@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.