Editors’ Note: A writer who contributed to this story works for the Office of Admissions as a University Ambassador. In the interest of fair, unbiased coverage, she recused herself from interviewing Sally Stone Richmond and reporting on the current admissions cycle.

Washington and Lee University will no longer consider applicants’ financial need in the admissions process after an alumnus donated $132 million.

The donation by investor and philanthropist Bill Miller III, ’72, is the largest single gift in the university’s history and one of the largest dedicated to financial aid at any private liberal arts college, according to The Columns. 

The need-blind policy was adopted immediately after the donation was announced on Oct. 24 — just a week before the Class of 2029’s early decision deadline of Nov. 1. This means the university will now consider applicants solely based on their academic achievements and personal qualities rather than factoring in their families’ income, said Sally Stone Richmond, the university’s vice president for admissions and financial aid.

“This is the final sort of piece of the generous policies the university has to help students and families and counselors to understand the commitment the university’s made to making it accessible on all levels,” Richmond said.

Washington and Lee is one of about 115 universities that uphold a need-blind admissions process, according to a 2022 PrepScholar count. Only 24 of those colleges are need-blind and meet 100% of financial need without loans, according to the college preparation website, including top 10 liberal arts schools such as Williams College, Amherst College, Swarthmore College, Bowdoin College and Pomona College.

There are less than a dozen institutions that also guarantee these things for international applicants, Richmond said. Washington and Lee is now one of them.

“If we meet need, we meet it,” Richmond said, regardless of where a student is applying from.

Advocates of need-blind policies say that while the process can aid in admitting more low-income students to college, it can also help welcome more racially diverse students, according to a January report from Inside Higher Ed. Such strategies have been viewed as possible alternatives to race-conscious affirmative action, which was reversed by the Supreme Court in 2023.

Before 2023, Washington and Lee, like other universities, took students’ race into account in their admissions process. Now, the university doesn’t consider race or income.

But need-blind admissions don’t immediately even the playing field. Richmond said that a family’s income is still the largest factor in the resources students have access to — including standardized test preparation, college counseling and more — and can greatly impact how prepared a student is to enter the university’s competitive admissions pool.

The university has no specific goal for increasing socioeconomic diversity, Richmond said. Rather, “it is an opportunity for us to reinforce and to build on the existing story and potency of W&L’s affordability policies and practices,” she said.

W&L’s socioeconomic diversity by the numbers

Last year, the university’s lack of socioeconomic diversity affected its placement in college rankings. Washington and Lee dropped from No. 11 to No. 21 in a US News and World Report ranking due to new criteria that placed more emphasis on socioeconomic diversity, according to previous reporting by the Ring-tum Phi.

But having a small percentage of low-income students is nothing new for Washington and Lee. According to a 2017 report from the New York Times, Washington and Lee is one of 38 colleges in America where more students come from the top 1% of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60%. The university’s median parent income is $261,000, which the study said is No. 4 in the country and No. 1 in Virginia.

Over the past decade, the university has invested in financial and merit-based aid to welcome more low-income students to campus. Since 2010, Washington and Lee has nearly doubled its spending on financial aid — from $27,426,000 to $59,077,000 — according to the university’s fact books. In terms of change to the demographics of the student body, Richmond said, 25% of students received financial aid in 1993 but 60% of students in the class of 2028 received aid.

This change includes financial aid initiatives including the W&L Promise, which assures that students whose families have an annual income of less than $150,000 pay no tuition, and those whose families have an annual household income of less than $75,000 pay no tuition, room or board. Even before the university committed to need-blind admissions, it was listed in Best College’s Top 25 schools for most generous financial aid.

The move to need-blind admissions is one of many goals of the Leading Lives of Consequence Campaign, which began in July 2020 to meet the vision laid out in the Board of Trustees’ 2018 Strategic Plan, according to the campaign website. The campaign has already raised $475 million from more than 20,000 donors towards its $650 million goal, according to an email statement from President Will Dudley sent to the campus community on Oct. 28.

Future goals of the campaign include finishing the construction of the new Williams School and the Lindley Center for Student Wellness by fall 2025, building a new Museum of Institutional History and Admissions Office, and creating new academic and extracurricular programs, according to Dudley’s statement.

“[Miller’s] extraordinary gift allows us to realize our important aspiration to enrich our community by enrolling the most talented students from all walks of life who are drawn to Washington and Lee’s distinctive liberal arts education,” Dudley wrote in his statement.

He presented Miller with the university’s highest honor, the Washington Award, on Oct. 24 to recognize his philanthropy and service.

Miller’s choice to give to admissions comes in part from his understanding of higher education, Richmond said, stemming from his involvement on the Boards of Trustees for Johns Hopkins University and the Santa Fe Institute. His generous donation also comes from his loyalty to Washington and Lee, she added.

“The liberal arts education I received from Washington and Lee instilled in me values and habits of mind that have enriched my life and are the basis of much of my professional success,” Miller, now the chairman and chief investment officer of two investment firms, told the Columns. “I am pleased that this gift will make the same education attainable for students who share W&L’s core values of honor, integrity and civility and who bring different points of view, life experiences and talents that will contribute to a fuller and richer college experience.”

Richmond said Miller’s generosity allows admissions to recruit a diverse class without financial constraints.

“I feel very optimistic that whatever winds and tumult may come in the future — new FAFSA challenges or Supreme Court decisions — being able to know we have the financial resources to support students regardless of those is an extraordinary gift,” Richmond said.