Inside Story Of The College Admission Process

Unknown to parents and students, college accept more students than they can admit. After the school notifies the accepted students, the college uses financial aid package to try to entice the applicants the college wants most.

Scoring System

Colleges use a scoring system to rate their applicants for admission and for financial aid. If your total score is above a certain level, you are automatically accepted. If your score is too low, you are declined admission. Most students are in the middle so their applications go to the admission committee for a decision. The higher you are on the college’s priority list, the more money they will be to pay you to attend.

The Factor Of Student Body

Colleges like the diversity of their student body. The diversity can take many forms such as racial, ethic, geographic , economic and even gender. For example, a college may have a gender-balance policy that states that neither sex can be more than 58% of the student body. This standard must be met each year. Therefore, in order to meet the requirement of the policy, colleges “recruit” or “bid” for the student from higher income/net worth families.
So it is possible that a student with lower academics qualifications can receive more gift-aid than other applicants who have higher academic ratings.

Flag Factor That Opens Many A College’s Door To An Applicant, But Who Receive It?

A “flag” is a positive mark added to a student’s admission application to indicate that he/she is of special interest to the college.

Children of alumni get flags; these are known as legacies. The size of their advantage usually is measured by the parent’s generosity to the school. Students with special talents get flags. Under-represented minorities receive flags.

Once the application is flagged, it is removed from the common pool of applications for consideration on a separate basis. Hence, it becomes important to distinguish yourselves from your peer applicants.