Blake commented recently on my post about the $50 admissions application fee at OSU and the OUS Deferral form. Blake cleared up a few of my questions as well as adding a few more to my list. According to Blake, the request for the fee deferral is usually initiated by high school guidance counselors. I decided to research the impact that high school guidance counselors can have on students who have high financial need.
According to The U.S. Department of Education’s online pamphlet entitled, The Guidance Counselor’s Role in Ensuring Equal Educational Opportunity, “the counselor at the secondary school level assumes a number of roles, all important and potentially critical in affecting a student’s future.”
A section in the pamphlet titled Hands-on Counseling states that, “recent research suggests that low-income minority students are least likely to receive adequate counseling on higher education opportunities.” This statement is very troubling. Are students who have high financial need getting information about the OUS application fee deferral? According to Blake, “the number of fee deferrals OSU annually processes equals less than 1% of our total number of applications.” Is this number this small due to a low number of high need applicants or is it because high need applicants are not given “adequate counseling”?
According to Diverse, “counselors were also more likely to recommend students with higher family incomes to four-year colleges regardless of the students’ gender, academic performance and race.”
Another question just popped into my head. How do the other OUS schools inform potential applicants of the OUS deferral form? I decided to search each one’s website to find out if the form is available or at least linked (Please note that I am a self-identified google-phile. If I can’t find it, it’s probably not on the site):
Online information regarding the OUS “Request for Deferral of Application Fee for Admission”
- Eastern Oregon University:
Fee Deferral information availability rating - 0/10 (nowhere to be found) - Oregon Institute of Technology:
Fee Deferral information availability rating - 0/10 (nowhere to be found) - Oregon State University
Fee Deferral information availability rating - 3/10 (can be found if you search for the form and know what it’s called) - Portland State University
Fee Deferral information availability rating - 0/10 (nowhere to be found) - Southern Oregon University
Fee Deferral information availability rating - 10/10 (the form is prominently displayed and linked on the first year student admissions page) - University of Oregon
Fee Deferral information availability rating - 8/10 (the form is described and linked) - Western Oregon University
Fee Deferral information availability rating - 0/10 (nowhere to be found)
This issue seems especially relevant given that the state of Oregon is committed to increasing need-based financial aid. A $50 application fee could be the factor that keeps students with high financial need from ever applying…
Eric,
I acknowledge your chicken/egg reference concerning the number of fee deferrals we receive. Difficult to tell the exact impact. However, I would challenge your assessment of how easy/difficult it is to find the form or reference to the form at OSU.
The search engine on the OSU home page is terrible(as you well know). However, the ‘Ask OSU’ box on the Admissions home and subsequent pages will bring you directly to the following answer if ‘fee deferral/fee waiver/waiver is typed in:
“There is no authorization for waiving the application fee for anyone at any of the public four-year colleges and universities in Oregon, including Oregon State University. We can only defer the application fee for individuals with qualifying circumstances. There is a fee deferral form available on the Oregon University System web page at the following link: http://www.ous.edu/enroll/feedeform.pdf This form should be filled out by both the student and the high school counselor. If you are a transfer student the second page requests some supporting documents to be submitted with the form. We will apply the fee to your student account during the first term you enroll at OSU.”
Typing the words fee/app fee bring back a different answer but also provides a link (named ‘fee waiver’) to the answer provided above. Now does that really warrant a ‘3′?? C’mon, at least a ‘7′…..
I concede your point about other OUS institutions searchability for the form. But I can’t say how they promote/process the forms in other ways.
BTW, the link above has been changed to http://www.ous.edu/stucoun/prospstu/files/deferral.pdf
-bv
I am the director of admissions at Oregon Institute of Technology. I didn’t realize that we didn’t have info about app fee deferrals on our website. I’ll make sure we get some added there in the next few weeks.
[…] A couple of weeks ago I posted about the Oregon University System Application Fee Deferral Form. The deferral form allows students with high financial need to defer their admissions application fee ($50) at an Oregon University System School. […]
[…] Oregon State University’s Fee Deferral information availability rating is now 8/10 (the form is described and linked). […]