>I saw these decisions flipped frequently for students from affluent backgrounds, and rarely for students who’d applied for financial aid. >Although our school

>I saw these decisions flipped frequently for students from affluent backgrounds, and rarely for students who’d applied for financial aid. >Although our school advertised our “holistic” review process, our director typically used test scores to screen applicants. His rationale was that these were “riskier” students. The only time he didn’t? If the student could pay full price to attend our institution, or a “full pay” student. My main takeaway from this is a reminder on how reliant schools have become on gigantic, bloated tuitions to finance a large part of, if not all, their operations. Whee you need to keep paying for pricey administrators, new dorm buildings, and other likely-not-vital-for-education pieces but your state budgets have been slashed, endowment isn't paying out as much this year, and lower income students don't have access to as many loans - of course schools are going to put a preference for students from a wealthy background. I think if you want to keep colleges fair, you need to keep their budgets more bare bones and focused on the essentials of schools (teaching and research), OR charge those who can afford the vast tuitions out of pocket with even higher tuitions to offset the payments for more qualified, but less able to pay students.