Washington Monthly - September/October 2014 - 67

be a "good fit," but, rather, simply because their families
aren't rich enough to pay full freight. These schools, in
other words, are "need aware" when admitting a share of
their students.
This may seem unjust. But colleges say they have no
other choice because they have only a limited amount of
money to spend on financial aid. "While financial aid is
one of the top three expenditures at Oberlin, the amount
of funds available is still finite, and we do have to take
that into account in the admissions process," says Elizabeth Houston, who works in the admissions office at
Oberlin College.
"If, for instance, we admitted a class comprised entirely of students who could make no financial contribution to their education, we simply couldn't afford it," explains Houston in a blog post on the college's website.
"That's an extreme case, but even taking into account the
natural mix of income levels a college might see in their
applicant pool, there are still very few institutions that
are wealthy enough to afford to be completely need-blind
and still meet 100 percent of demonstrated need."
According to colleges, this typically doesn't affect
low-income students who are at the top of their class. Finances are only taken into account with more marginal
students, they say.
Still, in a survey conducted by Inside Higher Ed in
2011, 19 percent of admissions directors at private liberal
arts colleges reported that they admit full-pay students
with lower grades and test scores than other applicants.
These colleges are, in other words, providing affirmative action for the wealthy, despite all of the extraordinary advantages that these students have over their lessfortunate peers.

#4
LOW-INCOME STUDENTS
ARE NOT ALWAYS BETTER OFF
AT NEED-BLIND COLLEGES.
It's true that the most elite and wealthiest private
colleges, like Harvard University and Amherst College,
meet the full demonstrated financial need of their lowand moderate-income students. But many other colleges
that boast about being need-blind don't come close. Instead, they leave students with a hefty gap between what
the government says they should be expected to pay and
what they are being charged.
New York University, for example, admits students
regardless of their financial need. However, NYU students
from families making $30,000 or less face a daunting average net price-the amount students and their parents must pay after all grant aid has been exhausted-of
$24,265 per year. (See "America's Affordable Elite Colleges,"
page 30, and our full rankings at washingtonmonthly.com,

which calculate net price of attendance based on threeyear averages.) That means that the lowest-income families are on the hook for an amount that is nearly equal to
or even more than their yearly earnings.
Financially needy students who qualify for admission
at NYU may actually be better off at "need-aware" schools
that meet the full demonstrated need of the low-income
students they do enroll.

#5
NEED-BLIND SCHOOLS
ARE NOT REALLY BLIND
ABOUT THEIR APPLICANTS' NEED.
Administrators at purportedly need-blind colleges
don't necessarily need to know an applicant's family income to know if he or she is poor, because they have plenty of other clues.
For example, admissions officers know where applicants live and what high school they attended, and whether or not they worked after school or participated in a
plethora of extracurricular activities. Admissions staff
members also know the occupations of the applicants'
parents and whether they attended college, and, more importantly, whether the student is a legacy. And these administrators can learn a lot about students' backgrounds
from their college application essays.
So if a need-blind school is looking to admit a much
larger share of affluent students for budgetary reasons, it
could easily do so without knowing exactly how much an
applicant's family earned last year.

#6
IT ISN'T ALWAYS FREE TO APPLY
FOR FINANCIAL AID.
Come financial aid season, many students and families realize that they must fill out the Free Application
for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) in order to get a financial aid package from their school. What many families
may not realize is that very selective, elite institutions often require a student to fill out another, more extensive
form for financial aid. And unlike the FAFSA, this secondary financial aid application-the College Board's CSS/
Financial Aid PROFILE-isn't free. The PROFILE is expensive, costing a student $25 just to register and send
it to one college, and then $16 for each additional college.
Over the past few years, the U.S. Department of Education has been simplifying the FAFSA in an effort to
reduce the barriers that low- and middle-income families face when filling out an unduly complex form. As a
result, the number of questions asked on the FAFSA has
been reduced, and parents can now use a data-retrieval
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Washington Monthly - September/October 2014

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