“In our desire to seek out, attract and then distinctively educate students with unusual potential, we recognize that such individuals reside in all parts of the world,” said Chairman of the Board Jide Zeitlin. “Need blind admissions sends an important message to students of unusual potential outside of the United States while it enables so many of these students to now seriously aspire to an Amherst education.”
The extension of need-blind admissions to international students means that every applicant to the College will be evaluated without any consideration of financial need. Before the decision, this had only applied to American citizens and residents. “We recognize your generation of students is living in a global environment, there’s no denying that,” said Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Tom Parker. “There’s no doubt that we should be thinking about ourselves as a more international place than we already are.”
Parker said that this year, the college received roughly 1,000 applications from international students, and he surmises that this number will increase by 300-400 applicants as a result of the new need-blind policy. This year, international students made up seven to eight percent of the incoming class, and Parker expects this number to jump to 10-11 percent.
“I am excited that the need-blind policy has been extended to encompass all international students since it was one of my top questions when making the decision of schools to apply [to] in the U.S.,” said Nic Mollel ’10 of Tanzania. “I did recruiting for the College in Tanzania last summer and the question of financial aid was one of the first questions that was asked after giving presentations on the school and my experience here.”
The announcement comes on the heels of an increased commitment to courting international students, as represented by an exceedingly large number of international applicants for admission into the class of 2012. “While Amherst experienced a 26 percent increase in our international student applicant pool for the class of 2012 and we have seen steady, but not as dramatic increases in recent years, we can anticipate another surge of interest from international candidates with our recent announcement about being need-blind for non-U.S. citizens,” said Director of Admission Katie Fretwell. “The very fact that we did not have a need-blind admission policy in place for international students discouraged superbly qualified but high financial-need candidates from considering Amherst,” she added.
Amherst joins the ranks of Dartmouth, Middlebury and Williams Colleges, as well as MIT, and Harvard, Princeton and Yale Universities. According to Parker, Amherst was either the first or second school to go need-blind for American citizens, back in the early 1960s.
In 1991 the College considered doing away with need-blind admissions due to a tough financial situation. According to an Oct. 20, 1991 New York Times article, the College contemplated admitting fewer students and then having a longer waiting list. That way, the College could practice need-blind admissions until it ran out of financial aid, and then take students off the waiting list based on whether or not they could pay. According to Parker, some people at the College took a stand against such a policy or any similar considerations, and need-blind admissions continued.
Now in a much more comfortable financial standing, the College is able to extend need-blind to all applicants. “Why now?” Parker asked, with regard to implementation of the new policy, “Because we are confident in the capital campaign that we can raise the funds to support it.”
Elias Aba Milki ’10, of Ethiopia, is all for it. “It’s great that the College has decided to move to a need-blind admissions policy for international students. For students back home in Ethiopia, financial aid plays the largest role when deciding which college to apply to and to attend,” said Milki. “I remember talking to an admitted student from Ethiopia who was trying to decide between Stanford and Amherst. She told me that, even though she preferred Amherst, she would attend the school that gave her the best financial aid package.”