Financial Aid: Your route to rejection!

Colleges and Universities University of Pennsylvania
#1

<p>"Colleges are using their so-called generous financial aid packages to sort out applicants. The colleges first showcase their eleemosynary aid packages to ward off the anxiety of the applicants who need them. When the deadline to admissions closes, the colleges seem to revert their philanthropic policies to 'filtering' policies. Some colleges such as Stanford, U Penn, Northwestern, et cetra send out an email to the applicants before the admission results phrasing 'many qualified applicants would not be provided admission to the college as due to our limited resources'. And every one knows what follows next: 'We are very sorry to state that we cannot provide you admission to the Class of ...................' Financial Aid matters. If you want to get enhance your chances of getting in, ask for no aid or if necessary ask for 20% or less of your actual need."</p>

<p>This is part of an email I got from one of my high school seniors cautioning me to think before I leap. What do colleges have to say about this, U Penn in particular, since he mentioned U Penn?</p>

#2

<p>From Penn's Student Registration and Financial Services website:
[quote]
Need-Blind Admission
Admissions decisions are not affected by a student's ability to pay, or by filing a financial aid application.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>They claim that applying for financial aid has no correlation to your admissions decision, but there is definitely reason to be skeptical. Hopefully past applicants and current Penn students can shed some light on the topic, but at the end of the day, I can't imagine them having a definitive answer. It's very hard to prove or disprove whether it's easier to get in without applying for financial aid since the only way one could really prove this is by having the same application sent twice: one asking for little-to-no aid and the other asking for a generous amount.</p>

<p>On a somewhat related note, what schools did the senior who sent the email get into? His email seemed to be a bit... vitriolic.</p>

#3

<p>As far as I can tell he's leaving next week for New York to attend Columbia University. Besides he also got admitted to Bard, Tufts and McGill: I saw the list on the notice board of my school.</p>

#4

<p>What you said is true about schools like WashU for example that are need aware, but I don't know of any Ivy league schools that
would send an email like this because they are in theory "need blind". This excludes applicants connected to donors. I doubt this is true because sending emails like this would greatly compromise Penn and
Stanford's reputations. What is the source of this?</p>

#5

<p>@Poeme:</p>

<p>I don't know :(. I just asked him for an advice to help me choose schools for my application this year and this is part of the reply I got. Thus I am inquiring this.</p>

#6

<p>For Penn, this "they're actually lying about being need-blind" thing is an absolute LIE. I know of at least 3 girls (two internationals, one from Cali) who are going to Penn and paying LESS THAN 15% of the COA due to very generous financial aid packaging that included no loans.</p>

#7

<p>This may be true for some, but NOT ALL colleges, especially not Penn. I'm attending on a package of $53k/year, and I was not the ideal applicant; I was strong, but not the strongest. Domestic applicants are subject to a need-blind process.</p>

#8

<p>So if the admissions committee is deciding between two applicants of equal value, and one is asking for aid and the other one isn't, what do you think the decision will be?</p>

<p>Also, what do you guys think of this? Need</a> Blind Admissions-Does it Really Exist? | Recent The Ivy Coach Newsletters</p>

#9

<p>
[quote]
Some colleges such as Stanford, U Penn, Northwestern, et cetra send out an email to the applicants before the admission results phrasing 'many qualified applicants would not be provided admission to the college as due to our limited resources'.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Untrue for Penn (and I'm sure for almost all others)...and not sure why you would post a portion of an email you received from a friend with no sources? </p>

<p>spectralfish - it's a link to a consulting firm and that wants you to be concerned so that you will hire them...</p>

#10

<p>Nonsense. I was the only financial aid applicant from my school and still got in. If Penn wasn't need-blind, it could have easily taken any of those other applicants, some far more competent than me, over me.</p>

#11

<p>Im actually quite confused about this. All the Ivies claimed they are 100% Need Blind Admissions. I have checked out Yale decision thread last year, but most of them who got in did not apply for Financial aid except 3 or 4. Are they really 100%, I can't tell.</p>