" data integrity be underwritten"- exactly! Need 59 k in loans per year other child got $40k need based aid same family same EFC YES not BU but half? 30%- somenformula that approximatesba fair means test and livesvup,tomspirit of examples? Not whatnwebfound- $50 k plus loans or my kid is not attending and sadly I will likelynrisk my own future as my child is far more imoirtantbto me somthis is whynthey do,it- to let parents “make the decidin” - thanks for Empowering me (to committ financial suicide?)–I know–at least you “gave us the choice”… so thanks- as I know nothings truly pr
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BU won D’s “worst FA package” award. They did offer both merit and some need based aid but nothing approaching what she got elsewhere. We knew they were bad going in, I allowed her to apply on the chance she’d get a full tuition scholarship she was up for. Letting it go was fine, it was not a top choice, I just want to agree with the OP that their aid isn’t great.
…and because she has an NCP their NPC was not at all useful, none were, really. Packages came in all over the place.
@waitlistman, I have a hard time reading your run-on sentences with their missing punctuation and proofreading, so I can’t say I totally understand your point, but if you can’t afford to send your kid to BU, don’t. To take on any financial hardship for this school, which isn’t all that special, would be foolish. BU doesn’t owe your kid an affordable education, and you don’t owe your kid attendance at any school he desires no matter how costly. Get a grip.
You can’t compare what another school gave your other child. EFC is federal, so if the other school gave your child $40k, it wasn’t off the federal EFC. BU sounds very unaffordable for you. Have your son go somewhere else. You are not only risking your future but your son’s. Don’t have him borrow tons of money.
You really have to look at the sticker prices for school. Everyone starts there. If you get some aid or scholarships, it goes down, but BU never promised you the price would go down, it told you the sticker price. Just like with any other purchase in the world (food, car, house), the price is set and you need to do what you can to get the price down - use coupons, shop around, pick a lower priced product.
BU has a great net price calculator. Did you use that prior to applying. Usually it is pretty close to being accurate.
The school does NOT promise to meet full need for all students. That is something you knew going into the application process, right? And the school uses your data on the profile to craft a need based award.
Re: meeting need for 85%…this includes those with no need, or students who take only the Direct Loan. It doesn’t mean AT ALL that your child would get 85% of HIS need met. Not at all.
If you think an error was made, call them and ask them to check.
Your OP is difficult to read.
Our experience was similar to OPs. We do not qualify for, nor did we expect any need based aid, so that was never an issue. Son completed his application and supplementary scholarship applications well before December 1. He is a high stats kid (2270 SAT, 800,740 SAT II, 4.0 UW, 4.4 W GPA; several long term ECs). BU was the only school that did not offer him a penny of merit aid. (Northeastern, Brandeis, Hampshire, WPI, UMass Lowell, & UMass Amherst all offered aid. Most were 16-18K/year. UML was full ride - tuition, R&B + 4K for internships).
Different schools. Different policies regarding need based aid.
Awesomekidsmom, it sounds like you are talking about merit aid. Is that correct?
I believe the OP is talking about need based aid…which has financials as the criteria, not stats.
Re: need based aid…Northeastern and Brandeis, for example, pledge to meet full need for all. BU does not.
Re: merit aid…UMass Lowell…at that school this student was likely at the tippy top of the accepted students. Getting a lot of merit aid there isn’t a surprise either…and I’m going to guess some of that was either MA grant aid, or merit aid as well.
Like I said…BU doesn’t guarantee to meet full need for all. In addition, the most generous merit awards are highly competitive ones.
Awesome…it sounds like your son has some great choices. Hoping the OP does as well!
@Awesomekidsmom - Congratulations!!! Your kid does sound awesome! And I’m guessing that if his home state was somewhere other than MA, BU might have offered something. They do not hide the fact that they use preferential packaging and, in your son’s case, they may have decided they preferred to award their funds to kids from Alaska. Or someone may have just screwed up. No way to know.
Hang on to the “non-award” letter. When your son is famous, he’ll want to remember to thank BU for encouraging him to pursue his dreams elsewhere! 
I dunno. It isn’t really fair to criticize a school for not giving your kid merit aid, no matter what your kid got elsewhere. BU gives a TON of merit aid–to THEIR BEST candidates. There is a girl at my child’s high school who is basically being paid to go to BU, her award was so phenomenal. But she’s phenomenal, way above Awesomekidsmoms’ awesome kid. If your kid didn’t get great merit aid at BU (and mine also didn’t), it’s because BU had other applicants who were more attractive than your kid. UML (or wherever) didn’t. Accept it and move on.
Yes - I’m just talking merit. As I said in my second sentence, we didn’t qualify for or expect need based. It seemed that OP was lamenting both the need-based and merit scholarships. BU’s website makes it sound like there are a lot of merit scholarships whereas Brandeis doesn’t advertise them at all. However, I’ve met many kids with Brandeis scholarships, and none with anything from BU.
@redpoodles - I’m perfectly happy with it. I was just trying to let OP know that he/she is not alone, and I was also responding to another poster who suggested that perhaps OP hadn’t applied for merit scholarships on time.
I didn’t realize there was any merit aid at any of the private schools until my son started applying, so I was very pleasantly surprised. The BU thing has come up a lot in some other circles because there are a number of kids who were rejected at Northeastern, but accepted at BU, even though a number of kids who were admitted to both got merit only at NEU.
My son had a music performance award from BU…so they do give merit awards. Before the NPCs, they had a very transparent table that clearly stated the types of merit aid you could get with your stats.
I understand that folks are disappointed with financial aid awards, but no need to diss a school that clearly states they do NOT meet full need for all. BU clearly says this. Clearly.
And the BU generous merit awards are highly competitive.
@dodgersmom - Thank you - what a nice thing to say!
Here’s an irritating thing: My kid got the “BU Scholarship” of 25K in her package. But it isn’t a scholarship! It’s a one year grant. She got 16K free money from NEU. And they call it a “NEU Grant,” but also guaranteed it for 4 years. Shouldn’t that be called a scholarship??? Argh!
Also, there is a lot of overlap in the kids applying to both schools–however, BU is a bigger school and so can accept more of them, but that doesn’t mean they want to finance more of them… NEU is still building its brand.
To be honest, NEU’s FA hasn’t been that amazing either (on par with Emory-Oxford and Wooster). Miles ahead of BU, but not nearly as good as Amherst (College) or Tulane.
I’ve been trying to get an email or phone response to a few FA questions from NEU for over two weeks now. Just left another message…
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And what exactly do you think that “85%” means? That the school meets about 85% of each applicant’s need? No, not even close. The awards range from 100% (for some students) to 0% (for others). And those are the figures ONLY for the students who decided to attend BU. You can assume that a very large number of the students who decided not to attend BU made that decision because it was unaffordable for them . . . and none of their FA offers are taken into account in calculated that “85%” average. So if you’re looking at all the FA offers extended to admitted students, the average percentage of need met is likely quite a bit lower. <<<
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^This
We on CC have been trying to make this known for years. these avg need met stats are silly because a “bad aid” school could be filled with mostly high EFC students who only need a $5500 loan to meet most/all need. The Pell student gets a tiny pkg and a big gap…AND DOESN’T ENROLL.
@WaterRising…congrats on Michigan. I have a sophomore there that loves it and we are oos and can’t seem to get any aid even though we could use some so its great that you got some.
And people wonder why kids these days have to apply to two dozen schools. FA awards can range from ZERO to FULL - even from schools with a similar student/stat population, necessitating the casting of a very wide net unless you can/are willing to pay full fare. There is not a lot of transparency in the process; well, really, there is NO transparency in the process. Net price calculators are inaccurate, even wildly so for many people. By the time you find out how much aid you have been offered, it’s too late to go back and apply to a few more schools.
Colleges wickedly exacerbate the problem by marketing how they will “make it work” and by sending glossy brochures touting their amazing scholarships and aid. It takes a careful reading of the fine print, an understanding of the common data set, investigation into sites like this one, etc. to understand how misleading the propaganda is. The vast majority of parents and kids (especially first-timers), do not do this deep of an investigation. Why should they? The college - and US news (parroting the common data set figures) - indicate that the average aid is pretty high - and they will “work with families” to make it happen!
Even colleges that claim to meet full need can vary widely in the aid offered, because they all have different definitions of what constitutes “need,” and what constitutes “meeting” that “need” (i.e., with loans instead of grants).
About the common data set: Why, why, why aren’t colleges required to set forth the statistics about the aid offered to ALL ACCEPTED students? This would be the true mark of how generous/stingy a school is. Instead, the CDS only shows the aid that was offered by those students who chose to attend the school. Of course, these figures will skew to the advantage of the school because the kids with the good packages are likely to be the ones who chose to attend, making the school’s FA look amazing. On the other hand, many of the kids offered lousy packages will not attend because the school has not been made affordable for them…but you will never know what percentage of kids got truly bad aid because the CDS does not include the kids who chose not to attend.
Of course, as M2CK pointed out recently, this still wouldn’t tell you anything because the stat’s would still be skewed by the school’s “generosity” in meeting the full need of students who had no need!
The stats you need (and the ones that are readily available) are the average GPA and ACT/SAT scores of the school’s enrolled students. Limit applications to those schools where the kid’s stat’s are above the 75th percentile, and you’ve got a shot at getting good aid. There’s still no guarantee, of course . . . and that “meets 85%” stat really is ridiculously misleading. An adult should be able to see past the smoke and mirrors, but most kids aren’t going to know any better.