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.