<p>First off, I've done a bit of searching on the forums but some of the threads I found were either outdated (doesn't reflect the current economic situation in the US) or doesn't apply to me (URMs, etc). </p>
<p>Basically, my question is this: do elite colleges such as HYPSM look at low income students as:
a) desirable, because they want to diversify + low income shows that the student has overcome economic obstacles
b) undesirable, because of the current economic situation and their shrinking endowments
c) no effect, because many of these top universities claim to be "need blind". </p>
<p>It is my understanding that the offices of admissions and financial aid are completely separate, so one does not influence the other. However, students who apply for early decision are locked in, which sends a clear message that they can afford the tuition without financial aid. At some schools as much as 30% of an incoming class are admitted through early decision, so they have a huge advantage in the admissions process.</p>
<p>I’m specifically interested in HYPSM; sorry, I should have made that a bit more clear. As far as I know, none of the five have “early decision”. Yale, Stanford, and MIT all have early action, though.</p>
<p>Considering socioeconomic status does not mean that a school is not need blind. What that means is that a school can consider the socioeconomic status of the student without considering the student’s ability to pay; the obstacles that a student faces (or doesn’t face) are different than the student’s ability or inability to pay tuition.</p>
<p>Colleges “desire” students from low-income families because they have a high level of achievement (middle and upper income students may start at 0, but low-income students start at -20 and remarkably few of them ever make it to that high of a level) despite their circumstances. So yes, high-achieving low-income students are desirable to top schools - but those students are low in quantity and high in quality.</p>
<p>Some scholars think that colleges talk the talk better than they walk the walk, in general among the most selective colleges, but the specific colleges you mention may claim they are on the lookout for low-income, high-ability students. See </p>
<p>I’ve heard on here that these schools “recruit” (not the right word, but the gist) from top prep schools to ensure a certain amount of full-pay students, allowing them to remain need-blind.</p>
<p>How true that is I can’t say. But keep in mind that one’s application can yield certain information about your financial situation just by virtue of the opportunities you’ve been exposed to.</p>
<p>One way to be flagged as a low-income student for college recruiting is to request College Board and ACT fee waivers, if eligible. Many school counselors are less proactive about telling students about this than they should be. Google the income criteria for yourself (the criteria depend of household size) and see if you can get a fee waiver. This is a very new recruiting category, and it’s important to find out which colleges are in earnest about looking for low-income students.</p>
<p>QuestBridge is really a great tool. Although there are other perks of the program, the main tenets are that</p>
<p>a) you are provided with an application that will more thoroughly highlight what you have accomplished that middle and upper income students have not or could not</p>
<p>b) you can apply free to up to eight colleges, saving your four CollegeBoard waivers for safety and Match schools</p>
<p>c) you get two chances - the Match and the RD round - at each of the QeustBridge partner schools (well, the ones you ranked/applied to)</p>
<p>d) your QuestBridge application and financial aid information will be complete by September 30th (application) and November 1st (for financial aid), thus also completing a large portion of any other applications</p>
<p>e) you receive Match notification on December 1st, one of the earliest decision dates outside of early admission</p>
<p>And, if you are chosen as a finalist…</p>
<p>f) you can participate in the Quest Scholars program, which is a network that connects Quest Scholars (Matches and Finalists) to one another and to special internships and other positions</p>
<p>I’m not too familiar with the program, but from what I see, whether you are selected as a finalist or not you’ll have some indication on your app that you were a Questbridge student. We haven’t established yet whether being low income can help you or hurt you… if it helps you, great, but if it hurts you, then you’re in an especially dire situation because your application screams low income.</p>
<p>From a financial standpoint, does Questbridge have that much of a benefit? They pay your tuition, yes, but if you qualify for Questbridge you’ll most likely have 0 EFC too, right? I mean my sister is a freshman at Harvard right now and she essentially has a full ride because we are low income. I’m sure other top schools meet full need as well. </p>
<p>Excuse me if I’m a little confused about some parts of the application process… still a stressed junior right now.</p>
<p>^^I don’t think it either helps or hurts an applicant. Where it counts is in the Admissions committee and their review of your ECs. A well-to-do suburban student is expected to do “stuff” outside of the classroom and achieve real accomplishments (for HYPSM). But a low EC applicant with a single mother who doesn’t speak English could work at the local supermarket for an EC. The resources of your local HS likely also factor into the review of your test scores.</p>
<p>If you are certain your EFC is 0, then at a handful of schools, QuestBridge has no effect. Stanford and Yale, for example, will assess your financial aid the same as they would without QB. However, if you are Matched at a school like Trinity, Parsons, or Chicago, your package may be very different. Some schools include loans as part of the package even if your EFC is 0; this is not true for QB matches. Sometimes being a QB Match means that the student contribution is waived or a stipend is allowed for a laptop (excluding the Quest for Excellence program). There are 27 partner schools. At 20 of them (as far as I can tell from the website), the financial aid package is slightly or decidedly different for Matches.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, firstly I think this is irrelevant. Schools at which being low-income is detrimental are extremely unlikely to provide low-income students with a satisfactory financial aid package. That is, they may accept the student, but then offer the student an extremely poor financial aid package. I highly doubt that any school that would reject a QB finalist would accept any low-income student with an affordable financial aid offer. Thus, I think the point is null.</p>
<p>Secondly, reporting that you are a QuestBridge finalist is optional, as with anything on the Common Application. It is, however, a national - even international - honor. 40% of applications become finalists; a mere 10% become Matches (but well over 60% get into a partner school between RD and the Match).</p>
<p>I forgot to mention that with QB you can effectively apply EA to Stanford and Yale.</p>
<p>But 60% x 10% = 6% - even lower than the normal acceptance % of top schools. </p>
<p>You do have a point of saying that the schools that consider income as part of the app most likely won’t provide as much aid as traditional need blind schools like HYP, though. Hadn’t thought about it that way.</p>
<p>I wish I had finished my application to Questbridge now… I didn’t realize how beneficial it was. My mom was undergoing tests for Breast Cancer during that time, though, so I was freaking out [I lost my dad when I was 13]. Thankfully she’s okay right now [going for more tests in a few months].</p>
<p>No-one really knows if being low income helps or hurts apps at the particular schools you mentioned. My suspicion is that at those schools, being identified as low income may be a slight advantage, if your app identifies you as underprivileged. The problem is how to get that across to admissions without sounding like a manipulative weasel. That’s were organizations like Questbridge, the Posse etc come in. It’s a fine line, you don’t want to overdo it.</p>
<p>Huh? 60% of all QuestBridge finalists are accepted at one of the partner schools. Why did you multiply .6 and .1? That’s completely illogical. Also, keep in mind that 60% are accepted to partner schools, but there are many other schools that students get accepted to and attend that are not partner schools.</p>
<p>Sorry about that, a bit of a reading comprehension fail on my part… explains my 790 in CR ._____.</p>
<p>So I’m checking out the Questbridge website, and it seems to say that you can apply up to 8 schools early (followed by a list of non-binding schools, which are the ones I’m interested in.) If I apply to, say, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT, is it possible to be accepted to be more than one, or is acceptance capped at just one since it’s a “matching process”?</p>
<p>This is a good thread. I’m a junior who’s also interested in Questbridge. If you apply through Questbrige, you can’t also apply through EA, correct?</p>
<p>You can only be accepted to one. Only five schools are non-binding. The others are binding; if you get accepted, you must attend. Even if you rank all non-binding schools, you can only be accepted to one (the highest one on your list to which you were admitted; you’ll never know of the others). But you can apply to the others through RD and get accepted, if the school is one of the non-binding five.</p>
<p>If you use QB, you cannot apply EA elsewhere. However, you can use rolling admissions elsewhere. Some of the schools in QB will allow non-Matched finalists to apply EA after not being Matched (or being Matched to a non-binding school); MIT is one example.</p>