How can colleges like Amherst, Vassar, and Barnard have need-blind admissions, but still meet 100% demonstrated need of applicants? They must be saddled with an overwhelming amount of financial aid that would be impossible to plan for. This policy seems a little idealistic…does it function in practice?
They have enormous pots of money. I think they average about 50% of COA in free money per year, but it is fine with their bank accounts it if is 60% one year and 45% the next. They could, in fact, give 100% every year and not feel pinched.
Schools with a smaller margin have to be more careful. They don’t promise to meet full need for students off the waitlist or for international students
remember that most schools that are need blind and meet 100% demonstrated need are only need blind to US citizens/ US permanent residents. They are need aware to all others. In addition, they get a large amount of applicants so the acceptance rate is small. The school’s enrollment management office knows how many students they will take, what yield they will get. Regional admissions directors are well versed on many of the schools where they accept students.
They have very, very deep pockets.
It seems to have worked out all right for them over the last several years…
They clearly have a good sense of how the finances work. None of these schools is even close to bankrupt.
Statistics.
They aren’t really “need blind”.
They are “need blind” on an individual level, but not a group level.
They set admissions standards in such away as to favor students from more well-to-do backgrounds. Standardized test scores are one of the best proxies for family income and socio-economic status-- so if a school is looking at test scores, it is looking at family income as well. Again, not on an individual basis – there will be rich students with poor test scores, and poor students with high test scores – but on average, a student body with high SATs is going to have more wealthy students than a student body with more moderate average scores.
Colleges also use binding ED lock in full-pay or nearly full-pay students early on. Most end up taking 40% or more of their classes that way.
And the holistic admission process also provides other insights into family income. The college admissions process values activities and accomplishment that generally cost money, and are hard for people on the lower end of the economic spectrum to access, whether it is years of music lessons or participation in EC’s and summer programs with accompanying participation fees and travel costs.
It works, year after year, because even though individual students may be outliers, the ad coms actually have a very good sense of which students will need substantial financial aid and which won’t.
^^^ with all due respect, we should give credit where credit is due.
Amherst has obviously placed a great deal of importance on diversifying socio-economically. All you have to do is look at their % pell grants to see that. In fact Amherst and Vassar are #1 and #2 on usnwr’s list of elite LACs with the most Pell grants at 25%. (for comparison Harvard is 18%).
I know that there is a lot of cynicism regarding “need-blind”, but let the percentages speak for themselves.
If anything being low-income is almost a ‘hook’ at Amherst.
@calmom It should be noted the Columbia and Barnard participate in HEOP. They admit significant numbers of low income students with lower SAT scores. Indeed, you cannot get a HEOP award if your SAT/ACT is above a certain threshold. I’d also argue that having over 50% of students on financial aid represents a significant financial commitment on the part of these universities.
Having worked in admissions, I’d also argue that students with significant financial need and with less-than-stellar academic records have a better chance at these highly selective universities because they will take the time to evaluate individual circumstances.
I agree they have a well researched idea of what dollar totals they are likely to need, annually, to support the FA needs of the new class, even with need-blind. Then, they allocate not just that figure, but a bit of slush. When a college starts to run into some squeeze (however they want to define it, in management and accounting terms, eg, post 2008, for some,) there are those which adjusted their policies to be need aware, in whole or in part.
I disagree that standards favor well-to-do kids (at tippy tops.) There is no greater value placed on “high-cost” ECs. There are no better guarantees for high-score kids, as shown by the TTs that report this detail. And just being wealthy doesn’t mean a better app, in whole.
And when we speak of tippy tops. it’s not a kid’s financial circumstances that get him an admit. The ones qualified to do the work for the four years are well able, have records showing that, including good ECs. We’ve got to get past this notion subpar kids (of any sort) are getting some advantage. That includes the stereotype that poor kids with low stats have any advantage.
@lookingforward Especially agree with your comment about “high cost” ECs. When I was in admissions, listing such ECs actually hurt candidates. You wouldn’t believe the number of students who write about how they’ve learned about “foreign cultures” while vacationing in Marbella or St Lucia.
@exlibris97 – yes, but HEOP is part of their planning and budgeted for. The Barnard requirements for HEOP eligibility basically insure that that HEOP students won’t be admitted through competition with the regular applicant pool – basically if an SAT CR score is high enough to be competitive for regular admissions it is disqualifying for HEOP or BOP. So there is no way that HEOP admissions are “need blind” . I would guess that the Barnard admissions department and financial aid department work cooperatively in some way to identify HEOP/BOP eligible students – because there is an SAT/ACT score ceiling for those programs (rather than a floor) – then need-blind admissions simply wouldn’t work for those students.
I wouldn’t say it is impossible for a HEOP / BOP eligible student to get in, but the program requirement are at odds with the normal effort students would ordinarily make to increase test scores. For example, my d. scored 620 on the SAT CR- which is the highest score one can have to be HEOP/BOP eligible - but given that score she opted to take and submit the ACT instead, where she scored well above the 24 ACT English ceiling. And she would have been nuts not to want to improve her score, given that she was applying to other colleges as well.
@calmom I’m afraid I don’t follow. You state that the HEOP requirements are at odds with the usual academic requirements, but “need blind” refers to financial circumstances. Barnard’s Provosts explained last year that they actually do not have a financial aid “budget” per se but rather allocate funds based on the total demand for financial assistance, if necessary taking resources from other budgets.
HEOP was only one example. I have a neighbour who is a Gates Millennium Scholar at Barnard. Her scores were sky high but her academic record had its ups-and downs. Barnard offered her virtually a full ride and the Gates replaces her loans and work-study (and she was admitted before Gates decisions were announced, so that couldn’t have influenced Barnard’s decision). If Barnard had considered her financial need, they wouldn’t have admitted her.
From my experience working with Barnard, I’ve seen them reject far more “full pay” students than those requiring financial need.
The question was, “How can colleges like Amherst, Vassar, and Barnard have need-blind admissions, but still meet 100% demonstrated need of applicants?”
I said that they are not truly “need blind”, but rather control their financial aid budget through admissions policies designed to assure enrollment of a very large percentage of full pay students, through practices such as ED and admission standards that are designed to favor more wealthy students. In the case of Barnard, which has a very small endowment and limited funds available for financial aid, that currently means 60% of its students are full pay. See https://barnard.edu/pressroom/fact-sheet
I also said that they are “need blind” on an individual basis, but not on a group basis. That is, Barnard doesn’t care if my daughter needed a $30K grant or if your neighbor has 0 EFC… bu they don’t want too many students like that. So they structure admissions to assure that year after year, more well-to-do than needy students are admitted. It’s not an accident that year after year, Barnard manages to keep the percentage of financial aid recipients at 42% or below. (See https://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/2011databook_0.pdf at page 48 for data for 2001-2011) It’s a result of policies and practices designed to keep things that way).
Your claimed “experience” seeing more “full pay” students being rejected is at odds with the reported statistics. 60% is more than 40%, so obviously more full pay students get admitted at Barnard than financially needy students.
I’d note that on campus the economic disparities are very apparent and it is painfully obvious to students who need a substantial amount of financial aid that the majority of students come from wealth. The other colleges others that were mentioned in the OP do subsidize a majority of their students. At Vassar it is flipped --60% of students receive aid – see https://admissions.vassar.edu/financial-aid/ – and Amherst provides aid to 55% of its students – https://www.amherst.edu/admission/financial_aid — but then Amherst has an endowment that is 10 times as large as Barnard’s, and Vassar’s endowment is almost 4 times greater than than Barnard’s – so I understand why Barnard needs to continue to admit a substantial majority of full pay students to keep afloat.
But my observation is the same – Vassar and Amherst also adopt admission policies designed to keep their financial aid numbers stable over time. It’s a simple matter of budgeting – they need to be able to consistently project revenue and expenditures. I think ED is probably the greatest too the colleges have for that, as for the most part individuals with substantial financial need do not apply ED. About 40% of Barnard’s entering class is drawn from ED.
They can say whatever they want for PR, but the reality is that the numbers/percentages stay consistent from year to year. That is not an accident.
They did experience a significant bump in costs in 2009 - see p. 53 of https://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/2011databook_0.pdf – but I am assuming that was due to the impact of the market crash and ensuing recession.
Because Barnard’s endowment is so small, only 12% of its financial aid budget comes from endowment, as opposed to 40% for peer institutions – so that may be another reason for the assertion of how funds are allocated. (see p. 43). But obviously someone is crunching numbers for Barnard an sees a financial aid budget, or else they woudn’t be able to print such nice charts and graphs with all those easily referenced numbers.
Just putting this in here in case anyone hasn’t seen it:
Tangentially related.
Overall, elite college admission standards favor affluent applicants. Intentionally or not, it’s high income kids who score highest on standardized tests and often have the best grades too (though I’d say the former more than the latter).
There are other ways, as @calmom says, to get more full pay students. Some colleges in the midwest discovered a few years ago that a lot of high school lacrosse players would like to continue to play in college and most of them are from wealthier families. So, they added lacrosse programs.
^ those are not all meets need/need blind schools, but I think the general idea is the same.