Yes, I believe economic diversity enriches campus life, and adds value to a WashU education.

By the way, Student Life has run a number of stories over the years about what “need blind” actually means, not included in the robotic “related posts” list. A bibliography would be helpful to those of us trying to understand these issues.

i spent the past 5 minutes doing quick research (http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator), and found that WUSTL stacks pretty favorably with similar schools in terms of the % of students receiving financial aid:
Yale: 69%
Harvard: 62%
Emory: 62%
Dartmouth: 62%
Duke: 59%
Penn: 59%
WUSTL: 59%
Princeton: 56%
Northwestern: 55%
Williams: 51%
Columbia: 51%
Swarthmore: 48%
Tufts: 45%

Also, the average dollar amount of aid received was roughly comparable between WUSTL and the other schools… it’s not like Duke was giving $40,000 on average and we were giving $2,000 on average.

I belive (not 100% sure) that each of these schools say they are “need-blind”. Is Need-Blind just a misnomer? How can WUSTL still give financial aid to a respectable amount of kids and not be need-blind? This is complete conjecture, but here are my reasonably formulated arguments as to why:

- other schools may have wealthier applicants who actually apply. While Wash U does have a pretty large East Coast population, we are in the midwest and have lots of people applying from the midwest, where it is less likely that kids who apply will be able to afford $50,000 per year. Yale/Penn/etc are on the east coast and more likely to have wealthier kids apply because they’re right in their back yard.
-”need blind” schools might not know exactly how much you need when applying, but may know information like your parents’ jobs and what zip code you live in… its feasible that they could take those general pieces of information into consideration, and just accept people who have a 90210 zip code but reject people who are from less economically-well-off zip codes.

If anything, not being need-blind allows Wash U to be more conscious of the % of students who receive financial aid. Maybe, if Wash U was need-blind, it might end up accepting a freshmen class where only 25% of the kids need money. OR, maybe it ends up accepting a freshmen class where 90% of the kids need money. It can go either way. Need-blind, to some extent, has gotta be somewhat financially untenable, because it doesn’t allow the university to properly budget resources, AND it might work in the opposite effect…….. where, by not knowing how much a student needs, it ends up (by no fault or purposeful intention) accepting a freshmen class where very few kids need money.

By looking at financial aid when kids apply, Wash U is able to have a student body where 59% of the kids receive financial aid. Again, while we can always do better, we’re not exactly doing poorly. Princeton (just one school as an example) has a larger endowment and a smaller student body and calls itself “need blind”. even if this fact was true by the literal definition of “need blind”, it would be infinitely easier for Princeton to be need blind than Wash U. It’s on the east coast, likely has wealther applicants who apply, has a larger endowment, and a smaller student body. You can’t possibly use the phrase “need blind” as a blanket comparasion measure between colleges due to so many variables beyond colleges’ control, and the comparative difficulty between schools to get to the point where they are need-blind. It’s an unfair term.

Perhaps not being need-blind and actually knowing kids’ financial obligations is a good compromise that weighs the many costs/benefits of need blind admissions. do we want to be a school where 100% of kids need money? isn’t that unfair to kids who, by no fault of their own, have rich families that can afford $50,000 per year? by literally being need blind, again, Wash U may have some years where 90% of kids need money, and some years where 20% of kids need money. that isn’t good… we want economic DIVERSITY, don’t we? it’s a very fine line to walk…… what is an appropriate amount of students to receive financial aid? 40%? 60%? 80%? i don’t know the answer, but i think Stud Life’s editorial and lack of relevant research and POINTS to back-up their argument is completely irresponsible.

While we always can do a better job and give away more money and maybe officially be “need blind”, I think a more thorough story on what “need blind” actually means, how many students WUSTL rejected because they needed money, what specific initiatives is WUSTL undergoing to award more financial aid, quotes from administrators and admissions deans, relevant statistics, etc, would be helpful…. a staff editorial only goes so far. Closing the article with “In our minds, the University will not deserve to be at the top of the rankings for the quality of its financial aid until it is need-blind” is an ambitious argument that is completely out of place and entirely off-base without having done a thorough story with appropriate research before hand.