Sorry, misread your post. Highly selective school applicants skew more affluent, but I am not aware of this data at the school level. @data10 is there data on this at the school level?
I’d argue that much of these data aren’t relevant for admission purposes at need-blind schools. If they want to identify FGLI students, it’s be much more efficient with a separate checkbox/section as I suggested above. On the other hand, if they want to use it to identify full-pay applicants, well, then they aren’t truly need blind if they have a preference for full-pay students!
It’s difficult to tell. I guess it would be a little surprising to me that ~50% of applicants could be full pay, but maybe the number of applicants in the grand scheme of things is so small and skews so affluent that this is the case?
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No we didn’t.
Since a lengthier response here would be off-topic feel free to DM me. Your profile is hidden so I can’t initiate a DM.
The common app data thru March 15 shows that 56% of applicants reside in the highest income zipcode quintile (31% of the population lives in these zipcodes), and 6% of apps came from the lowest income quintile.
These data aren’t perfect because
-not everyone from high income zipcodes is full pay
-in some of the highest income zipcodes there is lower income housing (which is true of my HS’s district)
-this isn’t the year’s complete picture yet
-common app doesn’t get all the college app volume (maybe 65%ish or so).
Common app could cut this data by school, but I imagine that’s low priority.
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That high? Or do you mean just as a percentage of applications to private colleges?
No, that was to all schools…publics including CCs and private, but I don’t have a reference. It might be on common app’s site somewhere. Some schools have their own apps as we know, and there was coalition app (now dead, at least in its previous form).
No need. I didn’t mean to be nosy about anyone’s personal circumstances. It doesn’t matter. I just didn’t understand the point that you were trying to make with your example. Financial aid offices can only process the applications that they receive so I can’t imagine they really need the checkbox. As far as I know none calculate aid packages for applicants who haven’t actually applied for aid. That would truly be a waste of their time.
I think some don’t even start to process aid packages until the paperwork is complete so if an applicant forgets to send some needed documents, they may be not get their application reviewed until after the applicant is admitted. Upthread someone said that cal tech doesn’t even want the financial documents and aid application until after admissions decisions are made. I didn’t know that, but that seems great in some ways and truly need-blind. On the other hand, doesn’t that delay a student’s ability to compare packages between colleges in April (unless cal tech’s aid office calculates them very very quickly assuming they have the same April 1st notification date)?
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At most colleges it would but Caltech is very small. The incoming freshman class size is about 240 so with a yield rate of approximately 50% they’re making less than 500 offers. I don’t have the data but I’ve heard that about half are full pay so the FA office only has to process about 250 applications.
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Why would an open admission community college use The Common Application?
Also, don’t many state universities use only their own applications?
https://www.commonapp.org/explore/ says that 978 colleges use The Common Application (not necessarily exclusively).
No idea, but some do.
Don’t know the number off the top of my head which state schools have only a self app option. CA UCs and CSUs, UWashington and UT Austin are some of the schools historically not on common app. UCs had 210k apps last year. UT Austin and UDub will be on common app starting this year.
Also note that those app numbers on the common app update report linked above only include data from schools who were members for all three years that comprise that report. So, the data is undercounted and doesn’t include schools who switched to common app in the last 3 years, like the Illinois publics.
You can PM me if you want to continue, as this is off topic.
Incredibly helpful and useful. Understand all of the caveats, but this makes a lot of sense.
In the U.S. at least, it just seems strange to me that ~50% of applicants would be full pay. ~18% of households earn $150k+. But I guess it is not hard to believe that half of all college applications come from within that group.
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That’s not a good excuse for larger schools, because their admissions and FA offices are proportionally larger.
Caltech doesn’t want to waste its very limited resources in its FA office on applicants who aren’t going to be admitted. Once acceptance decisions are made, some of the personnel who work on admissions can be shifted to work on financial aid without creating any conflict.
I don’t think it’s safe to make that assumption at all.
AO after AO, counselor after counselor, and anecdote after anecdote tells us that legacy is at best a tie-breaker. T25 / <20% acceptance colleges reject the vast majority of their legacy applicants. Legacy alone is not going to get it done for an applicant who isn’t qualified. A development or celebrity kid, sure. A standard-issue legacy? It just hasn’t been like that for a long time.
Anecdotally the handful of legacy admits I know with confirmed stats were as qualified as anyone for the reachiest colleges. They chose their parent’s alma mater out of familiarity and tradition, not as an admissions strategy per se.
Granted, when there are 20 or 30 well-qualified applicants per seat, a potential tie-breaker is a huge deal, and it is well within reason to question why legacies deserve that boost. But I think anyone who believes ending legacy is going to lead to a new era of fairness in admissions and better-qualified student populations is going to be surprised by how little things change.
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Seems that Harvard weights LDC more than that, and more than URM that lots of people complain about.
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No two applicants are identical, so their claim that legacy is just a tie-breaker (as if two applicants, one legacy and one non-legacy, were otherwise identical or interchangeable) simply cannot be true.
No one denies that many legacies are qualified. It’s just that some of them (they just may not be among the ones you know) aren’t and they needed their legacy boosts.
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This doesn’t disprove the tiebreaker theory (the 3% rate in the below-average range is likely development kids).
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That data in #26 is in the context of one specific scenario that was run…the elimination of all hook preferences along with an increased preference for low-ses.
Harvard has already increased preference for low-ses, and has changed their admission eval process and criteria since the lawsuit too, most notably going test optional.
Needing the legacy boost to get in ≠ unqualified.
The schools are rejecting 85-90%+ of their legacy applicants; there is just no reason for them to accept unqualified ones.
Needing the legacy boost to get in = less qualified than someone else who doesn’t need it.
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