Better odds for full pay applicants

[Anonymous]

Tufts WL does move.
What major?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious how the RD decisions this week have come out for those needing aid versus those that don’t from private universities.

I’m not sure if there’s a systematic way to track if the current chaos is making a difference at places like Tufts or not.

Just one anecdote, this week's RD results, 3.98uw/1570 and full pay, admitted to GWU Elliot with 28k scholarship. Waitlisted at Tufts. Did not visit GW. Did the campus tour at Tufts fall 2023.

Same exact results for my daughter and we qualify for FA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious how the RD decisions this week have come out for those needing aid versus those that don’t from private universities.

I’m not sure if there’s a systematic way to track if the current chaos is making a difference at places like Tufts or not.

Just one anecdote, this week's RD results, 3.98uw/1570 and full pay, admitted to GWU Elliot with 28k scholarship. Waitlisted at Tufts. Did not visit GW. Did the campus tour at Tufts fall 2023.

Tufts takes a lot of their class ED and they still put your kid on the waitlist. I could see your kid potentially coming off it.

It does seem more possible than waitlists at other schools. The interesting thing about the Tufts waitlist is that the form for taking the waitlist spot doesn't open until the end of the month, after more prestigious schools release, I guess to make sure everyone on the list actually wants to be there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious how the RD decisions this week have come out for those needing aid versus those that don’t from private universities.

I’m not sure if there’s a systematic way to track if the current chaos is making a difference at places like Tufts or not.

Just one anecdote, this week's RD results, 3.98uw/1570 and full pay, admitted to GWU Elliot with 28k scholarship. Waitlisted at Tufts. Did not visit GW. Did the campus tour at Tufts fall 2023.

we did an Elliot-specific tour last year and it was one of the best tours we did. We also looked at tufts and found it really blah.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:YCBK talked about the changes to colleges this year (todays episode):

China applications way down “They're down. Some places, 30 to 40 percent. The number one source of international applicants is down.”

Anyway, let me not go off on that. So colleges are already going through that, right? And so they're going to do the budget-cutting things, freezing salaries, freezing hirings, letting faculty and administrators go, hiring more adjunct professors and less full professors.

But they got to increase the revenue, because that's not enough. So what I'm going to share today are ways I'm fully expecting colleges to either tighten their belts, but mostly increase the revenue. And I'm particularly going to focus on ways that impact admissions.

“I feel very confident about this, but I did talk to one school this week, and they confirmed”

1. “So the first thing that popped in my mind is they're going to increase their class size. Now not everybody can do this.”

“Now, not everybody can do it to the same extent. A lot of places are constrained because there's just no capacity, especially for 2025. 2026, they have a little bit more time to plan and budget, but they're going to do it to the extent to which they can.

So for example, if you can bring $40,000 more in per kid, and you can add 250 kids, you just brought $10 million into your budget.”

“Another thing I am expecting, and this is part of how you are going to meet your class, is converting doubles to triples.”

2. “Okay, another thing. Look for more kids to get admitted in a regular decision. For schools to go out with more acceptances.”

3. Endowment is not a quick fix answer to NIH cuts with current market performance.

4. “Go to the waitlist more.” I am fully, fully, fully expecting, and I'd be very surprised if I'm wrong on this, to see more waitlist activity, more colleges going to the waitlist because remember, they want more students, so they want more students, and so that means you take more people off the waitlist because there's no way of getting more students.

5. Next thing, more focus on full pay and high pay. It's just inevitable. “If you need money, you need to get money, and you get money from tuition-paying parents. You might want more families that are full-pell students. You may in your heart of hearts feel like our school would be better with that, but that's not paying your bills.”

“Then when you take into consideration even the schools that say they truly are need blind, and I agree they're degrees of this, they still have to intentionally travel to affluent areas in their recruitment. There's no way they can say we don't have to target affluent communities. It's just the reality. So of all those schools that say they're need blind, there's a bunch of them that really truly aren't even need blind.”


“It's going to be more or less schools that are need blind, so the ability to pay is going to be prioritized, and families with money are going to have a significant advantage. Now, at the most selective schools, I'll be honest, there's so many people that can pay that don't think the school with a 10% admit rate is going to a 40% admit rate.

It just doesn't work like that. But it will be noticeable. It's not going to be noticeable like that, but it will be noticeable, especially if you work in those institutions, or if you work with a significant number of kids that apply to the schools, I'm confident you're going to see a difference.”

More to come

From Your College Bound Kid | Admission Tips, Admission Trends & Admission Interviews: 15 Changes in Admissions to Expect in 2025 and 2026, Mar 16, 2025

Here’s the YCBK post on colleges increasing class sizes for the Case poster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Asians are much wealthier than whites.

100%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am the PP who speculated that software is used as a substitute for direct need-based decision making. I think another PP hit the nail on the head - if the initial class is “mis-shaped” as in requiring too much financial aid the software tells them to make certain adjustments like take more kids from CT or private school. It is blended with other adjustments until the class has the characteristics it needs to have. This is backdoor need aware but the schools can get away with saying they are need blind because the individual applicant’s financial situation is not taken into account. But the fact that classes have such consistent ratios of financial need is no accident. Schools have financial aid budget and need to manage around it.

Exactly, and nothing is wrong, colleges don't live on thin air.

[Anonymous]

New episode yesterday of YCBK:

“You know, and now we're down into territory about need aware versus need blind, whether need-blind institutions are actually need-blind.

Well, and so this dovetails right into one of my other 15 points I brought up, which is either more schools are going to act in a more need-aware, need-conscious way, and it's going to put more of a priority on full-pay and high-pay families, because you need money. So those are two things, right? See if you can expand your class.”

From Your College Bound Kid | Admission Tips, Admission Trends & Admission Interviews: Changes In How Admissions Decisions Are Being Made Due to Financial Pressures, Apr 2, 2025

[Anonymous]

^^^^
So much more!!

“I mean, there are need-blind institutions that say they're need-blind, but in reality, there has to be some level of awareness because there are elements inside an application. Without looking at financial aid characteristics, and by that I mean FAFSA CSS profile, you can remove that. There are elements inside an application for admission, which are really strong leading indicators of wealth.

Sure.

It is really hard to completely eliminate that bias in the process of reading and committee and shaping a class, period, exclamation point.

What are those? Why don't you just say what some of those are, those clear indicators? I think we know it will be helpful to be able to read.

Parents' level of education, the institutions at which they attended, professions.

Yeah.

You know, I mean-

Zip code.

Zip code.

School.

You can look at address. You can look at street address. And all you need to do is pull up some real estate calculator and you can just Google someone's address and see the estimated value of a particular home.”

—-

“And I know that. But, are you also, do you expect to also see it on the other side, which is, well, that's a kid I wouldn't have seen get in that school in the past. I can tell they're either expanding their class or they're afraid their yield is going to be lower and they're covering themselves.

I would think they're also seeing that as well.

It's 100%. Yep. Like, a student with that profile, a marginal profile got into a really, really selective place.

We're seeing it because of X, Y, or Z, could be this factor, this factor, but more and more we're starting to see it in terms of socioeconomics.

Yeah. I have long been of the belief that a lot of the schools that say they're need-blind truly really aren't need-blind. I commended, you probably remember when Haverford and Wesleyan came out and said we're not need-blind, and it was really controversial.”


From Your College Bound Kid | Admission Tips, Admission Trends & Admission Interviews: Changes In How Admissions Decisions Are Being Made Due to Financial Pressures, Apr 2, 2025

[Anonymous]

Full pay applicants are going to have a distinct advantage going forward. All the Republican cuts in research funding and a dearth of full pay international applicants willing to go to the US now means that every college is facing dramatically different financial realities. It's a shame. Smart middle class students will be frozen out of many universities, which means that a lot more private colleges will become ghettos for mediocre rich kids.

[Anonymous]

Meh. I'm not convinced that full pay is any significant advantage. Sure, it's better than not being full pay, in that a full pay kid is not constrained on where they could attend if admitted, but not really any sort of bonus position from an admissions standpoint.

We'll see what happens with the waitlists, which theoretically are need-aware. After applying to 18 schools, my full pay, high stats kid admitted basically only to safeties (four). Sitting on five waitlists ranging from T10 to T40-50.

[Anonymous]

People always say buy into a good school district because better school, better peer group. But it's also buying the assumptions about that applicant pool. Better to be the poorest family in a wealthy district than trying to be the diamond in the rough (who is actually relatively well off) in a poor district.

[Anonymous]

Full pay was definitely NOT any sort of advantage so far this cycle among need-blind schools.

We'll see what happens to waitlisted kids.

I imagine that 2026 may be different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Full pay was definitely NOT any sort of advantage so far this cycle among need-blind schools.

We'll see what happens to waitlisted kids.

I imagine that 2026 may be different.

I disagree. It looks like it was at our private.
The wealthiest kids (parents with w/big-name job titles (CEO, etc) and a history of large $$ philanthropy) were admitted to several private T20 even as marginal candidates. They clearly brought more to the table than others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Full pay was definitely NOT any sort of advantage so far this cycle among need-blind schools.

We'll see what happens to waitlisted kids.

I imagine that 2026 may be different.

I disagree. It looks like it was at our private.
The wealthiest kids (parents with w/big-name job titles (CEO, etc) and a history of large $$ philanthropy) were admitted to several private T20 even as marginal candidates. They clearly brought more to the table than others.

That's not full pay. That's being a development case or Z list kid and is an entirely different category that has worked for years and years and is not new to 2025.