GW University Loves Money More Than They Care To Admit

Like many universities, George Washington University in Washington D.C., has long-claimed to have “need blind” admissions, that is, the admissions process doesn’t take a student’s socioeconomic status into account when reviewing their applications. Per an article in their student newspaper yesterday, this turns out not to be the case at all!

The University admitted publicly for the first time Friday that it puts hundreds of undergraduate applicants on its waitlist each year because they cannot pay GW’s tuition.
Administrators now say the admissions process has always factored in financial need. But that contradicts messaging from the admissions and financial aid offices that, as recently as Saturday, have regularly attested that the University remained need-blind.

Oh also, if you’re wondering how many people actually get in off of the waitlist at George Washington University: in 2012 it was 1%.

The rest of the article is mostly admissions officers and provosts and deans and the like making qualifying statements which don’t excuse the misrepresentation (top applicants aren’t subject to financial scrutiny, only the middling applicants, and only after an initial need-blind review). Nowhere in the piece is anyone quoted as apologizing for their misleading need-blind claims, and nowhere in the piece does anyone pledge to either evolve their policies or change the way they talk about them. Great work, guys.

As someone whose family definitely did not pay full tuition, and who definitely found herself on the waitlist of most schools she applied to, I am retroactively scandalized (unless this can be my new excuse for some of those college rejections?). And while I still think this is some real injustice of accessibility and total bullshit, sadly all I can think is that these wait-listed kids are probably saving themselves a lot of student loan debt by not going there in the first place.

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