wondering if anyone received more aid than expected from a college?
any OOS public schools give aid that your weren’t expecting?
This is a pretty open ended question. What colleges are you interested in hearing about?
In 2005 fall, my kid was accepted to University of South Carolina as an OOS resident. She received their McKissick Scholarship which reduced the cost to instate tuition, and give a $2000 a year stipend as well. She did not get accepted to their honors college so this was a surprise. Cost would have been under $1000 a month at the time.
She didn’t attend that school, but yes, it was a surprise.
Union College was very generous with a $20,000 per year merit scholarship and another $ 14,000 union grant. Was quite surprised given the fact that our EFC is around $35,000.
Wasn’t expecting any merit aid from Kenyon. S19 was a good candidate but not a superstar. He got a small yearly merit scholarship that they allowed him to keep even though he’s using a Post 9/11 GI Bill ( not all school do that, FYI!!). They also eliminated all of his students loans from his original FA packet once his GI Bill FA packet went into effect. Honestly… there were a whole lot of tears a’flowing once we saw the final packet.
The Union College cost of attendance is nearly $72,000.
With your $34,000 total in aid ($20,000 merit and $14,000 grant), you are still paying your $35,000 family contribution…or more.
Yes, I am aware. Just saying that it was more than most have given.
Had always been lead to believe Boston College weren’t as generous as some peer institutions. Found them to be one of the more generous schools.
UT Austin offered D18 an OOS tuition waiver and $1000 merit scholarship (as a dance major with 4.0UW/35ACT). Completely unexpected and apparently extremely rare (there’s something like 1 per year for the whole of the school of fine arts). But she went elsewhere.
The 2 surprises during my D’s app cycle were Michigan State and University of Texas. MSU offered a full ride plus and UT offered full tuition and fees plus books.
D19 got some merit from Fordham (the offer was a surprise too as she thought she’d pulled her app), which looking at their middle 50 for admitted class of 2023 is surprising in retrospect as she is in range but not outstandingly so at all. I get a general impression from the CC thread last year that they are pretty generous.
Re post 8, interestingly an international on another thread posted he got a full ride offer from MSU (very good stats), so it does seem to be one to consider.
My son got 10K/yr merit from Purdue. OOS NJ. We were surprised because we heard they don’t give out a lot due to a very reasonable tuition (which it is). Also, there were many kids posting higher stats that got in, but no merit.
I think my son did a strong essay and took the time to answer the supplement questions, not rushing them.
So what was considered a stretch school, he got in and merit on top.
My kids only applied to one OOS public school each (they applied mostly to privates and in state publics) but D17 received full tuition at Alabama and S19 received $25,000 from Pitt plus an additional grant that brought costs below in state options.
For the private schools, there was a wide range of FA awards.
My daughter got a small unexpected merit scholarship at a school not known for merit aid. That was immediately donated back to the school. We did not feel it was appropriate to take it but it was too awkward for my daughter to refuse it outright because she was given it by her small department. We asked the larger financial aid office to tell the department money had been donated anonymously for an additional student.
SHOCKED that my kid got an Academic Scholarship ( vs Music Talent Merit, which we’re counting on) at a LAC in PA. His stats GPA 2.3 (and this is cause he worked really hard this last semester and brought it up a bit - applications GPA even lower ) and ACT 23 certainly does NOT lend itself to academic scholarships so this was a BIG surprise. Apparently his ACT, which low by all standards I’ve seen around here (maybe the low stats folks just aren’t posting?? ) was above the average for this school, which was 22, I think. Still, blend that with his low GPA and didn’t think it would come up to ANY $$ for academics so definitely a surprise. And speaking of surprises, Surprised that he got into WVU which states ON their website under admissions that for out of state students, the requirement is a minimum 2.5 GPA. Again, I guess his 23 ACT took him over? I wish I knew how these admissions things work. Not complaining, mind you, just befuddled.
I knew it would be an uphill battle for him to get into any music school within a university setting since a lot of them focus heavily on academics BEFORE getting to the talent/audition portion. I’m still surprised when he gets accepted before his audition (three so far), which I attribute to his essay… which is titled “I just want to play” and somewhere in there he mentioned that his grades were low cause he spends so much time playing, but it makes him happy. And who doesn’t want to be happy? Something like that…
I was thinking of starting a thread with folks with low stats cause ALL the stats I’ve seen on here are waaaaaaaaaaay above what my kid has. Surely there are others out here who have less than stellar stats but are still getting into their dream schools? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
@maya54 wow! Now that’s something I’ve never heard. Why do you feel it was inappropriate to turn down a scholarship?
I can confirm that in the last few years (and I mean literally the last three or four years) some colleges that were routinely offering scholarships are not doing so nearly as much as they did. Four years ago, for example, some popular colleges in my area such as Northeastern, Penn State or Syracuse, were definitely giving scholarships to kids with 90+ GPAs and high (above 32/1450) test scores. Now, pretty much forget it. My son was accepted to Penn State and Syracuse and was offered nothing.
Northeastern has notably tightened up their scholarship offers, which weren’t that spectacular except for the very most desirable students. D’s good friend got in four years ago, great grades and tests scores, was offered a measly 10k annual scholarship, but it only kicked in once she hit her sophomore year.
My son had a 90/91 GPA and a 34 ACT and was offered an unexpectedly generous scholarship from Indiana U. He then applied for more scholarships, which almost doubled the initial award. It would have made the school very affordable. He didn’t go there, though he liked it a lot.
When D got her acceptances four years ago, she was offered an unexpectedly large scholarship by U Rochester. Also didn’t go there, but it was a final contender.
Our surprise was a small presidential scholarship from UMD for CoE. (2 cycles ago). It didn’t tip the scales for her.
Her other awards were expected although her safety gave her full tuition which was more than expected.
“@maya54 wow! Now that’s something I’ve never heard. Why do you feel it was inappropriate to turn down a scholarship”
Because we had more than enough to cover college in the 529’s and had just received an unexpected windfall inheritance. We understood how fortunate we were and it didn’t feel right to take money that another student could really use. Our family has since set up a small annual scholarship awarded specifically as merit to a student who just misses ( like in the next decile) need based aid ( at a school that is good at covering need based aid).
It’s so refreshing to hear this, especially in context of another (non CC) discussion I saw recently about people putting their 529s in grandparents names so they still get aid from the colleges even though they have enough for college. (May be good financial planning but sounds downright unethical to me.)