<p>^Do you think they do this at HYPSM+ type schools or mostly just schools like Tufts, NE, etc? This has me a little worried as a student who will file FAFSA soon.</p>
<p>I would think it applies to HYPSM and those with very low acceptance rates. Tufts, NE and the WASHU’s have caught on which is why the accepted/enrolled numbers have become so tight. It also shares another light on ED acceptances when financial aid is involved.</p>
<p>“In most of the institutions – I can’t say all – we work with, they know that but they don’t act on it,” Jack Maguire said in a Friday telephone interview.</p>
<p>You file a second FAFSA - you don’t have to fill it out again or anything - for the more-than-10 ones. Presumably those colleges only see the set you put on that one?</p>
<p>Probably mostly at schools that consider “level of applicant’s interest” in admissions, or those who have a reputation of meeting some (but not all) students’ financial need (and may choose to meet need only for those whose lists of schools on FAFSA indicate high interest but competition against peer schools).</p>
<p>Yep, son thought this would be the case back in 2000-2001. Same FAFSA policy since then, 10 schools, re-file after the first has been processed with another 10. Or how many ever UP to 10 per filing. So if you start early enough you could theoretically do 1 a filing and start over each time. The only thing that changes for the FAFSA is the schools chosen (new school code entered), takes like 1 minute to do. Then you need to wait until it has been processed and do it again. Done early enough the wait can be under 24 hours. So 10 schools in 10 days, if you don’t want the other schools to see.</p>
<p>Or maybe one selectivity lists certain schools, maybe MIT and CalTech. Next day H and Y and P…and yes son did do this, 34 schools in all, 33 acceptances, 1 wait-list…not in 2001 but more recently. Financial aid packages were ALL OVER the place. Son figured this out for older sis and bro, they were also creative but not to his extent. One of his “papers” in college was on yield management as an econ major. Interesting read but his healthcare policy thesis was really an eye-opener.</p>
<p>There are too many games played by some colleges, particularly when they hire manipulative “enrollment management” consultants and give them too much power. Fortunately, the colleges where my kids each decided to attend have very straight-forward policies.</p>
<p>In an admissions application, when a college asks for the names of other colleges where you are applying, I always understood it was desirable to: a) list colleges that are considered peers/regular competitors to the college where you are applying, and b) not to list too many colleges. The goal was to avoid a college from thinking they were your safety or a last minute extra application. Maybe that strategy isn’t correct.</p>
<p>With Fafsa, you don’t have the ability to leave some of your colleges off the list, unless you have already decided you don’t want to consider them.</p>
<p>Some kids may list Us alphabetically. We didn’t choose to fill it out because we just wanted merit awards and didn’t feel it was any Us business what our finances look like. There were Us who did want financial data but we declined to apply to those.</p>
<p>A handful of people who are aware of this? I am quite certain that there are more than a handful on THIS site, and perhaps on this precise thread. That was OLD NEWS on the old CC forum. What a joke!</p>
<p>NACAC remains an organization that, among small tidbits of valuable data, seemingly cannot cease to share pretty bad information. In a way, it is clearly a testament to its cadre that is mostly culled from … the ranks of high school GCs. The organization is particularly inept in understanding college admissions.</p>
<p>Since I grew up in a country that assumed Constitutional protections that we no longer have, thanks the the Patriot Act, the NSA, TSA, IRS, etc, I simply assume that all information gathered (by anyone) will be used against me, as the Miranda warning states. I never give anything anywhere that is not absolutely compelled by law (like the stupid IRS, for example). </p>
<p>I would never mention interest in other colleges at all. What possible relevance could that have to the FAFSA interest in the first place.</p>
<p>If there are still X number of colleges on your list as of January or February, and if you need federal, state and/or institutional aid to attend, or even if you only want federal loans, you need to fill out the fafsa and list all of these colleges. </p>
<p>If a college asks about other colleges on their admissions application, you could leave that question blank, but some colleges may think that means you don’t have a well though-out list of colleges.</p>
<p>seems this wouldn’t impact early decision applications as the FAFSA would not be done at that point. </p>
<p>so doing an alphabetical list seems helpful </p>
<p>katwkittens–if I understand correctly your s submitted one app at a time,thereby avoiding other colleges seeing his other choices. and he got great results too…</p>
<p>The problem with doing an alphabetical list is that all the colleges will get to see who else is on the list, which IMO is none of their business. I like kat’s idea of submitting the form individually or in small groups of 2-3 similar schools.</p>
<p>If this is true, it is only true for a very small number of very selective schools. I honestly cannot imagine caring how the schools were listed. I have far more important things to do than try to figure out whether the order a particular student listed schools on the FAFSA means anything. I do not look at the order of schools, and the other schools where I have worked don’t look, either.</p>
<p>My kids applied to Catholic high schools and the rumor out there was that the order you listed where to send the test scores (TACHS) could make a difference in whether you got into the schools. The top two schools in the area deny this. I would have scoffed, but one of mine was rejected by his third choice school and the letter explicitly said it was because the school was not listed first or second. </p>
<p>This sort of thing really makes for a lot of paranoia in the process and lack of trust.</p>
<p>Seems like another “level of applicant’s interest” game. Also, a game of “financial aid preferential packaging” or some merit scholarships.</p>
<p>Perhaps, for a college suspected of doing these things, list it first, but then list in the second slot a peer college with a reputation of good financial aid and scholarships (or a safety with an automatic full tuition or full ride scholarship) to play the “level of applicant’s interest” game but also make it look like the school needs to come up with a good financial aid or scholarship offer to keep the student interested.</p>
<p>Why the heck is that list being sent out with the FAFSA? It seems terribly unnecessary and invasive. Just send it to the schools listed, no need to send the LIST with it (that’s to FAFSA, not filers). </p>
<p>I got both admissions to undergrad before I even filed the FAFSA so I guess it was a moot point to me but sheesh! When I filed for grad school, I didn’t give a thought as to who was first, 2nd, so on. If I had applied to more undergrads, I definitely would not have given it a thought.</p>
<p>Obviously these schools have far more staff than any school I have worked for or any school my friends work for! I absolutely do not have the time to look at the order of schools, nor do I want to try to figure out whether or not there is any correlation to anything I care about. I will say that I think such schools are few and far between.</p>
<p>I work at a grad school that competes for the top students in a very small pool of applicants. I don’t look at the other schools on the FAFSA, because duh … they might actually be applying to more than one very competitive school, and I doubt they are over-thinking which school to list in what order. If there is an applicant our faculty want, we work together to try to get that student to come to our school. We don’t look at the order of schools on the FAFSA and write them off just because we might not have been listed first.</p>
<p>In some other lifetime, when I have time to look at such things, maybe it would be interesting to see if there is some correlation. As it is, I am just much too busy wearing my many hats and making students happy to be part of my school.</p>
<p>I think it’s pretty ridiculous that colleges assume that students list the colleges in order of preference. While this might have been common knowledge to a lot of people on CC, this thread is the first I’ve heard of it. My D listed her colleges in order of West Coast to East Coast (I don’t think she did it on purpose, that’s just the way it turned out). The school she really didn’t want to attend was listed second. It worked out well for my D though because the school she’s currently attending gave her the best FA package (both of the colleges on the bottom of her list gave her great packages). The college she listed first (our state flagship) gave her a horrible package (pretty much nothing but loans). So, I have to agree with the information in the article even though I think it stinks.</p>
<p>Perhaps this type of thing is only relevant to a few applicants. Lots of schools (e.g. moderately selective state universities that admit by numbers and dispense financial aid by numbers) do not care about “level of applicant’s interest”, so the masses of applicants to such schools would not encounter this type of thing.</p>