Are admissions decisions really need blind?

Parents Forum
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<p>Now that the final results have been tabulated for child #1, I have cause to second guess some of the strategies utilized in her college application process. Notably for this thread (tho I think we goofed in many ways!), I am wondering if indicating that the student is requesting financial aid counts against the application, in spite of every school’s declaration that they are need blind in admissions decisions.</p>

<p>If this is the case, then virtually every book on admissions that I’ve read (and there have been many) and every ad com I’ve heard is being less than forthcoming. Has this already been discussed on CC and is widely known among the cognisenti (sp)? Alas, I was new at this, and believed when I was told that even for merit aid, one had to submit all financial doc; we therefore checked the “fin aid” box on the apps, tho would not qualify for need-based. Do you experienced college parents believe that financial need is counted against an otherwise competitive app or am I overdoing the monday morning quarterbacking? Thanks for your wise counsel. I’m sure the process for d #2 will go more smoothly (hardy har har).</p>

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<p>There is no conclusive answer to your question and, even if there were, it would have to be on a school by school basis.</p>

<p>I will say that all colleges and universities have an operating budget that assumes a certain predictable percentage of full-fare customers. How that predictablility is achieved is open to conjecture.</p>

<p>True “need-blind” admissions requires standing authorization from the board of trustees for the finance office and/or admissions office to exceed budgeted levels of financial aid discounts. By definition, if there is not authorization for the tuition discount rate to float, then a school can’t be truly need blind. And, even those schools that are truly need-blind by that standard achieve very consistent percentages of full-fare customers year to year.</p>

<p>If you read the strategic planning documents for colleges, you will often see a strategic goal of reducing the tuition discount rate by increasing the enrollment of full-pay students. In fact, it is quite rare to read a strategic planning document that does not include that as a stated goal.</p>

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<p>Cosmo, my daughter applied to and was accepted at 3 reach colleges where her test scores were below the average for admitted students. She applied for financial aid at all of them and used fee waivers for two. </p>

<p>She applied to 12 colleges in all, was rejected at one, waitlisted at 2 - and the rest were acceptances. Five years ago my son applied to 9, was accepted at 8 and waitlisted at one. </p>

<p>I do think there are some ways in which colleges favor full-pay applicants, but my own experience does not support a conclusion that this plays a significant part in the review process. In other words, I can’t see where it hurt my kids – there certainly have not been any rejections/waitlist decisions that weren’t better explained by other reasons.</p>

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<p>Our experience was quite different. We only applied for financial aid at three NE LAC’s. My son was accepted to one with no money (but there is a close affiliation to his high school), waitlisted at one, and rejected from the third. At the first two, his stats were well above the 75% SAT/GPA, at the third he was just a bit under the 75%. The latter two claim to be need-blind, not sure about the first.</p>

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<p>If I’ve learned one thing this year, it’s that it’s not about the “stats”. Especially at a small LAC, which is far more likely to focus on quality of essays, recs & other characteristics than a large university, which may be more numbers driven. </p>

<p>I think the mistake people make is that they assume that the percentile range of admitted students represents the overall strength of the applicant pool. That is, you see that your son’s test scores put him in the upper 75%, and you assume that means he has scored better than 75% of the applicants - so of course you would expect him to get in. But that’s not how it works: the college is looking for a variety of specific qualities, whether it is ability to write well, or ability to play a particular sport well, or to play a musical instrument, or help create a more geographically diverse student body… or whatever happens to impress them. Their score range represents the spectrum of student they are willing to take. They are just as willing to take a student at the lower end of the range if that student has something other to offer that they value – just so long as their overall score range is not impacted. </p>

<p>Let me share something my son wrote to explain this all to me:

Unfortunately, I just learned this lesson this year, and only after my daughter was admitted to reach schools with scores in the 25% range. (And basically both my kids are mad at me for being such a worrier and a naysayer all year long). I am quite sure that need wouldn’t factor into the decision to reject a kid who has very high test scores – it is the lack of those “good mix” factors that would more likely account for it. Because although my son postulated a very wide range of scores in his hypothetical, it is more likely that in these competitive times selective colleges are deluged with kids scoring above the 75% mark, many of whom are using the colleges as safeties, and the school can easily afford to be very choosy among the high stat applicants. </p>

<p>Anyway, there are a lot of reasons that a kid can end up being turned down – sometimes it can be a problem of being too good of a match for the school, in the sense that the kid is just like most of the applicants that the school sees. I think my son did well in the admission process because he was strong in math & sciences, but applying to many liberal arts colleges where students tended to be weaker in those areas - so he offered the school something that was less common in their applicant pool. He also had strong scores, and at the time I thought it was the scores that got him in everywhere… but now that I have weathered seing a second kid with a different profile go through the process, I have a different view. My daughter has much weaker stats than her brother; admissions have gotten much more competitive; and yet she has gotten into colleges that are far more selective than the ones he was admitted to.</p>

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<p>I am going to take the mini approach to this:</p>

<p>How need blind are schools really be when in the first section of the application, they ask about the educational level and occupation of your parents? </p>

<p>How need blind can they be when there is a big colorful fee waiver attached to your application.</p>

<p>How need blind are they when your application indicates what school you attend (admission committes know the difference between prep schools, and the demographics of students attending their local publics).</p>

<p>How need blind are schools when on the page there is a check box that ask if you are applying for financial aid? They are just not asking how much.</p>

<p>All need blind really means is that they will not hold your needing aid against you when making the admissions decision. Some schools are very up front about the fact that they give preferential packaging, that they give merit within need, and not every school calculates need the same.</p>

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<p>yes, merit within need is the way around true need-blind admissions. </p>

<p>I have not found that admission is hurt by ability to pay, but the ability to attend is. We have one financial package that offers $40K in loans and another that offers $40K in cash and a range in-between.</p>

<p>There aren’t many people who would assume $160K of relatively high-interest debt when an equivalent school is letting you off the hook with almost no debt. Clearly, the second option gives merit within need, and I have to conclude that second school wants my son to attend more than the first one wants him --and perhaps more than it wants others with similar need to his.</p>

<p>So even when acceptance is “need blind” your ability to attend --the way that is facilitated for you by the type of financial aid you receive-- can still be extremely intentional and need-aware.</p>

<p>I would have to concur --Harvard may be need blind, but few other schools really are by the way they execute their deals. If a school is asking you to take on $200K of debt, they are accepting you but REALLY they are telling you not to come.</p>

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<p>While I realize the 75% is historical and results are pretty strange this year, my son applied to small LAC’s and his strength is science/math. He also is a varsity athlete, plays two instruments and is self-teaching a third, Eagle Scout, and held a very responsible job for the past four summers, so I would have thought he was a very strong candidate at the schools. I truly believe the financial issue and geographic location played a role in his results. Fortunately, none of these schools were among his top choices, but I don’t believe schools are as truly need-blind as they say. I would guess if we had not checked that box and said that we could afford the $43,000 cost, he would have been accepted or at least waitlisted rather than the rejection.</p>

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<p>I think that even need-blind schools may be need-aware, as Sybbie describes above. However, financial need is not a binary choice. It’s not “all or nothing.” There may be cases where a school would want to admit several kids who need small amounts of financial aid, in order to capture the part that they CAN pay. They probably do look at the demographic data in such cases.</p>

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<p>I think the true answer has to be no, in that even need blind schools aggressively recruit and accept high numbers of students each year from high schools and prep schools that are from demographically wealthy areas. The high acceptance rates many top prep schools enjoy can also be rationalized by the quality of the education and the student body, but that’s not the only reason those places are so appealing to the schools, IMO. The advantage that some (mostly wealthier) students receive in the ED round is another way. Many students who are looking to compare FA packages do not feel they can afford to take the chance to apply ED.</p>

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<p>Keep in mind that a school being need blind in admissions and the amount of $ you get from financial aid are 2 separate things. At many need blind schools, admissions and financial aid are not even handled in the same office. I agree with cloverdale in the belief that admissions can deliver an “admit” to a student and at the same time a FA aid office is delivering a “deny” by the amount of FA offered or the way the FA is packaged.</p>

<p>Even in schools that are need-aware, the money becomes an issue, if your application comes across the desk at a time when they are close to exhausting the financial aid budget. Even at this time, if the school is looking at 2 similiary quallified students, and they only have so many $$ remaining, then the tip would go to the student who “needs” the least amount of aid.</p>

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<p>As Sybbie and Interesteddad well describe, there isn’t a school in the country that is “need-blind”. The question really is the degree to which need information is used in decision-making. Interesteddad has indicated how this is done at the macro-level.</p>

<p>On the micro-level, it is more difficult to get a clear picture. Clearly, any school that uses Questbridge is need-aware (this includes Amherst, Williams, etc.) - you can only qualify for Questbridge support by pre-qualifying financially. In this particular case, being low-income would be an advantage (for a tiny group of students), but it means that not only are colleges who use it not “need-blind”, but that they use need calculations in their decision-making.</p>

<p>But it goes further than that. In an article in a recent issue of the Williams Record providing a firsthand account of the admissions process, the Dean of Admissions asks point-blank how many “socio-ec” (low-income) students they have already admitted. The indication is that there is a target: they don’t want to have too few, but likely not too many either. </p>

<p>As college tuition rises faster than inflation, there is an increase in the percentage of relatively high income students who receive “need-based” aid. From the college’s perspective, this is a no-brainer - they are “cheap”, relative to those with higher need, they don’t need much in the way of aid to steer them away from the competition, and the college looks good for increasing the percentage of students receiving aid. The “no-loan” policies of several prestigious institutions are especially directed at this group.</p>

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<p>

That’s why then – small LACs are particularly sensitive to yield - they are looking for students who truly desire to come, not to be racked up as a safety. They can tell – the evidence comes through in many ways.

Sorry, as noted my daughter just got into a bunch of reach schools - other than an EA school, she sought fee waivers at every single private college she applied to. Our FAFSA EFC is around $5500 and Barnard thinks we qualify for a Pell grant if both my kids are in college. But we aren’t poor either - not in the sense that we could fill any quotas for socio-economic diversity. </p>

<p>I agree with Cloverdale - if NYU really wanted my daughter to attend, they would have offered more money. But they let her in. It is possible that some schools considered the financial aspect in deciding to waitlist or reject her - but schools that don’t promise to meet 100% need always have the option simply giving minimal financial aid. </p>

<p>I admit that I don’t much have rejection/waitlist data to work with - my two kids collectively applied to 21 colleges, with acceptances at 17, 3 waitlists, and 1 rejection letter. As much as each of my kids had going for them, they also had weaknesses in their records that explain why a particular school would turn them down.</p>

<p>It is easy to rationalize and I do think that at the end of the admission cycle, after the admissions department has gotten the memo from financial aid that they are running short of funds, it is going to make a difference as to who they <em>accept</em> – not so much as who they <em>reject</em>. In other words, that is the point when they are going to go to their “maybe” pile of applicants and sift through looking for the full pays before relegating the remainder to the waitlist. </p>

<p>The decision to reject rather than waitlist may be a financial one, simply because the college may know that it will not be able to offer funds to most waitlisted students. But it may also be a matter of school policy - some schools maintain large waitlists, others don’t. </p>

<p>(Am I the only one on the planet who thinks that my two perfectly wonderful kids may not be perfectly wonderful in everyone else’s eyes? That my kids might get rejected from a college because the other applicants were <em>better</em>?? That a system can be mostly fair without being at all objective?)</p>

<p>In any case, judging by this year’s results, needing money hasn’t hurt us at all. The application process has all sorts of things built in to favor rich kids, such as reliance on ED, marketing tactics, and the setting of admission standards that raise a very high bar to public school students without resources to pay for extra tutoring – but I don’t think that very many kids get rejected from top colleges where they would otherwise qualify for admission because of their financial need.</p>

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<p>Well, you have to distinguish between what “need-blind” means as the colleges use the term, and what people think the phrase ought to mean. As colleges use it, and as documented in “Equity and Excellence”, “need-blind” means that they do not have an explicit limit for the numbers of people they can admit who need financial aid. This means that they consider each applicant in one pool, as opposed to “need-aware” in which there is at some point in the process a two-pool system. </p>

<p>Need aware comes in when they are running out of aid money, and those who need aid are competing with each other for the remaining “need” slots, while those who do not need aid are competing with each other in the, larger, “no need” pool. As “Equity and Excellence” showed, at least at a number of Ivy need-blind schools, applying for aid did not decrease the chances of admission. </p>

<p>This was not just a stated policy. The authors reviewed the admissions decisions for a large number (many thousands) of applicants. They found that, after adjusting for academic qualifications, extracurriculars, recommendations, etc, knowing whether someone applied for aid did not contribute to predicting whether they would be admitted. In other words, the admissions decisions were not influenced by whether the student applied for aid. That is what need blind really means.</p>

<p>Need-blind does not mean “blind to whether the applicant applied for aid”. Perhaps one might think that is what it should mean, and they should have used a different term to describe the admissions process they use. This might avoid confusion, but it would not change practice. </p>

<p>Need-blind does not mean “blind to whether this person is part of a special admissions/recruitment program”. A school might well have an approximate target number of people to recruit under such a program, and at the same time be need blind. Participating in Questbridge has nothing to do with being need blind. </p>

<p>Amherst has proposed to enlarge its class, and recruit significantly more low income people, including some who do not have the standard Amherst academic preparation. They will need to watch how many such people they bring in to be sure they do not overload their ability to support them academically, even if they have set aside enough money to cover the financial aid. This has nothing to do with need blind.</p>

<p>The elite schools get primarily upper middle and upper class students because the academic and extracurricular credentials required for admission are far more common in those socio economic groups. So “need blind” does not mean “the student body will reflect the national income distribution”. Places like Harvard and Princeton, with famously generous financial aid, also have very low numbers of low income students. If their student demographics mirrored those of the country as a whole, then their current financial aid policies would break the bank. It is the large number of full pay students who make the generous aid to the lower income students possible.</p>

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<p>“It is the large number of full pay students who make the generous aid to the lower income students possible.”</p>

<p>Yup. Exactly (among a host of other reasons) why they aren’t need-blind. (and no particular reason why they should be.)</p>

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<p>My DD applied for two LACs among her 9 applications and got accepted from both. We submitted same finance info. One LAC gave us a generous package while the other provided no grant. Do they use difference method to calculate?</p>

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<p>“Exactly (among a host of other reasons) why they aren’t need-blind.”</p>

<p>Again, that is not what “need-blind” means.</p>

<p>Did they use different formulas? Maybe. First were both places need blind? Second, not every place that is need blind promises to provide 100% of calculated need. Third, even if two places reach the same need figure, and put together a package that meets it, they will not necessarily use the same mix of loans and grants. In general, the wealthier colleges have a larger grant component, but these are also used competitively to enroll their top picks. Colleges also use them strategically, “we don’t want to turn down this kid, but we think she will get in, and go, some place higher on the list. Let’s offer her a lowball aid package. If she comes back and asks us to match a better offer we will do it, if not, we will spend the money on someone else”, or “We think this will be the best admissions offer she will get, and we are betting the family will come up with the extra money, so again, let’s lowball”. If your daughter wants to go to the place with the weaker offer, get back to them and see whether they will match the higher figure.</p>

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<p>So on this topic, it looks more like a game to play.</p>

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<p>So, would it be a good idea for my son to mention somewhere in his application package that he is applying for an ROTC scholarship to finance his education? That would mean the government was paying his freight, so I’d think that would be good.</p>

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<p>i believe schools that spend a great deal of money on athletic scholarships (duke) are not need blind when it comes to most students who are not recruited athletes.</p>