23
Sep 11
Paying Full Tuition is an Admissions Advantage
Rebecca R. Ruiz recently wrote a post titled “Colleges Increasingly Look for Applicants Who Can Pay Full Price“ for the NYTimes online college admissions blog.
The skyrocketing cost of college has become one of the top factors in influence a students decision of where to go. Many schools that had opted to go “need blind” are now reverting away from that policy, and trying to accept more students who are full pay.
Here is a major excerpt from the article (to read the entire article click here):
more than half at public universities and more than a third at private, four-year colleges are working harder to recruit students who can pay full tuition. (A notable exception are the handful of colleges and universities, including those of the Ivy League, that say they are “need-blind” in their admissions’ decisions, meaning that an applicant’s ability to pay is not part of the admissions process.)
Ten percent of admissions officers reported that such “full-pay” students were admitted with below-average application credentials, and a quarter of admissions officers at four-year institutions said they had been pressured by administrators, trustees or development office staff to admit certain applicants.
Driving this interest in full-pay students was a high concern among admissions officers about the price of tuition. Affordability for students was the principal worry of those surveyed, most of whom said that by recruiting more candidates not in need of financial aid, they might better help those students who do need assistance…
The report also revealed that colleges are escalating their recruitment of transfer students and out-of-state students, who are the top priority for public and private institutions alike.
Asked to rate the effectiveness of various admissions tools, the majority of admissions officers surveyed cited college counselors at private high schools as a top resource. But, in an indication of the democratization of information available to students about colleges, a quarter of the group listed social media sources like CollegeConfidential and Facebook.
How the average family pays for college:
From a 2009 national study by Gallup and Sallie Mae. This shows average percentage of total cost of attendance paid for each source.
