Searching for colleges with waived early application fees

[clb3259]

Instead of making many college visits, our family strategy is to apply liberally ;) and see what sort of aid comes through. She have 4 reach schools, and about 10 others (8 private and 2 SUNY schools). We have visited two of the reach schools (Cornell and Vanderbilt), and Dartmouth actually states that visits don't make a difference in their acceptance of students so we're feeling like this is a sane and economical choice for our whole family.

 

We have found a few colleges with waived application fees for early submission--Gordon, Duquesne, and Messiah. We would add in some more good schools with waived fees if we could find them. Anyone know of other schools in the Northeast with waived application deals like this?

 

-Karen

[justasque]

Honestly, I wouldn't make that a criteria.  An application fee is a drop in the bucket when you're spending that kind of money.  I think you'd be better off searching for schools that 1) offer the desired major, and 2) have a decent endowment or other means to provide substantial aid for their students.  Obviously, you will also want to have a "safety school" that is very likely to be affordable (even if it's because they are in your town) and will be a reasonably good fit academically and socially.  In other words, put the time in to narrow down your search up-front, even if it doesn't involve visits.  I've seen too many kids apply to a lot of schools that weren't carefully researched, only to find that come May, their reaches didn't come through, their backups weren't affordable, and their safety, where they ended up, was not a good fit academically or socially. 

The application fee is there to encourage you to think carefully before applying, so that you're not wasting your time or the school's time.  In fact, at least one local school eliminated their "free application", because they were getting too low of a yield.  By putting it back, and taking some other measures, they now have fewer applicants but more of their accepted students actually choose the school.  This "yield" number is important to schools.

All that said, my kids' private school guidance counselor told them NOT to answer the question about where else they were applying.  Should you apply to a lot of schools, this may be wise advice in your case.  If they feel you're wasting their time, your otherwise-qualified student may end up on the waitlist.

(ETA:  If you have financial need, some schools may waive the application fee.  That might be a better approach.)

Edited September 14, 2017 by justasque

[yvonne]

I wouldn't make that a criteria, either, but... on the Common App, you can search for colleges that have "No (application) fee for domestic applicants (U.S. Citizens)" if that helps.

Of course it will only turn up colleges that use the Common App, but I just tried it and it came up w/ over 300.

[clb3259]

Yes, we see the application fee is a fine investment for these 14 schools that she'd be thrilled to attend if the money is there. We've thoroughly researched that list, and every one of those schools is a fine option, with the SUNY schools there as a very safe backup. So the waived fee isn't criteria for our main list at all.

 

We are looking to "fish" for money at priviate schools we may not have otherwise considered by adding them without paying another application fee. We are middle class and essentially single income, so need-based aid outside of the deep-pocketed, heavily endowed schools is not going to be plentiful, though we definitely have need--we're in that awkward middle ground, financially.

Edited September 14, 2017 by kbucky

[Milknhoney]

I work in a University admissions office. We do waive the fee for campus visitors, but we will waive it at other times as well. We will waive the fee for students we meet when we do high school visits. We also hold regional presentations in areas we draw a lot of applicants from, and we waive the fee for students who attend. Sometimes we'll waive the fee for a student we met at a college fair that seemed to have strong interest - like if they stop and have a 15 minute conversation with us instead of grabbing materials and walking on. We usually waive the fee if their high school counselor calls and asks us to. Also, as the year progresses and we're trying to generate applicants, sometimes we'll send out emails to all the prospects in our database who haven't applied yet and include a fee waiver to encourage them to apply. The first one is usually right before Thanksgiving, because a lot of people use that weekend to start filling out their applications. Same right before Christmas break. 

 

All that is to say I highly encourage you to get on all the mailing lists for all interested schools and attend any events in your area that they will be at. 

[JeanM]

I would agree that getting on mailing lists (and reading the mail!) is a good way to get fees waived. When ds was applying last year, I had him search his email for each school, and check for fee waivers.

 

I know there were one or two colleges that my ds applied to that didn't have fees, but I can't remember which. I'll update if I remember. I also wanted to point out that getting the admission fee waived doesn't necessarily make it free to apply. We had to send both ACT and SAT (subject test) scores to every school, plus most required the CSS profile. Those fees add up!

 

Good luck!

[Prairie~Phlox]

What is she wanting to go into?  Wgu.edu has a popup that makes the application free. It's an online University specializing in a few areas and is set up differently than your traditional college and is a lot less.