Early Decision/Financial aid question

[BelknapPoint]

I wrote:

Most need-aware colleges (Wesleyan being another one of them) that I’m familiar with, don’t take financial aid into account until they near the end of their self-imposed budget which tends to be in last stages of the admissions process - well after early decision.

Well, I was wrong and I thought it best to come back and say so. There was a thread this morning on the Wesleyan CC page that began with the OP, an international student, quoting or paraphrasing a deferral letter (from ED2 to RD) that stated explicitly that the decision was based on the fact that the applicant was an international student with “high need” and even gave the acceptance rate for such students - a depressingly low 5%.

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/wesleyan-university/2126539-deferred-to-regular-decision.html

So, there you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth. Sorry, for my misstatement.

Like almost every other school that provides institutional need-based aid, Wesleyan treats international applicants that are seeking need-based aid different than U.S. applicants. I would say that your first statement that you refer to above is mostly correct, with the caveat that international applicants face higher scrutiny earlier in the process.

[ucbalumnus]

@mom2collegekids

Self-employed people generally take business deductions, like cell phones, gasoline, car leases, depreciation, and others stuff, that schools will add back in. So one parent may be deducting $10k-50k or more that CSS schools will add back in…so a FAFSA income may be $80k, but CSS May consider the income as $125k or more.

Someone in this situation may want to run the college NPC twice to get a range of possible net prices for the college: one run with income as normal, and another run with business deductions added back to income.