THE decision by Grinnell College to continue — for now — to admit students regardless of their ability to pay raises a question that more and more parents are asking: how much does your financial situation matter in getting your children into college?
Parents have long used their wealth to try to sway admissions officers, of course. But that doesn’t always work. And it isn’t necessarily true that a needier student is passed up.
“The misperception is schools first look at all the kids who can pay full freight and then look at the kids who are left over,” said Kalman A. Chany, a financial aid consultant in New York and author of “Paying for College Without Going Broke.” “Parents like to use this as an excuse. They’ll say that if my kid didn’t have to apply for aid, he’d get in. It’s overblown. It’s a rationalization.”
Still, the vote by the board of trustees at Grinnell, a liberal arts college in Iowa, reflects a broader trend in financial aid. The college counselors I spoke to this week said the majority of colleges had already downgraded their policies to “need aware” — meaning that the colleges accept most of their students without looking at their need for aid but will consider financial need for some percentage of the applicants. Others are already considering a parent’s ability to pay in many of their admissions decisions.