St. Louis—The way colleges decide which applicants to admit and how much financial-aid to offer them has long been mysterious to many families. The last few years have brought a student-loan scandal, a weak economy, and ever-growing worries about both getting into college and paying for it, so it’s no wonder families are interested in solving that mystery. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re on the right track.
“There’s so much misunderstanding of what we do in admissions and aid, but especially financial aid,” said Angel B. Perez, director of admission at Pitzer college, at a session of the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s annual meeting here on Saturday.
Mr. Perez told the audience that he recently gave a presentation to a group who see this confusion firsthand: college financial planners. They told him stories of families with lots of assets who apply for aid in the hope that the financial aid office will let the admission office know how wealthy they are, increasing admissions odds; and of middle-income families who were fearful that applying for financial-aid would hurt their son or daughter’s chances.
A big part of the problem, Mr. Perez and his co-presenters agreed, is that colleges don’t tell prospective families or counselors enough about how they distribute aid.
“I think most admissions officers, frankly, try to avoid or minimize talking about financial aid,” said Mary Hill, co-director of college counseling at St. Paul Academy and Summit School, in Minnesota.
Families may know the financial-aid lingo: need-blind, need-aware, meeting full need; but they are missing the larger point, said Matthew J. Malatesta, vice president for admissions, financial aid, and enrollment at Union College. All but the very wealthiest colleges have a financial-aid budget they must adhere to, he said, and the real question families should ask is how that budget is managed.
There are only so many ways to do this, Mr. Malatesta said. One is to have enough wealthy students that it isn’t a big concern. Another is to decide, whether a college considers financial need in admissions decisions or not, that it simply doesn’t have enough money to meet accepted students’ full need. The third is to consider need in admissions, at least at the margins, and then give every accepted student enough aid to meet their need.
Mr. Malatesta’s college takes the third approach. “I find the most surreal aspect of my job, I have a $33-million budget, and it’s never enough money,” he said.
In any of these scenarios, all the college is trying to do is use its resources to the best of its ability, Mr. Malatesta said. But: “When you talk about these things, there’s a certain ick factor to it.”
From the family’s perspective, once they know whether or not a college can meet a student’s need, the next question is how. At many colleges that do meet full need, work study and loans are part of the aid mix, so applicants should be prepared to ask how a college approaches using these forms of aid, Mr. Malatesta said.
10 Responses to Peering Behind the Financial-Aid Curtain
lothlorien - October 3, 2010 at 9:25 pm
As one who is part of a private college, I can tell you that the idea that aid is considered in admissions is new to me. Admissions counselors at our institution can tell students what aid packages are available (these are rather consistent from year to year); however, parents and students tend to paint the most optomistic scenario for themselves and expect to pay as little as possible for an education. What really surprises me is the number of students who come to me as a faculty member/academic counselor concerned about finances and yet only seeing institutional scholarships, loans, and work as the only options. I even look for scholarship applications, hand them to students, and tell them to apply, only to hear later, “yea, well it wasn’t that much.” Parents and students, there are lots of private scholarships and grants available – start with the DOE’s own database. Spend time searching. Ask local service organizations, even corporations. Do not expect your institution to cover all of the funds beyond what you can/want to pay. We have limits as well. Every student would like to have everything covered by federal and state grants in addition to institutional scholarships. It is just not going to happen. And of course, the best thing you can do as a student is bring those grades up. After all, you are in school to learn. Better grades open up opportunities to more grants and scholarships.
checch - October 4, 2010 at 7:00 am
This article continues to veil the the process of financial aid in small liberal arts colleges. As a parent of 2 college students and soon to be third, this process has been a nightmare. Are students accepted or denied based on their application for financial aid? Parents know there is a budget for the schools, there is only so much money to share, but are our children being denied admissions because of this? So many small colleges claim that they will cover the financial needs of accepted students. Which really means for many students, they are denied because they applied for financial aid because the college can not supply the necessary package of loans,grants and work study. During the past two years this was most evident. Our college counselor told us that if you are applying for aid you probably won’t be accepted. For the more selective small schools this was the norm.In fact, our son was waitlisted at a school in the northeast, two days after we informed the admissions office that we would not continue our request for aid, he was acccepted. Middle class parents with kids in college are really struggling. We have refinanced our house and plan on taking out another equity loan. Telling parents what financial aid packages are available is a bunch of gibberish, every schools does it. Goodluck trying to find scholarships on the DOE’s list! If you qualify for those few available ones , generally you qualify for most college scholarships. Tell the parents and students the TRUTH. We will accept you and this is how much you’ll have to pay. If you cannot find a school that will do better, and do it honestly and openly. Isn’t it ironic that the admissions director is also the head of financial aid at so many schools? Just tell the parents the truth.
22228715 - October 4, 2010 at 9:11 am
Checch, I believe the article reflects reality in answer to your question – it depends on the institution, and each one does it differently. So… yes, at some places the student’s resources do not affect admission at all, at some places it is taken into account late in the process, and at many having high need disadvantages admission status because they just cannot afford to enroll too many high-need students. So, the value of those grades and test scores and essays and unusual community contributions is different at different institutions.I know the media and government refer to the “higher education system”, but it is not really a single organization with different branches, but rather several thousand individual entities, each with the power to make their own processes and decisions (especially at private institutions, but even state institutions vary within the same state.) I know that makes it hard to “shop” but that autonomy is what makes the larger “system” healthy by allowing for differentiation and identity.Your final question… I think it’s relatively unusual to not have separate directors of financial aid and admissions in this day and age, except for the smallest of institutions. Granted, they usually both fall under the same VP. Enrollment management experts, what’s the actual situation?
11132507 - October 4, 2010 at 9:28 am
My first question is why is this article coming from NACAC and not NASFAA? Admissions folks talk about aid, financial aid people are the ones who do it and live with all the results. I don’t mean that judgmentally, but you’d get much more in depth info from aid administrators.Having been an aid administrator since slightly after the invention of money, I’ve seen 1001 ways that schools distribute the money, and while I’m all for transparency, my honest opinion is that very few students and parents would be happy or even helped by the information they’re seeking. The federal formulas are a matter of public record, but the schools’ own algorithms are confusing, detailed, sometimes subjective, and subject to change at a moment’s notice as the needs and resources change. You might make too much money to qualify, and/or your kid might not be real high on the priority list. And it might be the opposite somewhere else. The frustration that checch expresses is common, as is the gross misinformation s/he received (“if you are applying for aid you probably won’t be accepted”), as are the broad brushstrokes being applied based solely on his/her experience. And help me out here, what’s the irony of admissions and financial aid both reporting to the same person? They’re offices that have to work closely together; when schools operate them as silos, you often get confusion and misinformation. Bottom line is that the only way to know how much aid you qualify for is the same as how to find out if you’re going to be admitted…apply and see what happens. Aid is too complicated for there to be one magic answer to one simple question. Of course, if colleges had been making some attempt over the years to hold tuition prices down, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
dbarron - October 4, 2010 at 9:44 am
22228715, you are correct. It is unusual to have the same person as a Director of Admissions and well as is the Director of Financial Aid. The vast majority of schools will have separate Directors for the areas. The Financial Aid and the Admissions Directors may or may not report to the same VP,AVP,Dean or Executive Director, depending on the structure of the University. Sometimes Financial Aid will be under Student Services while Financial Aid and Admissions are under Enrollment Management. In other structures they may all report to Enrollment Management or possibly even directly to Academic Affairs. The Carnegie model and personnel of the institution contribute greatly in the differing reporting structures. I have worked in almost every Carnegie model in higher education and I have never worked at an institution that considered financial aid application as a negative in the admission process. Does this probably happen at small exclusive private colleges? I am sure it does, especially as endowments shrink and cost continue to rise, but I do not believe it is representative of the admission process at the vast majority of higher education institutions in the U.S.
11223140 - October 4, 2010 at 9:46 am
I have worked in financial aid for 26 years, at both selective private liberal arts colleges/universities, graduate medical schools, and public 4 year universities — and have also led a non-profit college access center. Folks, the only truly failsafe approach to college financing is to save it yourself, from the moment of birth (and, better yet, from the moment of conception). Sure, I understand that this flies in the face of all our discredited theories about access, affordability, availability of aid to those who need it, etc. Yet is is true. As I share with anybody wanting to have the conversation, the last thing I want to be doing when my daugther is ready to enroll in college is to be talking to people like myself, because I know how broken the “system” (and I agree with a previous poster, it really is not a “system” but a network of thousands of changing “systems”) really is. Before I am tarred with the brush of “so you think that only the wealthy should attend the college of their choice,” consider for a moment that saving a massive amount toward future college expenses does not make you wealthy at all, it only makes you prepared.
checch - October 4, 2010 at 10:53 am
I agree and understand all of you, I know, I’ve been teaching for 28 years. It is a complicated issue. The reality during the past several years more so than in the in the past is that kids have been rejected because they applied for aid. It was not misinformation from our college counselors, they saw the pattern.Educational consultants have said the same. We experienced it. I would hope that admissions directors/financial aid people would be honest with parents and inform them when they apply or early in the process, so we are not left scratching our heads and second guessing ourselves when our kids get rejected. We have been to more than 15 schools during the past 3 years and we always get the party line about how applying for financial aid does not affect your application. Patoohy! I know that is a broad brush stroke but I have experienced it and so have thousand of other families. The time and emotion involved in applying for college is much to great to have to depend on some secret meeting in the backroom of the financial aid office in February.
cheapscholar_org - October 4, 2010 at 11:18 am
As the Net Price Calculators roll out on college and univesity websites later this month, I think alot of the financial aid methods and approaches of varying institutions will be demystified for prospective families and students.If the schools are staying true to the model of the Net Price Calculator being based off of prior year data, it should serve as a good point of reference (with some degree of variation).Dougwww.CheapScholar.org
colleenbx - October 4, 2010 at 4:31 pm
This is (most likely) off the direct topic except that it covers general financial aid eligibility. What I would like to know is how can any “sane” person use the exact same criteria from FAFSA to determine eligibility regardless of the state one lives in? My understanding is (was?) that the maximum amount a single person can earn and still be eligible for the maximum amount of Federal Aid is (was?) approx. $14,000.00 Now, who knows anyone in NYC that is able to live alone on $14K? Perhaps in other places in the US, $14K can support one person but, in NYC, it is not only impossible, it seriously encourages fraudulent activity… Working and not claiming it as income, living with someone you share expenses with and not claiming that, getting help from parents and not divulging that, making your rent higher than it is to skew your need, etc. My information is from 2006. Please let me know that this Federal maximum cut off has been raised to a real living salary, ok? Back in 2006, when I earnestly tried to understand the logic behind using the same figures for every geographical location, I was met with silence. Well, that is not completely true. I was told over and over, “It is a Federal Program and the amount is determined by the Federal Gov’t.” Great, so why doesn’t the Federal Gov’t. look a bit more closely at the varying costs of living in different cities in the US? This practice does a terrible disservice to the thousands of students who live in more expensive cities (like NYC) AND depend on Financial Aid. I am not even considering the small private colleges that can often afford to provide aid. I am thinking of CUNY, for example.
11132507 - October 4, 2010 at 5:35 pm
colleenbx – What you have to remember is that the result of the FAFSA data, the family contribution, and the need analysis formula that derives that figure, are no longer (if they ever were) realistic assessments of what the family can afford to pay, but rather a rationing device. That’s not ideal, but it’s reality, and a perfect system would drastically increase the cost of the program, which in this economic environment, isn’t happening. There are minimal living expenses taken into account, but Congress has never regionalized them; what is regionalized, to a very slight extent, are the relative taxation rates of different states. So a family living on $50K in a high tax state will have a lower family contribution than an otherwise identical family living on $50K in a low tax state…but not to the extent you’d probably expect. It’s not narrowed down to cities, so “New York” includes the Upper East Side of Manhattan and it includes rural farm towns upstate. But even if it were to be narrowed down to cities, you talk about room for fraud…what would be keeping someone living outside NYC from getting a PO box in a high cost zip code just to claim that they live in a high cost area?Your figure of $14K is not accurate, and there is no real “cutoff” figure, because assets, household size, number of kids in the household attending college and other data is factored in, otherwise the FAFSA could have far fewer questions.