Wesleyan University this weekend became the first major university to announce publicly a shift in financial aid policy because of costs, when its trustees voted unanimously to adopt a policy of rejecting some applicants who cannot pay full tuition.

Wesleyan is one of small minority of colleges--including Harvard and Swarthmore--that up till now have pursued a completely "aid-blind" admissions policy, under which they promise to spend as much money on aid as it necessary to let accepted applicants attend, Harvard and Wesleyan admissions officers said yesterday.

Most colleges, they added, have finite budgets for financial aid that make it impossible to fund needy applicants beyond a certain print. Harvard and Wesleyan, on the other hand, have the option off drawing on unrestricted funds--money from the College's general budget--to fulfill the goal of aid-blind admissions.

Rising costs and increasingly severe cuts in federal aid have forced both colleges to draw a higher percentage of unrestricted funds for financial aid each of the past few years, officials said.

Under the approved plan, Claire Matthew, an admissions officer, said yesterday, Wesleyan will accept its class first according to merit, without considering financial need, and will then calculate how much money would be needed to fund all applicants fully, or "to need."

If the sum totals more than 10 percent of the school's operating budget, Matthews added, the admissions committee will reduce the amount of aid to 10 percent by replacing needy students at the bottom of the list with wait-listed students who do not need financial aid.

Financial aid currently consumes about 8 percent of Wesleyan's budget. Matthews said, adding that the ceiling was set at 10 percent to delay any effects until next year's admissions cycle.

The student-faculty budget advisory committee responsible for the plan had calculated that without a ceiling, financial aid costs would total 15 percent of the budget by 1986. The New York Times reported yesterday.

Wesleyan's action sheds some light on the philosophical problems faced by colleges but will not directly affect Harvard approach to the dilermma of dwindling funds and rising id costs, L. Fred Jewett '57, dean of admissions and financial aid, said yesterday.

Jewett, who is studying Harvard's options in case federal cuts make it impossible to maintain the present aid-blind policy, drew a distinction between Wesleyan's decision to reject students asking for aid--without giving them the chance to try to find alternate ways of paying tuition--and the "admit-deny" option. Under the latter, which Jewett said he probably would favor, a student would be told he qualified for admission on merit grounds but that the college couldn't afford to give him aid.

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Though Harvard and Wesley an spend comparable proportions of their budgets on financial aid, "People come to quite different conclusions looking at the same facts," Jewett said.

He added that Wesleyan's public shift would be unlikely to spur other colleges to take similar actions immediately. Wesleyan has traditionally been "so specific" in its commitment to diversity and to aid-blind admission. Jewett said, that the shift may have appeared more significant that it would at other institutions.

Mixed Feelings

About 75 Wesleyan students staged a small rally Saturday to protest the decision, but most students were more disappointed than angry. Randy Siegal, a co-editor of the student newspaper Argus, said yesterday.

Four students served as voting members of the budget advisory committee that prepared the plan, and others were voting members of trustee committees, which discussed the problem starting last spring, Siegal said.

The student assembly also submitted a list of resolutions to alleviate the problem, including instituting a special development drive for funds restricted to admissions, and periodically reevaluating the effects of the policy on the student body. Response was encouraging and the suggestions will be incorporated, Mark E. Kushner, and assembly member, said yesterday.

But Siegal said many students were skeptical about the priorities the budget committee had used in deciding on the plan, and predicted "a lot of questions" in the next few months over why the committee had not tried other measures, such as cutting other programs, before changing the aid policy