicago suburban high schools is going to be assumed to be more affluent than one attending an inner city public high school. And that’s true, and probably apparent to the reviewers. That said, to me need blind means that you’re not evaluating these two hypothetical students by different standards for admission, or at least the standards don’t change based upon the financial situation of the two students. That’s what need blind means to me. It’s not taking it into account, not necessarily being completely in the dark about the need of a particular student and not considering it in the admission process.
@BigDaddy72 Correct. “Need blind” means that Adcoms do not take into account whether or not a student has applied for financial aid. Certainly Adcoms are aware that some Zip Codes are more affluent, however that doesn’t mean they are influenced by this (and even in communities like Monterey, California they are large disparities in income). Indeed, from past posts (and even some from this year), you’ll see that students from affluent schools are faring no better than other students. And having applied for FA appears to make no difference. Indeed, in recent years, I’ve had more students who were FA candidates accepted than “full pay” ones.
@brantly I’d say that Zip Codes are a very unreliable way of predicting financial status. Just take Shaker Heights, Ohio. It is one of the wealthiest communities in America, but also includes some very deprived areas. Similar situations can be found in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Alexandria, Virginia; Monterey, California; and the suburbs of Chicago and Detroit.
Zip codes are fairly reliable. They are used as income proxies constantly, because they are reasonably effective. Moreover, even in the unusual cases of a zip code (or high school) with a substantial wealthy component along with a much less wealthy component, the high academic achieving kids are much more likely to be full pay.
I have no idea how it enters into the adcom decision process, but I agree with the statement that it is impossible for humans not to be need-aware in a statistical sense.
How would zip code be reliable? We have a low income housing a few blocks away from expensive houses. Family incomes range over 50-fold. However, the adcom do target certain areas or school districts with mostly low income families by other means. People are overthinking on how the adcom extract information from the application. They hardly have enough time to read through the applications.
“There is no such thing as “need blind” at any school.”
Most state schools (thus most schools) are need-blind since admission and aid are by formula. Other schools (like NYU) are need blind since they don’t meet need anyway (“show up if you can afford it”). Many schools that are need aware are need blind until the aid budget is exhausted. Schools with huge endowments can be need blind since they value top students more than their finances.
What we traditionally mean by “need blind” is that need is not considered in the admission decision. There are indeed hints available to suggest financial aid is needed; the best is a checked “applying for financial aid” box.