<p>They sent me a letter asking for a couple financial forms...why would they be worried about financial aid if they weren't getting ready to accept me?
(I know this is ridiculous but just hoping)</p>
<p>I think it's a good sign, i don't know if this has anything to do with your situation but one of my good friend's applied to cornell for the college of arts and sciences and then they sent a letter and called her asking if she would like to go to CALS instead and she said yes, so im guessing if she hadn't agreed she might not have been accepted.</p>
<p>I highly doubt it is a good sign....</p>
<p>They want to have the forms ready so that they can calculate a financial aid package for you quickly when/if you get accepted. I know for med school we are advised to send FA forms to all med schools we interviewed at even if we haven't been accepted. And I have received FA forms from schools I haven't been accepted at. It's standard practice.</p>
<p>I think it's a good sign. It seemed that the people who were admitted early decision were contacted about FA prior to the decision. I know they say that the offices are not connected, but it's nice to have something to hang your hope on?!</p>
<p>i received a letter about this too today. they were missing my parents tax returns which i am almost certain i sent to them. my dad got so excited coz he thought that if they weren't ready to accept me, they wouldn't bother sending this letter. Although this idea is really nice, I agree with norcalguy, I believe they're just sending this because it's "standard practice."</p>
<p>ravesky, what state is your friend that got into cals from?</p>
<p>It's standard practice and means only that your FA file is missing some forms. It means nothing more, and has nothing to do with admissions. Last year, we received that notice from a school to which my d was ultimately not accepted.</p>
<p>Sorry, but you just have to wait.</p>
<p>5757, My friend who got accepted into CALS was from New Jersey</p>
<p>Isn't Cornell a need blind school meaning that admissions does not know if you are applying for financial aid? If so, the request for further information or missing forms is just that and would not mean anything re admissions. Sorry.</p>
<p>I got one today. I'd imagine that they wouldn't want to do FA awards if you haven't been admitted, but idk.</p>
<p>Yeah there's no way they are going to do the calculations for 30000+ students if they are not going to admit 80% of them...That would be a serious waste of time. Well, I'm going to rest easy tonight knowing that I may very well be admitted to one of the best schools in the world.</p>
<p>I'm not going to make any assumptions, but I can tell you guys what I observed during the ED process. I made a thread in early December about missing financial aid forms and asked a number of applicants who were missing them to indicate whether or not they were contacted by the financial aid office. If I remember correctly, the 2-3 people who were contacted were all accepted (I searched for their names in the ED results thread). I then looked up the results for some of the applicants who were not contacted by the financial aid office and found one who did not get in. The rest either didn't post their results or I never found them. Just based on this, there appears to be some connection between the financial aid office and the admissions office, at least as far as ED is concerned. It might be different for RD, but I highly doubt it. Having the financial aid office estimate packages for every applicant to Cornell seems highly impractical.</p>
<p>I guess the only thing we can do is to wait until the official letters arrive.</p>
<p>i am actually really interested in this i received a letter as well. i know for yale at least, i was rejected and was not contacted about any missing forms, and when i found out i hadnt sent them in and contacted the fa office, they said i should just wait becuase there was plenty of time to do that if i was accepted...
so idk but it does seem like it would be a waste to do 30,000 packages if there were only going to accept ~20% of em, imho</p>
<p>Of course it is, that would be an unrealistic goal and a rather unsatisfying career too if 80% of your work was thrown out each year ahha</p>
<p>i read a thread where people had this experience, thought they got in (princeton was one in particular), and were rejected. the admissions office and FA office are entirely independent, or the idea of "need-blind admissions" is false.</p>
<p>I don't think that such a connection between the financial aid office and the admissions office would affect need blind admissions. It's entirely plausible that the admissions office makes a portion of the decisions beforehand and then contacts the financial aid office to tell them to start putting together the financial aid packages for the accepted students. It would be somewhat impractical to wait for all of the decisions to be made before starting on the financial aid packages. If you think about it, this arrangement may expedite the process to a significant degree.</p>
<p>Also, we have to keep in mind that the process may be different at each individual school. Perhaps the offices are completely independent of each other at Princeton, but they may not be at Cornell.</p>
<p>I completely agree with your first point.</p>
<p>Hi, </p>
<p>We too received a phone call this week from the fin. aid department asking for more forms. My S was deferred. I hope this is a good sign. S spoke with admissions awhile back, with the actual person who read his application. Was told his app. was very strong but was deferred because he applied to a strong program. We are really keeping our fingers crossed.</p>
<p>Another poster said 16,000 of these are sent out when they called Cornell. So now, we definitely know it means nothing.</p>