<p>In a move that was all but inevitable, Williams College ended need-blind admissions for international today, effective with this year’s current applicants, according to the test of a letter from interim Pres. Bill Wagner reprinted at EphBlog.</p>
<p>I say it was inevitable because, last year, Williams averaged slightly less than $5000 total revenue from each of their 143 international students. When you are spending $80,000 per student, you can’t make that up on volume. They were bleeding revenue from the failure to attract more than a handful of full-pay internationals. The comparison to peer schools (Swarthmore and Pomona both have roughly the same percentange of full-pay internationals as domestic students) is so dramatic that the only conclusion is that the need-blind policy was shaping an applicant pool that was unusually needy (or perhaps more creative in hiding assets feeling that full-pay wouldn’t increase admissions odds).</p>
<p>Whatever the case, there are millions of dollars of potential revenue on the table, money that simply cannot be ignored.</p>
<p>I believe this leaves Amherst has the only remaining “need-blind for internationals” liberal arts college. They have, however, just instituted a cap on the number of internationals (to the stop their own financial aid bleeding). I don’t think it will be long before they follow suit on this one.</p>
<p>Swarthmore was considering need-blind for internationals before the recession, but it is now solidly off the table. Nobody can justify charging internationals an average of $4,996 versus and average of $34,000 for US students like Williams did last year.</p>