Ranking schools based on Application fee

Question

looking for ways to postpone working on my essays, I started thining of ranking schools by application fee's they chanrge. law of supply/demand would imply that with fixed number of spots, the fees would be higher at more sought after schools. I am too lazy to check all the schools' websites but am curious if anyone knows if there is a list out there tracking such data.

aaudetat · Answer

I couldn't agree with you more, econgirl!

As I was deciding where to apply, I kept a spreadsheet with various bits of data, including application fees. Here I the ones on my list that had application costs.


Penn: 215
Stanford: 245
Harvard: 235
Northwestern: 225

Cornell: 180
Yale: 180
Dartmouth: 220
Berkeley: 175

NC: 130
York: 125
TX: 125

I think the pattern in this small sample is pretty clear. But my-oh-my, doesn't Tuck seem a bit big for its britches?

And I noticed today that Tippie's fee is only about $60. Probably related to that great MidWestern Challenge: attracting students to the fly-over zone. (Which I think is crap, btw. I'm from the MidWest and it's a good place, dernit.)

rhyme · Answer

I do not, but I'm pretty sure supply / demand doesn't work in this context. Supply is essentially limitless - schools hire part time readers to cover additional loads...

pelihu · Answer

I have a personal list of some schools that I considered applying to: Stanford $245 Wharton $215 Columbia $215 UCLA $187 Duke $185 Chicago $180 Michigan $180 Cornell $180 Berkeley $175 Virginia $140 Who the hell do UCLA and Duke think they are, pricing themselves in with the ultra-elites? :lol:

Actually, a really good observation econgirl. No surprise that Stanford tops this list followed by Wharton and Columbia. Chicago looks like a bargain. I wish I knew the info for Harvard, Kellogg and MIT. I do believe that schools have another concern beyond just collecting the highest possible fee. It's actually more important for them to generate the highest possible volume of applications, because this will improve their admit percentages and yield. Then, for a school like Harvard, which has an endowment to cover the educations of every student it admits in perpetuity, charging a high fee (I don't know if they do or not) is simply an indication of how powerful they are.

Tajik4GMAT · Answer

85$ for international students

EconGirl · Answer

Here are the schools I applied to ($)

Penn: 215
Columbia: 215
Duke =185
Yale =180
NYU =175

 

P.S. rhyme, supply = limited number of spots for students to fill (not related to #AdCom staff)

EconGirl · Answer

pelihu, looked up :

Harvard = 235
MIT = 230
Kellog = 225

dukes · Answer

Insead $264 (200 Euros)

Hjort · Answer

Interesting topic. Note, however, that these are just list prices- many students will receive waivers so the mean price paid by applicants to a given school could be well below the list price that that school.

aaudetat · Answer

Really, waivers?

I saw a lot of "don't ask 'cause we won't waive your fee unless you're little orphan annie herself" when I was looking at schools.

I wonder if waivers are more common among the schools that are less sought after?

Back to the discussion of supply and demand - I don't think we need to get that technical about it. We could think of it that way, or we could at it like this:

"What? You don't want to pay our $250 fee? Good for you. We don't care. We're Hah-vahd, and a zillion other people are more than willing to pay the fee for the 12% chance that we might actually let them in. So there. Nah."

pelihu · Answer

My understanding was that most schools will only grant waivers to applicants that are still finishing their undergraduate degrees and are receiving financial aid.

I think there are some programs like the consortium that more or less allow applicants to waive the fee (and fill out just one application for a bunch of schools), but that is for underrepresented minorities only.

braindancer · Answer

I think I saw somewhere on this forum that schools below the ultra-elite threshold tend to waive the fee for applicants with monster GMAT, as an additional attraction. I've received several offers like this as well, but from non-elite schools at all.

saraafifiahmed · Answer

Hey Guys,

Is there a lit for these universities offering free application waiver or do not have application fee in the first place. I have collected some of your posts, but is there a complete list please?

Thanks a lot

Ranking schools based on Application fee

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