So I was both admissions and financial aid at a school that was not need-aware, as well as financial aid only and admissions only at schools that were not need-aware. Schools have to do prep work in advance of admissions decisions, as @thumper1 noted. One school where I worked prepped all financial aid applications in advance of admissions decisions, making it easy to quickly package aid according to packaging policies as soon as admissions decisions were made. At other schools, only those students who were admitted were prepped/packaged (I would say that this is typical for public university undergraduate financial aid). In all cases, admissions and financial aid were totally separate things … even when I did both.
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