THE PRICE OF NO
Colleges get rich on rejects’ fees
We regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you a place in our incoming college class — but thanks for the cash!
Competitive universities across the country are cashing in big on students who don’t make the cut, according to an analysis of admissions data by student-loan firm LendEDU.
Most schools require hefty application fees and keep the cash whether or not an applicant gets in. All that scratch, especially at schools that shun tens of thousands of kids per year, has turned rejection letters into a gold mine.
Topping the list of rejection-revenue generators is UCLA, which pocketed $5.6 million from 79,000 rejected applicants who ponied up $70 each in 2016. The highly selective school accepted 17,473 students. The West Coast college didn’t return a request for comment.
The exorbitant figures have experts questioning why flush colleges still collect such fees.
“Schools with really high endowments don’t need the money,” said Dr. Shirag Shemmassian, founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting. He added that the exclusive nature of some schools could be a reason why colleges are collecting so much in application fees.
“It’s like a nightclub — the longer the line is, the harder it is to get in, the more you want to go,” he said.
New York colleges are also getting boatloads of cash from students getting the thin envelopes.
Columbia, New York University, Fordham, Syracuse, SUNY Stony Brook and CUNY Hunter College all made more than $1 million in rejection revenue in 2016, according to LendEDU. Columbia and NYU were neck and neck at about $2.9 million.
Universities said fees are necessary because a lot of work is involved in vetting thousands of applications, cover to cover. They also argued that many fees are waived.
A Fordham University spokesman disputed the group’s findings, saying that the college took in only $552,000 in 2016.
And NYU spokesman John Beck- man said, “As far as I recall, The Post charges $1.50 to buy a copy of the newspaper regardless of whether the purchaser reads every article. Unlike The Post, though, if someone asks us to waive the application fee, we don’t charge them.”
At CUNY, a single application can be used for up to six colleges, and 42,000 low-income high schoolers had the $65 fee waived, a spokesman said.
LendEDU analyst Michael Brown said the group came up with the figures by subtracting the number of admitted students by the total amount of applicants, then multiplying the difference by the application fee.