elephant in the room ...

princessbell
Sat, 12 Mar 2011 10:47:08 +0000

Ditto to indigoblue2’s awesome post, and to add some fact to this discussion, WashU is need-blind until they get to the last 5% of domestic applicants, and then they have to take need into consideration because the money literally runs out. So they’re technically not need blind b/c of these last few students. It’s not that they don’t want you b/c you need financial aid, it’s that there would be no point of admitting you over someone else if you can’t afford to come and they have NO MONEY left to give you. I’m peripherally involved with admissions and I know that it’s a very, very painful thing for them to do. And the administration and students have been working EXTREMELY hard to raise money for those who need it and the school has made socioeconomic diversity a huge point in the past few years.

I also don’t think it’s fair to use those stats about what percentage of the student body gets aid compared to “peer” schools. I think that the range of people from underprivileged backgrounds who apply (not even get in) to WashU is very low b/c the school does a poor job of recruiting people from lower income groups in the first place. Smart kids at bad schools are usually familiar with the concept of the Ivy League - finding out about schools like WashU and LACs takes work if you’re not in a privileged atmosphere IMO. WashU didn’t even bother to come once to my poorer, minority-filled county but went to the richer, whiter county about 30 minutes away multiple times. If they hadn’t randomly sent me a letter giving me a free visit (probably because of National Achievement) or if I weren’t a frequent CC visitor in HS, I would never have applied b/c I never would have known about it. I think that’s a bigger part of the problem - people of higher socioeconomic class apply to WashU, so naturally fewer of them need aid, and as a result our percentage of people on aid is lower than that at other institutions.