wisdom of checking "no aid needed"?

Parent Cafe
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<p>The “Ask the Dean” column mentioned at #15 is a nice article. It offers some insight, but doesn’t entirely explain the process. I am beginning to think that the treatment of “no aid needed” applications is simply one more example of how things might play out differently at different schools, and the applicant will not have full knowledge of the process behind the scenes.</p>

<p>Again, the assumption here is that the schools are not at the top of the academic totem pole – they are tuition-driven, need-aware, and don’t even claim to meet full need. The applicant’s stats are at the lower end of what the school might accept, so there is no possibility of true merit money.</p>

<p>Presumably, if you’re in the bottom 10% of what they take, and the data shows that 10% of the people who enroll at the school are full-freight payors, you had probably better plan to be one of the full payors if you want to attend. (Especially when they don’t have any other special reason to want you – you didn’t win an Oscar, you weren’t homeschooled in a yurt halfway around the world, etc.)</p>

<p>So the question becomes, do you telegraph your full-pay intentions boldly by checking the “no aid needed” box where there is one? If you do, you may improve your odds. If you don’t – if you submit a FAFSA and check that you are requesting financial aid – the admissions office may immediately spot you as a full-payor anyway, as far as they are concerned, when they see your weak stats and high EFC. But by having at least nominally asked for aid, you might get the routine discount of a few thousand dollars that some overpriced, undistinguished private colleges routinely throw at undistinguished entrants. And while it would be a shame to leave that money on the table, you are left to guess whether that nominal request for aid will reduce your chances of admission.</p>

<p>The booby prize for all this will be daily life at a school where you are competing to succeed as one of the more weakly-qualified members of your class. How one would fare in that situation is beyond the scope of this discussion, I suppose. But I’d be interested to hear anecdotes. (My guess is that there would be so much grey area, in terms of personal motivation and maturity, being well-suited for your specific program, having maybe gotten weaker grades at a harder high school, etc. that it’s difficult to predict with accuracy. The best predictor of success would probably be the gut feel of the kid and the parents.)</p>

<p>All comments appreciated.</p>

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<p>It can and does depend on how the schools work. First of all, we are only talking about a small group of schools here. Most schools are need blind. Yes, Northeast New Mexico State is need blind in admissions as are more than 95% of the schools out there. It’s only in the top bracket of private schools that tend to give good aid packages to those they accept, that needing aid plays a role in admissions. They tend to be the smaller, highly selective school, and in my opinion some of the best schools in the country. They are not ivies, but as a thread on this board recently tells us, a “Little Ivy”, Wesleyan has joined their ranks. </p>

<p>Those schools actively use enrollment management to keep their rankings up, get the students they most need and keep their budget at a certain level. They may accept everyone on a need blind basis at admissions and give all acceptees grades, A, B, C, and let financial aid make the cuts. A’s get all get accepted, get full need met, get the best aid packages, mostly merit. B’s get what scholarships are left, but also self help. C’s get government money and at some schools are gapped, at others just dropped if there is no way the school is going to come close to providing what the student needs. However, there is also a lot of play here in the C group, where if the admissions numbers are such that they can use the bodies, it is much cheaper to give a C that has $5k in need what he needs, in fact give 10 such C’s all what they need, boost the % of need met figures to the school, increase the possibilities that those students will come, and reject the C student who needs a full ride to come to the school. There is a huge difference between needing $5K and needing $50K, and it would be foolish for any school who is practicing enrollment management not to take note of the difference and use it to stretch funds and stats the best way possible. </p>

<p>So, the methodology of the school matters. If your kid is applying to NYU, from all of the zero EFC kids who have gotten zilch (BU too), you can pretty much feel comfortable that asking for aid is not going to do a thing to admissions chances, and hey, there are some merit within need jackpots you can hit by entering your ticket. You won’t get if you don’t try. But a school like Hopkins…ummm. They are coy about their entire process. If you read their admissions site carfully, you can see that they are not need blind in admissions and do not guarantee to meet 100% of need. But their aid stats are not bad. You can get a good package from them and they clearly accept those who have need; half the kids there are on financial aid. But if your kid is at the bottom end of getting accepted…yeah, it can have an impact on whether the school takes him or not. It might not, if the need is very small and he falls into the group that they take in place of the kid that needs $50K, but it is highly unlikely you’ll get admissions or financial aid to give you the exact details on how enrollment and aid management is doen.</p>

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<p>Did you consider how it will all work for potential Merit awards? At D’s UG it was strongly recommended to file FASFA to receive full range of MERIT awards. We follow this recommendation religiously with great results. I had a feeling ( might not be true) that school have been using FASFA file (and student stats, of course) to award Merit scholarships. Why else they would send special letter with this recommendation? D’s UG had many privately donated funds for Merit scholarships, we know that because most of hers had family names attached to them. I imagine that school would have hard time matching that many smaller donations to specific students unless they have a program that does it for them. D. had about 10 of these Merit awards and I believe that filing FASFA could be some kind of trigger (in addtion to her stats). We are very far from receiving any kind of need based.<br>
However, this could be different from school to school. I would follow all recommendation from FA office or even check with them what is the best in your specific situation.</p>

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<p>Anecdote: Thirty years ago, an old friend was called off the waitlist of a “bottom tier” medical school a couple of days after classes had started. Evidently they had an unexpected vacancy. He always says, in recalling this, that he was clearly the least-wanted student at one of the least-wanted medical schools. However, in truth, all accredited US medical schools are good, even the least well regarded ones. The friend graduated near the head of his class and went on to a surgery specialty at a much more prestigious med school, and subsequently a successful career as a surgeon.</p>

<p>At highly selective schools in general, all the students are well equipped to be there: those chosen first, chosen last, wait listed, and many of those turned away. Even HPYS has a worst student in every class - but my suspicion is that the worst students are likely not necessarily the last admitted.</p>

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<p>Anecdote: Thirty years ago, a friend of ours (U of Illinois undergrad) was turned down at NU Law School and accepted at WashU Law School. He rented an apartment in St. Louis, rented a U-Haul, went down, moved all his furniture, etc. and got ready for classes to the start the next day. He received an urgent call from his father - NU had called the house and admitted him. So he literally didn’t spend a single night in St. Louis - he repacked, drove back up to Chicago, and got back in time to start NU classes in a day or two.</p>

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<p>Neither of our kids completed a common app, so sorry, didn’t know there was a box to check that no FAid was being sought. We never completed & turned in any FAid forms as the calculators showed that we would not qualify for any. Perhaps it may have helped our D in her transfer, as some kids with higher stats routinely get turned down as transfers at her U. Don’t know for sure, but don’t see why not to check the box if you’re not applying for FAid & don’t think you’d get any.</p>

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<p>In some states and some situations, you have to complete FAFSA which is used as a screening tool for money. Georgia has HOPE, WV has Promis, FLorida has Bright Futures. They may all need a FAFSA completed in order to get those funds, though financials are not taken into consideration. You need FAFSA now for PLUS. So filling out FAFSA does not mean you are applying for financial aid.</p>

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<p>Correct me if I am wrong, but you can apply for PLUS any time, it doesn’t need to be done at the time of applying. Parents could apply for it in the summer after admission. Isn’t it done directly with the government, not with school? Would the school get your financial information? I think the information they request is also very minimal, right?</p>

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<p>I agree with this. However, it seems the schools do peek at the financial status when it comes to wait list decisions. DD was wait listed at two high reach schools and got calls at the end of May enthusiastically encouraging her to attend as a full pay student. No offer was made in writing, just a phone call with 3 days to decide, so I’m not sure how these offers are factored in to statistical results. We filled out FAFSA and Profile even though we had no hope of financial aid, and it was a waste of time. I wish now that I hadn’t provided so much personal information.</p>

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<p>Right, re Georgia and the HOPE/Zell Miller scholarships. It seems obvious that by requiring FAFSA, the government is collecting data on demographics of scholarship recipients. The HOPE program is currently not need based at all, but there are funding issues, and among the ideas floated is keying it to family income in some way. Much as I don’t enjoy participating in this, I can see the logic of collecting information on current recipients’ family income.</p>

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<p>Again, in the situation presented, please assume that there will be no merit eligibility whatsoever, and no need-based eligibility whatsoever. Loans and work-study are not an issue. The schools in question are not at the Johns Hopkins level that have been mentioned in some comments. Again, the assumption is much lower on the totem pole – mid-range private LACs that compete with better state directionals, taking the 3.3 to 3.6 gpa kind of student. The family expects to write checks for the full amount, and the question is whether flagging the application as a no-aid-needed application might help, as opposed to requesting aid when you know there will be none (except the possibility of a small discount that this type of school sometimes hands out very freely).</p>

<p>It is interesting that some posters have noted privacy considerations associated with the FAFSA. It is a lot of personal information to give the government, if there’s nothing to gain by it. I’m assuming that you give it to the government; I’ve never looked into where that info goes, or what privacy protections it has.</p>

<p>I’m a bit puzzled by the notion that most schools are need-blind as to admissions. When all is said and done, enrollment is never need-blind (unless the school and the family agree on the amount of need and the school meets it). I guess the elite schools that have the endowment to invite whomever they want on board, may legitimately claim to be need-blind. And perhaps public colleges are need blind as to admissions – admitting large numbers of people, principally on the basis of stats, and having a statistically reliable model of what that will mean in terms of yield. But the small, private, tuition-driven schools are concerned about their yields. They may take time to carefully build a class, but what good does that do if the people they admit cannot afford to attend? Schools of this type routinely “gap” people. In the Northeast, where even academically undistinguished schools of this type charge $45,000 to $55,000 per year, they can’t fully populate the class with needy students because governmental aid will not be enough. They use their institutional aid to improve their overall stats. At the end of the day, they must rely upon a certain segment of full payors, and those full payors presumably populate the lower reaches of their admittee stats. Or not?</p>

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<p>Possibly - who knows? But so what? If the advantage is there, then why not claim it? See, I’m puzzled by the whole premise of the OP - if you’re full pay (but not development-level full-pay, just basic full-pay) - well, of course it can’t hurt, and it can only help that you didn’t need FA, so I’m not sure what the “strategy” is.</p>

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<p>It seems like you know the answer to your question already. It can only help to flag yourself as no-aid-needed. Why would you even bother to give any FA info if you anticipate being full-pay and that could be even the slightest “hook”?</p>

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<p>Personally, I really just don’t like more info about our family’s finances floating around than absolutely essential. That is one of the many reasons we didn’t bother filing ANY financial docs for either of our kids. If it gave our kids any slight “hook,” that’s all good to me. It was pretty apparent to us that we would NOT get any FAid, other than loans that we were NOT interested in. (We did run a trial FAFSA calculator & came up with amazing amounts that our family was supposed to pay.)</p>

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<p>I agree with you both (Pizza and HI). My lingering doubt comes from the conventional wisdom I hear preached everywhere – “always fill out the FAFSA, always ask for aid, no matter where, no matter what”. And I have found that colleges in this segment of the market do hand out small “merit” discounts ($3000 a year or so) like water at a marathon – to those who ask. No ask, no get. I guess the question becomes whether the possibility of that small percentage discount is worth the privacy concerns, plus whatever admissions advantage there may be to flagging oneself as an intended full payor.</p>

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<p>Oh, god, no. I wouldn’t think that the possibility of a small discount is worth it. I say better to go forth as a full-payor and let them read into it what they will (whether you’re just $50K full pay or a potential development person).</p>

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<p>The chance of even a minor tuition discount if the kid is truly at the bottom of the statistical pile is so remote, why bother? Unless the kid is from Wyoming or is the red-haired child of a fire-fighter, or some other category where the U has a special named scholarship where only a few applicants are even qualified, this seems like a no-brainer.</p>

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<p>So if you plan on applying to a need-blind school, specifying whether you are going to apply for aid doesn’t really matter at all?</p>

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<p>First let me say son was not applying for the kind of school that meets need, we “knew” there would be no “need”, and son was not a contender for merit because of GPA. I believe he checked not applying for need on the common ap, and got no $$ initially, as expected, but in June or July, submitted a FASFA, and lo and behold, a significant ( to us) amount of money appeared under financial “award”. No name to it, no conditions, no promise of renewing. They didn’t say and we didn’t ask. </p>

<p>Not expecting it again this year, but plan to submit another FASFA just because. </p>

<p>The first time we had two in privates and older one wanted a stafford, but our EFC was essentially equal to full price for both. They both got institutional work study too, and older child used every bit of it, and took out a smaller stafford. </p>

<p>Just saying’.</p>

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<p>When my son started the application process I had this same question. I posed it to the college counselor we were working with and without hesitation she said to check the no box for applying for financial aid. We did, however, indicate that he was applying for merit aid.</p>

<p>Like the OP, we knew that there was essentially no possibility of financial aid. However, I reasoned that if they really wanted my son maybe they would provide something. We did have to complete the FASFA for Florida Bright Futures anyway. </p>

<p>In the end we checked no for financial aid and yes for merit.</p>

<p>Now that we are done I am glad we went this route. To make this a more concrete example I will use the names of the schools involved. Of his accepted schools, my son received the highest merit awards from UF, Boston University and Northeastern. He did not get any money from William and Mary or Washington University in St. Louis (where he will attend and I don’t believe is need blind). I was assured that if our financial situation changes, he can always apply for aid in the future.</p>

<p>In fairness, I don’t think the decision mattered for University of Michigan where he was waitlisted or Duke or Vanderbilt where he was denied. However, if it was a close call for WashU and this tipped the scales, it was worth giving up the slight possibility of a very miniscule amount of aid. </p>

<p>Good Luck…</p>