Let’s face it: the college admissions process favors students from higher-income families. Whether intentionally or not, it creates a lot of obstacles for students from less privileged backgrounds to apply to and enroll in prestigious colleges. The 2017 study analyzing the tax returns and attendance data of about 30 million students born between 1980 and 1991 found that some "elite" institutions enrolled more students from the top 1% of families than from the entire bottom 60%.
Although a degree from selective colleges might be one of the few ways to achieve upward social mobility, even highly-qualified low-income students struggle to take advantage of this opportunity. Legacy admissions and high cost of attendance are the more obvious reasons behind the discouraging statistics.
What most Masters students do not realize is that the whole application process can look and feel different to low-income students.
Standardized testing
One of the most obvious ways in which wealthier students benefit in the admissions process is standardized testing. Besides generally receiving higher-quality private education, rich students can afford to take test preparation courses, retake exams multiple times, and file for accommodations. Usually, they also have more support in figuring out what exam to take and when, while less privileged students have to navigate this process entirely on their own.
“Everything in this process gives either an informational advantage, a preparation advantage, or procedural advantage to those with more money,” Akil Bello, supplemental education and test-preparation expert, said.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many institutions have adopted a test-optional policy. For the 2022-2023 academic year, more than 1800 colleges allow students to apply without test scores. While not solving the problem completely, this approach can make it easier for college applicants to present themselves stronger to admissions.
Need-aware colleges
Whether the college is need-aware or need-blind makes an essential difference in admissions. Most colleges and universities in the US are need-aware, meaning that they take into account how much financial aid students need when evaluating their application files. According to Director of College Counseling Adam Gimple, the financial status of a domestic applicant is rarely a decisive factor in college admissions.
“A need-aware school is a matter of we'd like to admit this person, but we only have a short amount of money that we can allocate to all the applicants that we want to admit in terms of financial support,” Gimple said. “It's more a reflection of the school's ability to navigate and manage their own finances than it has actually anything to do with the applicants themselves.”
For low-income international students, however, getting admitted to a need-aware college proves to be more challenging. While more and more colleges use a need-blind approach when reviewing domestic applicants’ files, only a handful of institutions have adopted this approach for international applicants. Gimple said that the applicant pool of international students requesting financial aid is incredibly competitive, even more so than the generic international applicant pool. Public universities, funded by taxes, usually do not allocate financial resources to students outside of their states or the country overall. Most private colleges also do not offer substantial financial aid to international applicants.
Holistic Review Process
It is no surprise that students from wealthier families may have more resources at hand to build impressive applicant profiles. They have time and money to engage in numerous after-school activities and get tutoring in challenging classes. Still, most admissions committees usually look at the applicants in the context of their school and overall the amount of resources available to them.
“If they're a need-aware school, then that means that the same population would be looked at totally differently [from a need-blind school],” Gimple said. “Yes, in the context of Masters and the nuances of this place. But it's not like, you know, person A from Masters is going to be compared against Person B, side by side.”
Lack of Support throughout the Application Process
While having access to more resources does not necessarily make rich students' applications more competitive, it can certainly relieve the burden of the application process for them.
“I think that the biggest difference between students of means and students who don't have means is that wealthier students tend to have more help across the board,” Bello said. “They have access to APs, they have tutors, not just test prep tutors, but tutors for their academic classes. They have counselors to help them when they struggle and to advise them on nuances like applying early. That's a big advantage for wealthy students.”
When compared to public schools with one counselor helping hundreds of students, low-income Masters students are obviously privileged to get assistance from the College Counseling Office. However, when compared to their Masters classmates with independent educational consultants, this assistance may not be enough.
“It just feels like you are in a race, and [rich students] already got the head start, and you got to be held back a few seconds before you can start,” Kathy Christie ‘23 said. “We have a good feedback system with our college counselors; however, other peers who do have tutors, they get extra eyes on their work. They have more one-on-one time that they could spend going over applications.”
Understanding Financial Aid Applications
More challenges arise when students apply for financial aid and then interpret the offers they receive. For domestic applicants, it usually means submitting FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) and sometimes a CSS (College Scholarship Service) profile, and for international students — a CSS profile and an International Student Financial Aid Application.
All three forms and especially FAFSA are extremely confusing to fill out. Especially when the family’s financial situation does not fit the stereotypical idea of two parents, who have a stable income and can both financially support a student, applying for financial aid becomes incredibly tedious.
“FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid for domestic students here in the United States, is a very legal document,” Gimple said. “It is very hard to understand, and the questions are complicated.”
Yet, even filling out all the forms does not guarantee a desirable amount of aid. More often than not, families end up having to pay more for tuition than they think they are capable of because of the outdated formulas FAFSA uses to calculate students’ financial needs.
Masters alumna, Ellanna Swope ‘22 is now a freshman at Sewanee: The University of the South. She learned about FAFSA’s flaws from her own experience. Swope’s parents lost most of their side jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic and had to use their savings to compensate for the income loss. These changes, however, were not reflected in Swope’s FAFSA which asked for the taxes from three years prior to the year when she would start college.
“The government as they were looking at our FAFSA said, ‘Well, you don't need that much aid and grants and money,’ when in reality, I actually needed a whole lot more,” Swope said.
Most colleges allow the accepted students to appeal their financial aid awards if the offers do not account for the families’ income changes. Some colleges also take into account CSS profiles and other financial documents to provide an award package that would actually meet the applicant’s needs.
Understanding the financial aid offers adds yet another challenge to the college application process. Many of the award letters itemize tuition, miscellaneous expenses, boarding fees, loans, work on campus, merit-based scholarships, need-based grants, and so on, leaving the students wondering what the college actually covers and on what conditions. Bello gave an example of confusing financial offers he encountered in his professional career.
“I'm in a chat group with someone with a Ph.D. from Berkeley, a high school college counselor, a college admissions officer, and the higher ed reporter,” Bello said. “We were looking at a financial aid award letter, and we couldn't figure out how much [a student] was supposed to pay. Five college-educated higher ed professionals across the spectrum of the jobs, and we can't figure out what they were asking her to pay.”
Unnecessary Hurdles and Fees
A less apparent part of the application process is the numerous fees a student has to pay. College applicants have to pay to register for the SAT/ACT and then pay a fee each time they want to send their scores. Most colleges also charge an application fee. Submitting a profile via SlideRoom costs additional money. International applicants are also required to pay for Language Proficiency exams. Even the CSS profile used to evaluate students’ need for financial aid has a submission fee and an additional fee for every college it is sent to. If the student's parents are divorced, they have to pay the CSS submission fee twice. With all these unnecessary payments, the college application process becomes an endless stream of fees and fee waiver requests.
Some colleges have recognized the struggle and started to accept self-reported test scores, requiring an official score report only after enrollment. Several institutions such as Tulane University, Wellesley, Grinnell, and Kenyon Colleges also removed application fees and began to grant CSS fee waivers to domestic applicants.
“All of those things remove 20 dollars here, fifty dollars there,” Bello said. “It makes the process easier to manage by removing unnecessary fees, unnecessary hurdles.”
So What Now?
By adopting test-optional policies, renouncing legacy admissions, offering fee waivers for domestic and international students, or simply using more welcoming language, colleges can make their admissions process more equitable and less dehumanizing for lower-income applicants.
At Masters, we can start by breaking the stigma around the financial aid process. If we shy away from talking about financial aid in college applications, low-income students may not only feel uncomfortable among their rich friends during college-related discussions; they also might not ask for enough support from the college counseling office.
“Talking about finances and financing education, whether it's Masters, or after Masters is a very personal, very sensitive subject,” Gimple said. “And more often than not, people, where it's not an issue, have no problem talking about it all that much. And people where it is going to pose a challenge, tend to try and keep things a little close to the vest.”
For most Masters students money is not a part of the equation, so they do not understand how much it might change the application process. Not everyone can get their supplement checked three times. Not everyone can retake their SAT exam. Not everyone can afford to go to “elite” colleges, and not everyone wants to.
Masters students should reflect on their privilege and stop judging their classmates for whatever application or enrollment decisions they make.
Graphics designed by Viktoriia Sokolenko. Illustration created by Sonali Rao. Photo courtesy of Viktoriia Sokolenko, The Messenger, and Federal Student Aid website.
Credits:
Graphics designed by Viktoriia Sokolenko. Illustration created by Sonali Rao. Photo courtesy of Viktoriia Sokolenko, The Messenger, and Federal Student Aid website.. Created with an image by methaphum - "Group of Graduates during commencement. Concept education congratulation in University Degree. Graduation Ceremony ."