When a school admits a student but gives so little financial aid that its clear the student will be unable to attend, I’ve heard it called and “admit deny.” Why would a school do this? It seems so hurtful and a bit perverse. Do they really think the family might be able to dig up the money somehow?
It says that the student has what it takes, although school cannot provide the needed financial support.
Some people would rather be denied outright, while others appreciate knowing they made the cut.
I suppose a very few families do come up with the money, from outside scholarships or great uncle Joe who is willing to shell out for his alma mater.
Yes – they get some portion of the admit-deny’s to attend, parents might pay using the PLUS loan, extended family, or selling the house (seriously! I saw this on a college website and crossed it off our list!).
@aroundhere Thats horrifying!
How would the school know?
Our kids were admitted to the colleges they applied to, and most were pretty pricey. The kids received no need based aid. One got a smaller merit award…and the other a decent one, but not huge.
We were absolutely able to pay the balance for them to attend, and I’m sure there are others like us in the admitted student family pool.
Schools don’t know for sure what will or won’t be possible. We could afford to send our kids to private colleges because grandparents left us a big sum of money and that was how we chose to spend it.
Because some colleges are need blind. The admissions department does its thing and financial aid does there’s, Also most colleges don’t meet need. You pays it if you gots it.
Aren’t some of these schools need blind? The Admissions committees don’t know how much aid is needed when they admit a student. They also don’t know whether the family applied for FA.
We attended an online chat with a top school and we saw that when admissions views the commonapp, the question regarding whether the applicant applied for FA is blacked out. The FA office sees the answer to that question.
Wouldn’t the NPC help reduce the likehood of a surprise “admit deny?”
As noted above… most schools don’t meet need.
I assumed they know from FAFSA and the profile. But it seems like you are all saying its not a deliberate thing. They don’t knowingly admit a student that can’t attend.
Students and families whose FA calculations result in the same net price may not have all the same actual financial resources (and/or capability and willingness for student and possibly parent loans and student work). So a given college’s FA offer may be seen as too expensive by one family, about what is needed by another, and very generous by a third.
It is likely colleges with worse FA are likely to find yield worse than those with better FA for similar student/parent financial situations. But such yield is probably not zero even for bad FA colleges like Penn State.
@gallentjill MOST colleges are need blind for admissions. This means the admissions department does NOT know about a student financial need when they review the application for admission.
The admission office accepts the kid.
The financial aid office puts together the financial aid offer.
They both get sent to the student.
Think about it…at all the large public universities out there…as well as the many need blind private schools…the admissions folks aren’t discussing finances with financial aid…at all.
@thumper1 Thanks. Thats a lot less nefarious then I feared.
I think schools put it on families to do the research. They figure if you applied then you were under the impression you could manage it. I’d guess that only schools that say the will meet “full demonstrated need” but are also “need aware” actually have communication between financial office and admissions during the application period.
Why would it be nefarious? A poor yield doesn’t help any college.
Years ago my D applied EA to a pricy private school. This was before NPCs were standard. She was deferred to RD. She was accepted RD but the letter said something to the effect of “we are unable to offer you any financial aid.” My interpretation was, if you really want to come and are willing to pay full freight we’ll happily take your money, but otherwise forget it, we’re not that interested in you.
The more transparent colleges will make clear on their website that they do not meet full financial need. So, if a student applies, they have that knowledge up front.
These days, a college that wants to be more transparent will have a good quality net price calculator, along with instructions on how to put in situations like divorced parents, small business income, etc…
Admit/deny happens in the context of schools that do not promise to meet full need. With a full-need school, the financial aid often comes up short for various reasons, but I think the admissions committee would not know details and would assume that the need will be met.
So the phrase “admit/deny” refers to a situation where the ad com makes a decision to admit a student but short them on need based aid. How does this happen? Many schools leverage their need based aid, and I think in those cases the admissions office will inform the financial aid office of some sort of priority ranking that in turn determines aid. At some schools the admissions & financial aid are more closely tied-- and may be managed by a department with a name such as “enrollment management”.
Now back to the situation where admissions is separate from financial aid – if admissions is “need blind” then the admissions office may know how they want to score a particular applicant in terms of financial aid priority – but not know the details of how much that student actually needs. NYU is an example of a school that is notorious for the way that it leverages aid-- it really assigns each student to a tier with identical need based grants to all students within that tier, regardless of need.
So, as a hypothetical example, they may be offering all “tier 3” candidates who have need an award that includes a $15,000 grant. Doesn’t matter whether the family EFC is 0, or 15K or 30K or 50K – the ad com has assigned that kid to tier 3, and the financial aid office will put together package including that grant. And it works fo NYU, because every year we see families willing to sign the dotted line for huge PLUS loans so that the kid can attend their “dream” college. I know about NYU because my daughter was admitted and offered a small grant — I don’t know the specifics about tier level but at the time my daughter was admitted there seemed to be about a 4 level breakdown – of course the top tier got generous awards.
I think in that situation it really is an expectation that it will pay off in PLUS loans. I found stats recently showing that NYU receives a humongous amount of $$$ every from PLUS loans, and is the second highest institutiional beneficiay in the nation from PLUS loans - the highest is Penn State --but Penn State has more families borrowing, but lesser amounts. Average PLUS loan at NYU is above $30K a year, and they have thousands of borrowers. And NYU has continually expanded offerings, so that it can enroll more and more students. Many of the students in the “admit/deny” category are also denied admission to their first choice school at NYU, and instead offered admission into the “liberal studies” program at one of NYU’s international campuses. So more of a deny/deny/admit scenario. And still plenty of those students sign up for the ride.
Here’s a somewhat different scenario, with perhaps a different collegiate end goal:
My son got an admit/deny letter in a somewhat different circumstance. His first choice was a LAC that had a policy that IF it awarded aid, it would meet full need --and they also promised to meet full need for any student who applied ED. And it would give full aid to continuing students. But it couldn’t promise to meet need for all first years that it admitted in the RD round.
Because we had no idea what to expect – and complicated financials (NCP / home equity / both parents self-employed) – ED wasn’t going to work. So my son applied RD but wrote his application that the LAC was his first choice and basically that he would do anything he could to attend. In hindsight, that was probably a mistake --he should have been more coy. His stats were above average for that school, and at that time the school had about a 75% admit rate.
My son went to visit the campus in March of his senior year and got feedback from other students that he was sure to be admitted with his stats, and came home elated. And then a week or so later he got a nice fat envelope annoucing that he had been admitted… but, unfortunately, the financial aid budget was exhausted and he could not be offered any aid other than the subsidized federal loans to which he was clearly entitled.
OK. I had a followup conversation with the financial aid people. We were told that my son could be on a “waitlist” for financial aid, and would get aid if it became available. By that time we had an offer in hand from a peer LAC that had offered us a specific dollar amount, and the top choice LAC told us that IF my son was given aid, he could expect a competitive package. So here was a school that acknowledged there was need and even was willing to say what the $$ amount would be… but we had to wait in line. They offered to allow us to double deposit — with the idea that my son could hold his spot while waiting on an answer for the money.
Now I don’t know how many kids admitted RD were in that position. I assume that it was a small fraction, but I found a Fiske guide article that referenced the practice, so we were not unique. Because my son’s stats were high for the school and I know he had great LOR’s — I would have expected him to be a very desirable candidate.But I think that he had pretty much told the school that he was desperate to come – and we probably looked like a middle class family that would figure out a way – certainly in a position to borrow if necessary.
So I think that at that time, for that college, it was a combination of yield management and increasing the number of fist year full pay students. Their high admission rate probably was tied to fairly low yield, and the admit/deny was a way of sorting out which students really were going to come. On paper the college was “need blind” but in reality they were cash strapped and couldn’t afford to offer full aid to all the students it needed to admit in order to fill the clas.
Probably on May 1st some financial aid dollars would be freed up, and they would be left with some students who were “waitlisted” for financial aid and some students who simply deposited without requesting the financial aid waitlist. But I don’t know how they would go about distributing the freed up funds - at that point it might have been most efficient to meet “full need” for the students who had less need – since obviously five $5K grants for five low need students would do more for their averages than one $25K grant for one student.
I’d note that in the years since that college’s admission rate has gone down to about 30% and it can now afford to promise to meet full need for all comers— so I think that we were really simply the victims of a policy that was the college’s way of dealing with an inadequate financial aid budget.
In any case, we never found out because I was not at all comfortable with the double deposit idea. My son’s #2 LAC admitted him with a financial aid package far more generous than what any other college offered— and so off my son went to the college that welcomed him with open arms.
@calmom Thank you for the great explanation. I’m happy it worked out for your son! It seems like the financial aid/merit system is not nearly as clear or as distinct as one might think. The way you described NYU sounds much more like a merit system masked as financial aid. I think a little clarity would be helpful at all of these institutions.