@JBStillFlying describes well how need blind schools use ‘proxies’ to help determine financial need, I expect AOs are very facile at incorporating this information.
I would also expect Chicago’s predictive analytics admissions model has at least one financial need variable that serves to further refine the net revenue estimates of the potential class.
@Zoom10 - schools like Chicago do tend to use net revenue targets, defined as gross revenue less financial aid (both need and merit based). Hitting the net revenue target is important, there’s not necessarily a concept of an FA budget.
Here’s a really good read from a blog from Erica Meltzer, I think she makes some very insightful predictions on how COVID-19 will affect standardized testing, university finances, and class compositions going forward.
“I think that this will particularly be the case at competitive private schools just below the very top rung, places like Emory, WashU (currently forced to compete for many applicants with test-optional U. Chicago), Vanderbilt, Boston College, Northeastern, Boston University, Tulane, and Colgate. At the rung of private colleges below that—schools that have had to take applicants’ finances seriously into account all along—admissions requirements will almost certainly become more lax. At the rungs below that, many institutions may simply close down.”
Trends that could suggest this sort of outcome were pointing in that direction anyway given the demographic cliff that's looming. International admits were supposed to help soften that blow, but coronavirus might have thrown a monkey-wrench in that plan, at least for the time being.