QuestBridge brings low-income students to U.

“It was totally unexpected,” she said of the phone call she received last fall from the QuestBridge program notifying her of her acceptance to Princeton. “I was just sitting at my computer doing my homework, and [QuestBridge] called and said I got matched with Princeton, and I was like, ‘What does that mean?’ ”

Mills is one of 31 students who received this same call from QuestBridge last year. The California-based nonprofit admits around 1,000 low-income, high-achieving students annually from around the country into National College Match, a system reminiscent of the medical school admission process designed to ensure students receive full need-based financial aid at top-ranked universities. In addition to learning of their college admittance early, students accepted to the college-match program are guaranteed to receive full financial aid, and their application fees are waived.

“Since I didn’t decide to go to Princeton right away, I got a bunch of outside scholarships that actually exceeded the amount of need that I had after the QuestBridge scholarship,” Mills explained. “So I was actually able to buy a computer through [Student Computer Initiative], I got my books, and, when I got my first bill, it was actually a credit on my account.”

The University has been working with QuestBridge since the program’s inception five years ago and started matching students as a full partner college in 2006, receiving almost 900 applications for the Class of 2013, Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye said.

“There are several very good organizations around the country that are identifying low-income, high-achieving students, and QuestBridge, in the last several years, has been identifying three or four thousand students throughout the country in this category, and so they’re one of the ways that we are finding some of these low-income students,” Rapelye noted.

QuestBridge asks the students it names as finalists in the college-match program to rank their top eight choices of QuestBridge’s 27 partner colleges. These colleges guarantee to meet 100 percent of demonstrated financial need of students selected through this program, eliminating the loans that may comprise part of a conventional financial aid package.

Rapelye explained that owing to the need-based nature of the University’s financial aid system, a low-income student admitted through QuestBridge’s college-match program would not have a larger aid package than one admitted through regular decision. On average, a QuestBridge student’s scholarship to the University is composed of 96 percent scholarship and 4 percent campus job funding, she added.

Rapelye noted that the University has taken between 10 and 31 QuestBridge finalists each year it has been involved in the program. She added that in the coming year the matched group might be slightly smaller because “we pay QuestBridge for every one of the matches and not all of our matches enroll.” According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, 70 percent of QuestBridge’s annual budget is supplied by its partner colleges, with the remainder supplied by outside donations.

Applying through QuestBridge does not boost one’s chances of admission, Rapelye maintained.

“I think we’re applying exactly the same standard when we’re reading [QuestBridge] applications,” Rapelye said, adding that the QuestBridge application’s greater level of detail and number of essays “just gives us more information about [the applicants].”

For Joey Barnett ’12, who was also admitted through the college match, QuestBridge’s main advantage did not lie in its financial benefits.

“For Princeton and schools like Princeton that have no-loan policies, students would be paying the same amount anyway,” Barnett noted. “I think applying through QuestBridge shows the colleges that you’ve overcome obstacles because in the regular application, there’s just not enough room to say ‘I’ve overcome this’ and ‘I’ve achieved this.’ ”

Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

He added that QuestBridge was helpful because students “apply in a whole different light.”

If students are not chosen to participate in the college-match program or choose to avoid being bound by colleges’ early decision programs, a regular decision option, in which students apply to partner colleges using QuestBridge’s free application, is also available. These students do not receive early notification of acceptance or rejection, but they are linked with QuestBridge in their applications.

Rapelye noted that the University, which doesn’t pay QuestBridge for students who apply through the program but weren’t selected for its college-match program, also accepts applicants through this regular decision process.

“We’ve admitted … a total of anywhere from 45 to 80 students in the regular decision pool, so that’s where the bigger group comes from for us,” Rapelye said. “There are many, many students who are not finalists but who are very good candidates.”