Does applying for Financial Aid hurt chances of Admission at Visitation?

[Anonymous]

I saw on another thread here on DCUM that applying for Financial Aid at Visitation could hurt your chances of admission vs. an applicant that is Full Pay.

Does anyone have any experience or background on whether this is true or not?

[Anonymous]

Need a little more information such as what school you are coming from (public, private, Catholic feeder), HSPT scores and GPA and Legacy status. That said, I think it would probably hurt a little. Depending on other factors already mentioned, that might not matter but they are not need-blind in admissions.

[Anonymous]

Visitation is not need-blind in admissions. They have a finite financial aid budget. All else being equal, if you are full pay your admission odds are better than if you need financial aid. And if you only need some modicum amount of financial aid, your admission odds are better than if you need a "full ride".

[Anonymous]

The odds of a student needing FA being accepted are almost certainly lower than a Full Pay applicant. Two thirds of each class accepted has to be full pay. They can’t have a lower percentage of “full pays” because they need those tuition dollars to run the school.

Visitation gives $3 million of FA to 125 students (33% of the population of 500) So the average FA award is $24,000 and the tuition is $39,150 or 60%. So the average FA recipient’s family has to come up with the remaining 40% or $15,150.

If Visitation give FA larger that 60% to anyone, they have to offset that by either giving less money to other FA applicants or by admitting more “Full Pays”.

The big question is how much FA do you need? If you need 75% to 90% to make it work, the odds are stacked against you.

[Anonymous]

That FA sounds way too generous.

[Anonymous]

Do those financial aid numbers include tuition remission for faculty and staff? That may be where the bulk of that money is going.

[Anonymous]

They don’t publish who gets how much. But if they are giving significant tuition breaks to faculty and staff that money almost certainly come from the FA budget.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That FA sounds way too generous.

These are the numbers the school publishes (Total Financial Aid given and percentage of students that receive it.)

While the “average” FA package is 60% of tuition, there have to be a significant number of people that get much less than that. If they have one student that gets 100% they have to offset that with four that get 25% aid. This is a case where the mean average —- dividing the total amount of aid by the number of people receiving it —- doesn't give you a good idea of what the frequency distribution looks like.

[Anonymous]

The. admissions staff is not going to give a lot more information about Financial Aid because they are trying to get the maximum number of applications.

Telling people about this $3 million pot of money and that 1/3rd of students get some it is a good way to encourage people who don’t feel they can afford the school to apply. They are not going to tell you about what your odds are or how much you might get. They’ll let you imagination and optimism work its magic.

ALL these schools do this. Just read the description of the FA programs on their websites. It’s almost always stated the same way with the total amount of FA and the percentage who get it.

The idea that schools don’t consider FA need in the Admissions process is strange on its face. What would Visitation do if at the end of the Admissions process they ended up with a class in which 2/3rds not 1/3rd) needed FA to attend? Where’s that $1,000,000 going to come from?

[Anonymous]

It will never increase your chances

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The odds of a student needing FA being accepted are almost certainly lower than a Full Pay applicant. Two thirds of each class accepted has to be full pay. They can’t have a lower percentage of “full pays” because they need those tuition dollars to run the school.

Visitation gives $3 million of FA to 125 students (33% of the population of 500) So the average FA award is $24,000 and the tuition is $39,150 or 60%. So the average FA recipient’s family has to come up with the remaining 40% or $15,150.

If Visitation give FA larger that 60% to anyone, they have to offset that by either giving less money to other FA applicants or by admitting more “Full Pays”.

The big question is how much FA do you need? If you need 75% to 90% to make it work, the odds are stacked against you.

Finally a good, balanced FA answer. Kudos

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do those financial aid numbers include tuition remission for faculty and staff? That may be where the bulk of that money is going.

+1 the FA budget for random applicants is certainly much smaller than the full FA budget. The FA office may prioritize faculty and staff, current families, families with siblings attending, alumni, and who so on.

[Anonymous]

The most important thing about education is money

[Anonymous]

Hey Jeff you should lock and wipe this thread because it uses the word budget. That is poverty talk. Poor people should not have the free speech thing. It's pay to play now a days!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do those financial aid numbers include tuition remission for faculty and staff? That may be where the bulk of that money is going.

+1 the FA budget for random applicants is certainly much smaller than the full FA budget. The FA office may prioritize faculty and staff, current families, families with siblings attending, alumni, and who so on.

Financial Aid is an enrollment management tool. The belief is that a class with only full pay kids would be a disaster.

Since all families pay something they want to make sure they have a full class. Just like the airlines, it’s better to discount fares and fill the plane than it is to take off with empty seats.

It’s also true that some applicants that need FA offer the school something’s that the next candidate on the list of Full Pay applicants does not. That might be academic aptitude, athletic skill, legacy status, etc., etc.

The idea that there are an almost unlimited numbers of qualified applicants with the ability to pay tuition is just not true. Many of these kids have academic or social problems that the school doesn’t want to sign up for four years.