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.