How do they determine financial aid?

[Anonymous]

How do private schools go about determining FA? Do they take a look at all of the applications first, make their decisions and THEN do they turn to the financial aid applications? Do they then give the students who were admitted as much as they can so that they will choose to enroll? Does the admission committee make the admissions decisions and then later does another committee determine FA?

[Anonymous]

Depends on the school. Some are need blind which means they make their admissions decisions with no regard to aid requests and then the FA committee determines aid awards for those accepted. That means that sometimes you will get an acceptance, but no aid or significantly less then you asked for. In other schools those decisions go hand in hand. If they can't award you any aid or enough aid, they won't accept you. I would ask that question specifically at each school you are interested in.