@calmom for post #15 - are those known procedures?
anyway, this goes back to my initial thinking that it is more difficult for “high” need non URM kids to get admitted to meet 100% need schools, even the kids may have a way to borrow 20% or 30% of the needs…
Does it also mean that the non need-blind school also knows the kid’s financial need before making decision? does non need-blind mean need-aware?
Those are examples of how the process can be handled, supported by anecdotal information from specific schools. I do not have direct information as to the current process at any given school.
Yes. The school is either need-blind, or it isn’t.
If it isn’t, then at some point it may look at the student’s calculated need and that could result of a student being waitlisted or even rejected when the student would otherwise be admitted.
While true, at more selective colleges it might not be the primary factor. That it, the broader effects of lack of financial resources might be more significant as a barrier --for example, students who attend lower-performing public schools with fewer resources, counseling, and college-prep support vs. students whose parents can afford to pay for private education, tutoring for test prep, etc.
I’m curious about this, too. Son is looking at schools with $65k/year price tags, some with no merit aid. Our EFC is approximately $50k. Does “needing” 25% in FA affect his admissions chances? Or does this issue come into play when applicants need 50%+?
If the school is “need-blind” then it shouldn’t matter whether your EFC is 0 or $15K or $50K – the ad com won’t factor need directly into the decisiion making process.
If the school is need-aware, then the amount of need could very well be a factor, depending on the process used to for enrollment management. Obviously high-needs students are more expensive to enroll than low-need students.
Again: students with financial need get admitted. My kids were admitted to most of the colleges they applied to – and for the colleges that didn’t accept them, there were always other objective factors that could have accounted for the college decision. I think the bigger problem is with schools that don’t promise to meet full need - then it is very common for students to get admitted but not be given enough aid to attend.
My son was accepted to a college - his top choice – which did not guarantee to meet full need at the time, and his acceptance letter stated that there was not enough money in the financial aid budget so he was not given any grant aid, but the school offered to put him on a “waitlist” for financial aid. My son opted to attend a different school – one that did not promise to meet need of all student, but was extremely generous with the need-based offer that was extended to him. The school that shorted my son on aid has since changed its practices – now it promises to meet full need, but is need-aware in admission policies – so if those policies had been in place when my son applied, does that mean that he would have gotten aid and attended? or would he have been waitlisted or rejected because of his need? Obviousliy I don’t know – but the point is that unless the school is both “need-blind” and also promises to meet full need of all students, it doesn’t really make a a practical difference. And most of the schools that promise to meet 100% need and are also need-blind are also among the most selective.
@calmom based on what I found, and with the exception of the highly selective colleges, many of the meet full need schools are not need-blind. I listed some in my first post. Hence, it got me thinking that “high need” and non-URM kids may have a difficult time get admitted.
I understand that – I just commented that the ones that are both 100% need + need-blind are for the most part so selective that chances are iffy for anyone. My point is that for the rest, it really doesn’t make much of a practical difference whether the kid gets rejected/waitlisted at a 100% need school that is need-aware; or gets into a need-blind school that does not guarantee to meet full need, but can’t afford to attend. It’s just two different ways schools choose to deal with admissions and allocation of financial aid dollars.
High-need / highly qualified students get in – you can look at statistics and see that just about every college will tend to admit approximately the same number or percentage of students needing aid each year, and aid dollar averages tend to hold steady as well. As I’ve already pointed out, the impact is at the margins.
Or to put it another way – if the school is a reach, then the need-awareness would be one more likely strike against admission. But if the school is a match or a safety, probably doesn’t make a difference. Colleges are happy to use their aid dollars to attract good students.
@calmom Having worked in college admissions I agree with your comment that applicant rankings are not based solely on metrics. While both universities I worked at were need blind, and we received no information about financial status at any point in the process, from attending admissions conferences I know that even “need aware” colleges like Smith will take other factors into consideration when deciding whether a student is at the margin. For instance, a candidate presenting a particularly compelling case or having unusual circumstances (talent, exceptional adversity, achieving something truly exceptional) could be “ranked” higher than a student with higher stats.
I’ve also had experience with several candidates in the past few years that were high need and were not necessarily “stellar” students. What I found interesting is that they were admitted and had their full need met by both their need aware and full need universities. In the case of the “need aware” colleges, I simply assume that the admissions committee really liked them and so ranked them highly.
One final comment regarding meeting “demonstrated need”. Again, my experience is that most families feel that they can contribute considerably less than universities believe they can. This is even true at very wealthy universities with very generous financial aid programs. That’s unfortunate when it happens but a standard formula is the only way to ensure any sort of equity. Special circumstances are taken into account but I’ve had cases were families argued that they needed $1 million in investments for retirement and rainy days. Home equity is always the biggest dilemma. The university I worked at did not consider it when calculating financial aid, but when I attended a meeting there this summer they said they were reconsidering that policy as many faculty and alumni were arguing this practice was inequitable, effectively awarding financial aid to families with very valuable assets. The argument was why exclude home equity if you are going to consider investment accounts, both being assets.
Investment accounts and homes are not the same – people don’t live at their brokerage, and selling off investments to pay fo college expenses would reduce net worth, but not render them homeless. I don’t have a problem with colleges considering home equity to a certain extent, but they really should adjust the figure or exclude a certain base figure or percentage from consideration because it’s not really a fungible asset.
@Akqj10 It is so hard to determine what a school may or may not do and how they will assess your “need” because there are so many variables. I found it interesting that the two schools you named, Smith and Skidmore, had bottom line COA at the most expensive and least expensive of the dozen schools where D was accepted. Smith came in at $25K/year more than Skidmore although D was an early write and top merit awardee. Both are CSS profile schools, both given the same exact information. One thing we do know is that Skidmore was looking to build their STEM departments so the choice of major can very well play a part in financial aid packages. Also, at the time of applying, Skidmore was a safety (in our minds) and Smith a solid match…that is no longer the case with a 25% admission rate this year.
@calmom I don’t think anyone expects a family to go homeless, nor are homes treated as a fungible asset. The issue is whether families with extensive amounts of equity in their homes should be required to borrow against it. Indeed, even if they were they would still be advantaged since home equity interest rates are usually much lower than the rates offered on consumer and educational loans.
@calmom I don’t think anyone expects a family to go homeless, nor are homes treated as a fungible asset. The issue is whether families with extensive amounts of equity in their homes should be required to borrow against it. Indeed, even if they were they would still be advantaged since home equity interest rates are usually much lower than the rates offered on consumer and educational loans.
“I do agree that money matters a lot more than the colleges let on, but also that there is no such thing as “need-blind” – I think that ad coms can get a good sense of finances from most applications, and they know what their financial aid budget is like. (I mean, poor kids usually don’t have the same range of EC’s and out-of-school opportunities that rich kids have – it’s just slightly more hit or miss when they can’t confirm economic status before making the admission decision.)”
Exactly, need-blind (and holistic admissions) are two of the phrases colleges use to justify who they accept with little meaning. In addition to knowing family (income) context to figure out what applicants had advantages, colleges need full pays to subsidize the ones getting financial aid. This doesn’t mean that a someone that does not apply for FA has a hook, the applicants have to be similar more or less in grades ECs, etc.
Income qualifications for home equitey loans can be quite stringent. Especially for families that have lived in the same home for awhile, in an area with rising home prices, there can be a significant gap between family income and paper equity. If the source of equity is the amount that has been paid down over time on the initial loan – that’s one thing. But when the equity is due to a rise in market value over time while family income has remained stable-- or even gone down – then the equity is not a source that can be tapped.
Not when the bank turns the family down, or when the family has poor credit related to other financial difficulties. This is moving away from the topic of “need-blind” to the topic of meeting need – but perhaps that is something intentional on the part of the100% need/ so-called need-blind schools – they can stil structure financial aid policies in ways that keep students on the lower end of the economic spectrum from enrolling, even in admitted. Together with policies about noncustodial parent income, the consideration of home equity tends to make things very difficult for children who have been raised by single parents.
Collleges aren’t looking for “similar” students – the whole point of holistic, selective admissions is to get different students – they want all kinds of diversity, including income/background diversity – but the diversity also has to meet the instituional goals. If they can afford to give need based grant aid to only 30% of enrolling students, then part of their admission goals will be to admit a class where 30% will qualify for that aid.
Of course the students all need to meet whatever the college’s absolute minimum criteria are for admission, but it is not a matter of choosing the rich kid over the poor kid with identical grades and EC’s — it’s simply not a one-for-one competition.
And my point was that even so-called “need-blind” colleges can shape the economic profile of incoming classes by the choices they make as to which EC’s and academic criteria to value. SAT & ACT scores are known to be tied to family income; many public high schools do not have the resources to offer the range of courses that are available to students attending private high schools or public high schools in wealthier districts; kids from lower income families can’t afford to participate in the same range of EC’s.
Boston College is “need blind” and meets 100% of financial need (based on their formula for financial need). From what I’ve read, even their wait list is need blind which is rare in my experience (nephew was wait-listed from 4 schools- all took need into consideration and one basically told him he was in if he could come up with tuition-which he could not).
I hope I have not “over-read” this, I think, instead of “admit-deny” where some need-blind (but not meeting full need) schools do, meeting full-need schools may just turn away kids when the schools can’t meet their need.
@annamom Great link. I don’t remember such a bold confession by a college, albeit to raise millions. But if Lafayette concedes in this challenge that 150 to 250 qualified students are denied each year due to financial reasons, then those slots are filled by a slightly lesser cohort who are full-pay or mostly-pay. Using a yield of about 30%, that is 45 to 75 of these students matriculating. Out of a class of 681 for class of 2021, that’s more than a few at the margins. (Not to pick on Lafayette, one of the Top 5o LACs, for its honesty regarding admissions…)
Union College is also very straightforward and clear in stating they are a “need-aware” school.
"First, counselors and students should understand that very few colleges and universities have unlimited financial aid budgets. Maybe 20 institutions in the country operate with unlimited aid funds – schools like Harvard and Yale. They can meet the full need of all the students they accept. They are truly need blind and meet full need.
But the vast majority of American colleges and universities must manage to an annual financial aid budget. And this means they’re choosing either the need blind or need aware approach."
At Union, we have a pretty generous financial aid budget – about $30 million per year. But we are need aware…
https://www.union.edu/admissions/school-counselor/resources/needblind-needaware/
I don’t think it’s a secret that schools have to turn away students for financial reasons. And it’s easier to get admitted if you don’t need much (or any) money. What I don’t understand is why people think that’s wrong…it stinks, if you need more money, because you’ve probably already had the deck stacked against you, but it’s their budget and they get to decide how to give it away.
Best to go in with your eyes open and realistic expectations. In general, (and there are exceptions, yada yada) if your need is 70k, they have to want you 140k/year more than people who are paying 70k.
There seems to be a lack of transparency around which schools are “need-aware” and “need-blind”. Outside of the top 20 colleges with unlimited financial aid budgets it might reasonable to assume that financial aid is one factor in the admissions decision. I think it is admirable that Union and Lafayette are candid about this.