Poor Kids Need Not Apply?
"Need-aware" versus "need-blind" admissions policies
Washington and Lee University, a highly selective private college in Virginia, recently made headlines by announcing that, following a $132 million dollar donation from an alumni, it would be adopting a “need-blind” admissions policy. As their press release explained, this meant that moving forward the school would “no longer consider students’ or families’ ability to pay when evaluating applications for undergraduate admissions.”
This announcement that they would stop considering a student’s ability to pay is good news for low and middle income students interested in Washington and Lee, which also touts their W&L Promise program1, which “assures that undergraduate students whose families have an annual household income of less than $150,000 pay no tuition, and those whose families have an annual household income of less than $75,000 pay no tuition, room or board.”
It also, however, serves as a reminder that prior to this infusion of alumni cash, Washington and Lee did engage in a practice called “need-aware” admissions, where students were evaluated not just for their ability to be academically successful but also for their ability to pay the more than $85,000 a year it costs to attend the school as a student living on-campus.
For many families, the idea that their income could be held against their child during the admissions process is an uncomfortable reality to consider. It’s a pretty overt reminder that students from the wealthiest families often have multiple advantages when applying to highly selective colleges and universities, though happily it’s not a wide spread practice. So let’s dive in to how “need-blind” and “need-aware” admissions practices really work and why some schools continue to consider ability to pay as part of their process.
What is need-blind admissions?
Need-blind admissions refers to any admissions process where family financial resources are NOT considered as part of the determination for which students get offered a spot. The good news is that the vast majority of colleges and universities are need-blind, at least for domestic students.
(And always remember, the majority of colleges admit the majority of their applicants the majority of the time)
The category of need-blind colleges and universities for non-international students is really diverse, including many highly selective public and private universities. This includes flagship schools like the University of Michigan, the entire University of California system, UNC Chapel Hill and more on the public side. Need-blind private colleges include MIT, University of Chicago, Brown, Dartmouth, and Duke.
One important caveat is that while some need-blind institutions do promise to meet all of a student’s demonstrated financial need and/or have robust institutional aid programs for lower income students, this doesn’t mean that every student who gets admitted will actually be able to afford to go.
That reality - that an offer of admissions can be an empty promise for a low or middle income student without enough financial aid support - is one of the reasons that some schools give for continuing to practice need-aware admissions.
What is need-aware admissions?
Need-aware admissions practices factor in a student/families financial resources along with the students academic record and their other admissions materials. The institutions that practice need-aware admissions tend to share several criteria:
They are high cost and most likely private institutions
They are highly selective (you have to have plenty of people to say “no” in order to make this model work
They will require a student to complete the CSS profile and submit that in the fall, prior to admissions reviews.
They don’t usually advertise the fact that they are need-aware, but a fall CSS deadline is often a clue
Need-aware institutions are thought to include schools like Macalester College, Emerson College, and Berklee College of Music, among others.
This doesn’t mean that the institution doesn’t admit lower or middle income students, but rather that they may have a certain amount of aid capacity that they are prepared to offer in a particular year and are filling their admissions slots accordingly.
For example (and using easy math), a school may have a program where they say tuition and fees are waived for students with a family income below $100,000. As they do their institutional budgeting they’ll factor in the cost of tuition and fees, the expected amount of Pell Grant dollars lower income students might bring in, and the set a threshold for how much tuition revenue loss they can sustain and arrive at a number range for how many high need students they can admit in a given year. Say, for easy math, that number is 50. They’ll also calculate their yield rate (the number of students that they offer admissions to who choose to enroll there - schools want high yield rates) and know that they can safely offer admissions to 75 high need students to eventually land at the target of 50.
For lower and middle income students, that means that they may have to be even stronger academic candidates than their wealthier peers because there are fewer spots open to them. Does this mean that a rich kid with a 2.0 is going to get selected over a lower income kid with a 4.0? No, not necessarily. But would I feel more confident if I was a 3.8 GPA kid whose parents make $600K a year than if I was a 3.8 GPA kid whose parents make $60K? YEP.
Is need-aware admissions ethical?
This is the trickier question.
On the one hand, it feels unfair that bright, hard working students might not have a shot at getting into the highly selective school of their dreams because they have the disadvantage of not having wealthy parents. I think we want there to be a meritocracy and the promise that any student who works hard enough and excels academically will be welcomed with open arms. It feel icky to be forced to acknowledge that wealthier kids have an easier path, even though this has ALWAYS been true (and “easier” is relative when you are looking at schools with 15% acceptance rates).
On the other hand, these models are often designed to ensure that the lower income student who do get admitted have the financial support they need to attend. These models also acknowledge that some students are just simply not going to be able to attend without taking on substantial private student loan debt and that offering them a spot but not being able to guarantee institutional aid is a false promise of sorts.
Would I personally rather my kid get denied admission or offered a spot but need to take out $150,000 in private student loans over four years to be able to attend?
I’d probably rather them get denied, honestly.
(But this is also why I won’t let my kid apply to some schools, because that is an awfully crappy set of choices for a 17 year old)
The thing I find the most unethical about need-aware admissions policies is that it can be really hard to tell when they are in place and so some students are likely not going to be aware that there is more to the decision making process than just their admissions application.
In this, as all things, I just wish there was more transparency for students when it comes to the highly selective schools that say “no” far more than they say “yes”.
