Universities rarely release the specific criteria behind their aid decisions. Could a little-known regulation help open the black box?
At the center of the admissions and financial-aid process is a massive information imbalance: Schools make their decisions with detailed data about each applicant that goes well beyond test scores and transcripts. Many universities have access to comprehensive financial profiles, sometimes down to the type of cars a family drives. Some analyze patterns and interpret even the most subtle indicators from students, such as the order in which schools are listed on the federal financial-aid application, or even how long a student stays on the phone with an admissions officer.
Students are not so lucky. Schools offer comparatively little information about exactly who they’re awarding aid to and for what. College-bound teens and their parents often resort to college forums, sharing their personal “stats” — their financial and academicprofiles — with strangers online to get advice on which colleges are likely to be generous with aid. Once they get their financial-aid awards, some even go back to these forums tocompare their aid packages in an attempt to reverse engineer colleges’ criteria.
Read more at ProPublica: http://www.propublica.org/article/how-exactly-do-colleges-allocate-their-financial-aid-they-wont-say?