Financial-Aid Implications and International Students
I do not want to spend a great deal of time on financial aid, as it is a subject so complex as to merit a separate book. What concerns us here are the implications that applying for financial aid may have on a student's admission to the college of his choice. First, I will address the issue of financial aid for U.S. citizens (either natural-born or permanent residents with green cards) and then I will turn to the more complicated case of international students.
All the Ivy League schools are known as need-blind in terms of admissions for all but international students. This term means that admissions decisions are made without regard to financial need. In other words, if a college knows that you can afford to pay the full tuition and it decides to accept you over another, poorer student, it would be blatantly violating the need-blind rule. Not all the highly selective colleges are need-blind, so before applying, you need to check every college's policy, at least insofar as it concerns your chance for admission.
In addition to being need-blind, some of the Ivy League schools (but not all) guarantee 100 percent of financial need for all admitted students (except international ones). At Dartmouth, for example, if after doing a financial-aid “need analysis” the financial-aid office determines that you need twenty thousand dollars a year to be able to afford Dartmouth, it would come up with a combination of scholarship (if you qualified—the higher the need, the more scholarship dollars), work-study money (money that you have to earn over the year through work), parent contribution, and student contribution (if you had your own savings) to equal the full amount. What some colleges do is admit students on a need-blind basis but then resort to “gapping,” which, as it sounds, means that if you need twenty thousand dollars, they might give you only ten thousand and expect you either to come up with the rest or go to another college.
Since all the Ivies are need-blind in terms of admission for all but international students, why should there be any effect on your chances for admission? After all, financial-aid offices are always separate from admissions offices in the Ivy League and there are strict rules prohibiting the sharing of information between the two offices. The answer is that even though the Ivy admissions officers cannot access specific financial-aid information, right on the front of every application form is this box: “Are you applying for financial aid, yes or no?” Thus, every Ivy League school will know whether or not you are applying for aid—at Dartmouth, this information is coded right on the front of the master card and is on the first page of form 1 in the application.
I have previously discussed the implications of parents' college background and occupations, explaining how if students come from very humble backgrounds, they might get a break on certain standardized test scores, whereas if their parents are supereducated and have high-paying jobs, they will be judged accordingly to stricter standards, especially regarding standardized tests. Well, what if after reading where your parents went to college and what jobs they have (manager, or director, or systems analyst), the officer reading the file can tell absolutely nothing about what kind of background you come from—a manager could mean the manager in a supermarket, who gets paid very little, or the manager of a multimillion-dollar investment fund.
In these cases, all an officer needs to do is let his eye wander over to wherever on the application it asks whether or not you have applied for financial aid in order to give him a rough idea. At Dartmouth, a code “O” means the student checked off “no” to applying for financial aid, and a “2” means that they checked off “yes.” So if the officer cannot tell what kind of manager your parent is but he notices that you are not applying for financial aid (which means that the family can afford the tuition and room and board, which will exceed thirty thousand dollars a year), he realizes that you are not disadvantaged economically and therefore do not deserve any breaks in terms of socioeconomic background.
The mere fact that a student checks “yes” with reference to financial aid does not in fact mean that he will qualify for financial aid or that he will even apply for it, so seeing a “2” (applying for financial aid) is more mysterious. In the aforementioned case, if the officer saw that the student was applying for financial aid and he still had no idea of educational background or income level, he would have to remain neutral in his reading regarding family background.
Again, I'm not suggesting that anyone subvert the system by checking off “yes” with regard to financial aid, because this is only one of the many factors involved. If officers suspect that you are trying to manipulate the system, it could obviously work against you. Even if you have little money but both parents attended Ivy League schools, no disadvantage would normally be assumed—the socioeconomic-disadvantage reading is meant to aid students who truly have grown up in areas where they have not been exposed to top-notch schools, high levels of education, or privileges such as traveling around the world. Remember, officers will see other factors than just a “yes” with reference to financial aid: they can see your parents' address, highest level of education and which colleges they attended, along with which high school you attend. In addition, many times guidance counselors or teachers will unknowingly reveal a student's level of economic background by a reference in a letter—such as, “She takes after her father, who is the highest-ranking federal judge in Ohio,” or, “Tim has to work twenty-five hours a week to help his single-parent mom meet basic expenses.”
The most needy students will apply for a fee waiver, as well'which is stamped right on the front of form 1 if it is approved by the officer who monitors fee-waiver requests. These students would be easy targets for finding out about economic disadvantage. Conversely, a student whose parents live on Fifth Avenue in New York City, went to Ivy League schools, work as doctors or lawyers, and whose child attends an expensive private school will come across as able to pay full tuition, whether or not the student checks off the “yes” or “no” box. In this case, checking off the “yes” box would be considered willful deceit.
I think the really surprising fact about all this is that people have assumed for years that being able to pay for college would actually help their child's chance for admission, but this is not necessarily so. At these colleges, unless you plan on donating a huge new building or making a very large-scale donation, being able to afford the full tuition will give you absolutely no advantage in the admissions process. I cannot go so far as ha say that if you do not apply for financial aid, you have a lower chance for admission, because that is not true, either. It's just that you won't get any of the breaks or allowances that would be given to truly disadvantaged students. This is as it should be.
I think it is important to know all the facts about the implications of applying for financial aid, but the bottom line is that ethics and morals have a role, too—these facts are not here so one can try to cheat the system; they are here so one can make a fully informed decision about finances while upholding the moral and ethical standard that you would want your children to live up to.
INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS
Before examining the implications of financial aid for international students, we need to define what exactly an international student is. The most obvious example is a student who holds a passport from a foreign country and who has attended high school abroad. If a student holds a foreign passport (for example, from Peru) but through a student visa attends high school in the United States, he is still considered in the international category because he holds a foreign passport and does not hold a U.S. green card. However, if a student is a Peruvian citizen but attends high school in the United States and has a green card and permanent-resident status, he is not considered an international student. Finally, U.S. citizens who hold U.S. passports but attend high school abroad are not considered international students, either.
In short, international students, regardless of where they attend high school, are defined as citizens of foreign countries who do not hold a U.S. green card and are therefore not U.S. permanent residents. To quote from Dartmouth's information packet for international students, “Canadian citizens, U.S. permanent residents, and U.S. citizens living abroad are reviewed without the constraints of a limited financial aid budget.”
Why bother to make such a fine distinction? The fact is that at all the highly selective colleges, Ivies included, the applications of international students are never read on a need-blind basis for the simple reason that financial-aid funds are severely limited for international students and non—green card holders cannot qualify for U.S. federal-aid funds, an important source of income for financial-aid packages. What does it mean for admission if you cannot be read on a need-blind basis?
Basically, those international students who check off “no” with regard to financial aid have a much greater chance of admission at all the highly selective colleges than do those who indicate that they will apply for aid. (There is no point in lying on the application, because if you are admitted and have indicated that you did not need financial aid, then if you can't afford the tuition, the college is powerless to help you and you will have to turn down the admission offer.) To oversimplify a little, international applicants at all the highly selective colleges are eventually divided up into the “don't need financial aid” and “do need financial aid” piles and then acted upon accordingly.
Most colleges have an officer in charge of international applicants and that person would normally be the first reader for all such files (since he is familiar with many foreign grading systems, tests, and other conventions that differ significantly from country to country). All international applications would go through the same process I outlined earlier, up to a certain point. That certain point is committee. Before international applications are distributed for committee consideration, all the ones that indicate a need for financial aid are removed for separate consideration in a different process, which I will discuss shortly. The no-need international students are sent on to committee and judged against the same standard that any other student would be judged against.
Thus, it is only those international students who apply for financial aid who will be treated differently and judged by different standards from those used for their U.S. counterparts. Money talks in international admissions.
How exactly does the process work for these international applicants who need aid? The process varies a little by college, since each college has its own budget for international financial aid (some have no budget and can take only full payers), but the general process is very similar. Once these applications have been read two or three times by the international officer and one or two additional officers, the international officer would sort out all the folders. If both readers voted “R,” the student would be rejected. If both readers had negative leaning votes like “R” and “P-,” or “P- and P-” (“P” stands for possible) or even “P and P-,” or “P and P,” the student would probably not be accepted. Those applications with stronger votes would be sorted by country and passed on to the financial-aid office for a partial read of about how costly it would be to accept these students. Then the international officer would usually meet with the head of the office and try to pick the strongest applicants, keeping an eye on the budget. If a very strong international student needed only a relatively small amount of financial aid, he would probably be accepted, but if he needed a large financial-aid award, the competition would be fierce.
To give a specific example, I helped the international officer read all the applicants from the People's Republic of China (PRC) for three years and was present at the final meeting with the director and the international officer. Typically, Dartmouth received between 80 and 150 applications from PRC students per year, but because of the Communist government, every single one not only required a complete aid package—they were so poor that they all qualified for fee waivers, as well.* Many of these students were brilliant; many were academic 8s and 9s. They were some of the most academically gifted students in the applicant pool. To give you an idea, many took the GRE (graduate record exam) that U.S. students take after they finish college, because the SAT I and II are not available in China. Even given the fact that English is not their native language, they routinely scored over 650 on the verbal (high for an intelligent, literate U.S. citizen) and sometimes a perfect 800 on both the analytical and quantitative sections of the test. The sad part is that with all these incredible students to choose from, Dartmouth accepted one or at the most two a year out of the entire group, since they needed a full aid package. As you can see, the odds are very great.
The most competitive area is India/Pakistan. Over 220 students a year apply, but only a handful of high-need students will be accepted. Even among these brilliant students, those who do not need financial aid have a significant advantage over those who do. Of the ones who need financial aid, only a few are admitted a year out of the many who apply.
Besides India/Pakistan and the People's Republic of China, the countries with the largest number of international applicants to Dartmouth (and these numbers would be similar at the other highly selective colleges) are Canada, Ghana, Japan, and South Korea.
Overall, the acceptance rate for international students at Dartmouth was much lower than that of the rest of the applicant pool. From the classes of 1996 through 2000, the acceptance rate ranged from a high of 14.2 percent to a low of 10.5 percent. At some schools, it is even lower; Princeton typically accepts only 6 percent of the international applicants who apply. For the class of 2000 at Dartmouth, there were 1,272 international applicants from eighty foreignesountries, from which 142 were admitted and 47 matriculated. These figures include both financial-aid and nonfinancial-aid applicants. I do not know the exact acceptance rate for each group, but obviously it is much higher for non-needy students than for high-need students. In total, two-thirds of the international applicants will apply for financial aid. For a typical year at Dartmouth, a roughly $400,000 international financial-aid budget supports around twenty-five students a year, while the other twenty or so students receive no aid.
On a final note, one very important test for international students is the TOEFL test, which measures proficiency in English. For some odd reason, it is not scored on an 800 scale—the highest score is 677. International students need to show a strong proficiency in English. If they score under 600, it will be nearly impossible to gain admission, particularly if they are in the aid category.
Now that we have looked at how financial aid affects admission, let us turn to some final aspects of the reading process.