<p>cavender–</p>
<p>YOu are misunderstanding. CSS schools determine need themselves, so… they have determined they have “met your need” according to their formula, with loans.</p>
<p>There are a few bad things in this whole situation:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>College is not about “need” and really that word should be eliminated. It is not “need” but “want.” or amount necessary to pay for THIS school.</p></li>
<li><p>I feel it is unethical for schools to count loans as aid, as they are aid to the schools and not to the student.</p></li>
<li><p>You are in a classic accept/reject situation, as it is known around here. Your daughter was accepted, but it is a rejection for financial reasons. </p></li>
<li><p>We are walking around believing the myth that “the money is there” for you. Just apply and it will arrive.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>In the meantime, is there some place where your daughter can afford to attend? I hope so.</p>
<p>Congratulations to your DD in getting some top schools meet her need. That is terrific. Sometimes kids get NO schools meeting full need as defined by FAFSA, and especially defined by the family. More often than not. Yes, BU and AU were stingy with your DD. But they were not stingy with everyone,and it is possible that some of those kids who hit the mother lode with those schools got shafted for fin aid at schools where your daughter got full need met. </p>
<p>I agree with you that the financial aid picture should be made more clear to everyone when they start this process instead of all of this optimistic talk. The sad truth is that most students do not get what they need to go to school even according to the aid calculators. Most end up going to a local school part time and work their way through. It is the rare student that gets everything paid for them.</p>
<p>romanigypsyeyes: “You missed the point. The Profile could determine that you have ZERO or very little need and therefore could be met with a small loan. It has nothing to do with your EFC.”</p>
<p>Ithaca and Emerson both required Profile and both came close to meeting need. I still maintain the point of my posting here. Certain schools accept a percentage of students knowing that they will not be going there because it would be cost prohibitive for them to attend BECAUSE the school will not offer enough financial aid.<br>
- Schools should not accept as many students as they do.
AND
- They should publish the number of students who are accepted, have need, but receive ZERO amount from the college. This is a stat readily available.</p>
<p>Bottom line is your daughter doesn’t have to attend BU. I am sure she has other choices. We all go through what you’ve gone through. My first son was offered nothing by Washing University in St Louis, but other school offered him some scholarship money, so he went to that other school.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>AND?? What one school determines your need to be has absolutely nothing to do with what another school decides.</p>
<p>Cavender, the schools are a business. That is what you are missing here. Schools accept the number they do because their data shows them that it meets their goals to do so. They don’t know which kids will show up. There are kids in your D’s situation who somehow come up with the money. Grandma writes the check or there is an annuity somewhere that gets cashed in, the house is remortgaged, the vintage collection is sold off. These are all real life happenings when a family has a kid who get accepted and insufficient aid is forth coming. Unfortunately there are also those families who will do things that are financially risky, like take out private loans that they cannot pay back, should not be alllowed to take under any financial analysis, or they cash in pension money. But there are parents who will fight for their right to do these things for their kids to go to a school and disagree with you fully that their kids should have been turned down because they could not afford the school and the school did not want to give them the money. They want that opportunity. It would mean less options for them. It;s your choice to turn down the schools if you don’t like their terms. If they turned you down, it would not be your choice. </p>
<p>It’s your opinon and you are welcome to tell us this, but most of us disagree on some of your points. How many students do YOU think a school should accept and why Should YOU be the one coming up with that number? That is entirely up to the school, and a lot of thought goes into how many each school accepts to ensure all seats are filled and yet the school is not over filled. How on earth are you or any of us able to come up with a number?</p>
<p>I think the raw nerve struck is discomfort with the sense of entitlement, a common sentiment expressed on this forum. Many of us middle class parents hear about good students getting full rides, so when our kids graduate and apply to their dream schools and find out that there ain’t no free lunch, a sense of disappointment sets in. None of us feels like we can afford the tuition. This is America. Either we pay higher taxes, or we pay high tuition.</p>
<p>i agree with the OP in a number of her sentiment, particularly in the way disclosure is NOT made in the college process and how so few parents and students get it about financial aid until they actually go through the process at which time it is too late for that student. </p>
<p>BU used to be one of the more transparent schools for financial aid. We looked at it though my students did not apply there. At the time, they gave us a matrix for expected aid/merit that was more detailed than anything else we got from any school. Basically it told us what one can expect at what income level with a given test score/gpa. Very much a merit/need chart that gave you a good idea what was coming.</p>
<p>*
I still maintain that these schools shouldn’t accept as many students as they do, then I couldn’t complain that they give ZERO of what FAFSA says student needs.*</p>
<p>That’s not really what FAFSA does. The term EFC is a misnomer. </p>
<p>The federal gov’t has no right/business to tell a college what a student “needs” apart from federal aid (which is little). Schools are under no obligation to give a rat’s patootie what FAFSA indicates except to determine if the student is eligible for federal aid. </p>
<p>Yes, schools have to over-accept because (like your D), kids get accepted to 3-4+ colleges these days. Only the elites have super high yields. </p>
<p>Most schools are need blind because they want families to have the opportunity to decide if/how they’ll pay. Maybe the parents will take out Plus Loans, maybe they’ll take out home equity loans, maybe there’s a rich granny or generous non-custodial parent. Most schools leave it up to the families to determine if they can make it work…or not.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In most states, at this point we pay higher state taxes AND we pay high tuition. but, these are private schools the OP is posting about… </p>
<p>We really just don’t have a public higher education system. Most states have community colleges and directional state universities which remain affordable, and most private schools do value the mission of educating the less fortunate and give out grant money in order to educate some (not as many as people think) of these low income students.</p>
<p>But, private schools are allowed to do as they will.</p>
<p>Now, of course, we could get into a conversation about whether such institutions ought to remain tax exempt, or whether private institutions ought to be allowed to get taxpayer grants and research money, but that is different than a public decision as to who “should” get aid and how much.</p>
<p>romanigypsyeyes: "AND?? What one school determines your need to be has absolutely nothing to do with what another school decides. "</p>
<p>There are common evaluative criteria, income, assets, etc., but there is no way that you can defend how school A gives half of costs and school B gives ZERO costs based on the same information, and given the same endowment.<br>
Face it, in spite of parents’ hope that there is an even playing field, Profile schools do not evaluate a student’s financial need evenly. They are whimsical and many examples of this have been cited in this post.
Are you a financial aid officer?</p>
<p>poetgrl, my bad. Yes, those are private schools, but even public schools are relatively expensive now. For example, a year at the University of Texas at Austin is in the low $20Ks, even though they are partially financed with tax dollars. But you’re right, I confused the two.</p>
<p>The sad part of all of this is that there are state schools that charge way too much for everyone to attend and there are places where a person cannot get a college degree for that reason. That the OP is upset that private schools are operating this way, does not garner a whole lot of sympathy from me, given that I see some kids shafted by the state system. We’ve gotten pretty good about having local community colleges available most places that are affordable to most everyone. Transportation can be an issue still for some students even so. And too often such colleges are not well run for students trying to get a college education, with too few classes available, poor quality of instruction, poor level of preparation for the students. I’d like to take those PELL and Stafford monies and pour them into this very basic level that I feel should be available to everyone. That Stafford loan isn’t going to be the make or break for most kids considering BU. I think it’s dishonest these school present the federal loans, workstudy and PELL as their own funds, not to mention PLUS></p>
<p>Would it have been more fair for BU to reject your kid because they determined you couldn’t afford the school? I think that would have opened up another can of warms: Who are you to tell me what I can and cannot afford?</p>
<p>Yes, the sense of entitlement is hitting a pretty raw nerve around here, at least with me. No one is entitled to a college education, we don’t pay enough taxes to have free education up to college, only to 12th grade. If you want your kid to go to any college, then it is up to you to make that happen.</p>
<p>oldfort: “Would it have been more fair for BU to reject your kid because they determined you couldn’t afford the school? I think that would have opened up another can of warms: Who are you to tell me what I can and cannot afford?”</p>
<p>Not that she couldn’t afford to attend, but they have years of stats that show which students were accepted, which of these had X financial need, and which of these students offered the least financial need from them eventually attended BU. If their financial assistance was based on need, my daughter would attend, so ergo, it is not based on need but other criteria (luck? demographics?).
It is within the full knowledge of BU to know how many students they can help attend, they can raise their entrance criteria so that those students accepted have a legitimate shot at attending their school. Apparently my daughter was academically in their lower tier and she should not have applied or been encouraged to apply.</p>
<p>No one should tell you what college you can afford, but they can tell you what college you should apply to based on achievement and the entry requirements they use. If you get in, then the college should help with the expenses, especially if they are upper tier endowed schools. They have the numbers. Parents pay to send these schools the CSS Profile. It just seems so willy nilly and doesn’t have to be.
By the way, I did that online BU financial need assessment, and the results were the reason we applied. I thought I had a shot at affordablity.</p>
<p>cavender: “If you get in, then the college should help with the expenses, especially if they are upper tier endowed schools.”</p>
<p>Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. The only case this might be /close/ to true is if the school is a meets-need school. Neither of the schools you listed are meet-need schools. The only thing they “should” give you or “owe” you is FAFSA-determined federal aid, which was the stafford loans that you received. They most likely aren’t giving you money because they depleted their reserves for financial need-aid. You can contest that statement all you want and say it is some secret conspiracy to screw you over, but its probably true. It happens and its true.</p>
<p>I am really wondering how it all is working for schools in terms of enrollment. If a school gives little to no financial aid, they should be losing students who were admitted but choose to attend more generous schools. So their yield should go down, their stats should go down, and as their stinginess becomes known, the number of their applicants should go down. I think, as more and more people become aware of the dangers of college loans, the schools that stubbornly attempt to charge the list price, may enter the downward spiral.</p>
<p>No. They anticipate that many people like the OP’s D won’t go and plan for that. Therefore, yield stays about where they want.</p>
<p>Look no further than NYU for evidence against your theory.</p>
<p>*There are common evaluative criteria, income, assets, etc., but there is no way that you can defend how school A gives half of costs and school B gives ZERO costs based on the same information, and given the same endowment.
<p>having the same or similar endowment as another school doesn’t mean that they both can afford to be as generous with need-based aid. </p>
<p>BU is very large for a private U. So it may have the same endowment as a school with half the students (or even less), so it wouldn’t have as much to go around. An endowment of 1.2 Billion isn’t that much for a private school that has 31,000 students. </p>
<p>Which schools are you saying have the same endowment and give better aid???</p>
<p>It sounds like your D wanted to go to BU and it’s not affordable, so you’re blaming the school.<br>
*</p>
<p>Face it, in spite of parents’ hope that there is an even playing field, Profile schools do not evaluate a student’s financial need evenly. They are whimsical and many examples of this have been cited in this post.*</p>
<p>Profile schools that don’t meet need AND FAFSA schools do not evaluate need evenly. Who says they’re supposed to? If you got great aid at a FAFSA only school then that may have included merit or maybe the cost may be lower or maybe your child’s stats are highly desirable for the school.</p>
<p>I suggest that you run BU’s NPC again and if it spits out results that gives a good amount of aid, print it out and show it to them and have them explain why their NPC is so inaccurate. however, if you are self-employed, then that could also explain the inaccurage results.</p>