Daughter got accepted, not sure I can afford it

Keilexandra
Sat, 08 Jan 2011 01:37:20 +0000

calmom - You misunderstand what I mean by magic. The director of admissions receives reports, I’m sure, and then tells his officers what demographics to emphasize. And voila, like magic, emphasizing those demographics results in less FA spent. It is much less direct than, for example, admitting more black people to raise the African-American percentage. In contrast, need-aware not-full-need schools like Franklin & Marshall will note exactly how much money each student costs, which plays a role in the admissions decisions.



calmom:

There is no such thing as a 100% “need-blind” college. ALL colleges accept “development” cases (admits done as a favor for large donors), and there are also other ways that colleges can manipulate their admissions, such as by pulling full-pay students from their waitlist. They can give greater weight in admissions to factors that they know are indications of ability to pay (such as participation in costly EC’s) - or they can target recruiting efforts to higher paying demographics. If the school does not promise to meet need of internationals – and most don’t - then they can also admit more international students.

OK. There’s no such thing as “100% need-blind,” but there IS just plain regular “need-blind.” All of the methods you’ve mentioned are indirect ways to control financial aid, which is important for any college; but “need-blind” implies that a given applicant is not rejected because s/he has too-high need (and is not extremely desirable for other reasons), and that remains an important distinction to make.