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Many schools like Harvard say they select their freshmen class on a need-blind policy. To what extent is this true because there seems to be evidence to suggest otherwise...evidence as in based upon the decisions of a few of my friends..

By Jamimom (Jamimom) on Thursday, January 08, 2004 - 09:03 pm: Edit

I believe it is true. Many of the top level schools actually look at the application in light of the advantages the applicant has and those who "have had it all" in opportunities are viewed in that light and those who have lived in financial hardship have that taken into account. A few anecdotal cases do not a policy make. There are a lot of applications to Harvard so you really cannot generalize based on a small sample. It would be interesting to see breakdowns of acceptances showing financial need as a factor, but I have yet to see that.
In indirect ways, no school is needblind, since they do give legacies and often special talent (athletes, musicians) students some preference. It can be argued that these categories are heavily weighted in high income candidates since many of the activities do require parental support and resources, and Harvard alums do not tend to be needy financailly.
There are some schools, however, that highschool college counselors strongly suspect are not needblind but claim they are. They have a better nose for sniffing out these kind of discrepancies since they see so many more applications over time. But it would be difficult to make a case against such schools until some kind of data breaking down the acceptance statistics vs application stats is available.