When Admissions Departments host Q&A sessions what would be recommended as questions to ask them?
Would you recommend asking any of the following to schools that host these sessions or would you ask different questions?
If merit aid is offered, would it be worth a try to ask for specific information about the amount that is offered?
For need-based aid, would it be recommended to ask if the school comes close to meeting financial need?
Would you recommend asking if many students need to take both federal and private loans?
You may want to see if some of your questions can be answered by:
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That doesnāt always have complete information.
Those sources may not be complete, but they may answer many of the questions you mentioned, and most specifically for you, better than a short generic blurb from an admissions person Q&A.
For example, you ask āFor need-based aid, would it be recommended to ask if the school comes close to meeting financial need?ā. Rather than wasting time asking an admissions person, who will give a generic answer that may not answer the real question (āwill FA be enough for me to afford the college?ā) for you, the collegeās net price calculator will be the best possible estimate that you can find (although some colleges may have poor quality net price calculators so that the best possible estimate still is not that good).
In general, pull what you can from written material on the collegeās web site, then use Q&A sessions to ask what you cannot find there. But be aware that admissions people may not be experts on the collegeās FA policies. They may be a bit more knowledgeable about the collegeās merit scholarship awarding, although many colleges prefer to keep how they award competitive merit scholarships opaque.
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The advice we were given was to only ask questions that couldnāt be answered by reading the website. Meeting need or merit scholarships are e generally things that are pretty easy to find. If you have questions about your specific situation, a conversation with someone in the FA office would be more productive.
Also, āmeeting needā is really not a very useful concept, since each college can define āneedā its own way. A college that does not meet a generous definition of āneedā may be less expensive than one that meets a stingy definition of āneedā, for example.
For schools that give merit-aid, isnāt it the Admissions Department and not the Financial Aid Department that decides whether to give any to accepted applicants? If yes, then the Admissions Department would have to be knowledgeable about it.
Is what you mean that colleges with lower āsticker pricesā could meet less need than more expensive schools that could end up costing less?
Lower sticker prices could be one reason. But also different definitions of āneedā can matter.
For example, college A and B both have sticker prices of $70k.
College A decides that you can afford $30k and your need is $40k. But it does not meet need and gives you $25k in financial aid, for a net price of $45k.
College B decides that you can afford $50k and your need is $20k. It meets need, giving you $20k in financial aid, for a net price of $50k.
In this example, college B that āmeets needā gives you a worse net price, because its definition of āneedā is less generous than that of college A that does not āmeet needā.
Regarding merit scholarships, yes, admissions often decides whom to give merit scholarships to. But you still want to find out as much as you can from the web site so that you can ask worthwhile questions about what is not already given there.
Interesting example; when two schools have very different numbers for āneedā, would it be because one uses just the Fafsa while the other one makes its own formula after factoring in the CSS Profile?
Any two colleges could have their own different formulas for determining āneedā.
The best estimate for each college will be its net price calculator, with the awareness that some colleges of low quality net price calculators that make their best estimates poor estimates.
Also, if your parents are divorced, look very carefully to find if the college wants both parentsā financial information. If so, be sure to include both of their financial information in the net price calculator.
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When using Net Price Calculators also pay attention to whether or not they ask if youāre a transfer student. Those that donāt might not be accurate for your situation.
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Point is, donāt ask them questions that are answered on their website. Donāt ask them to speculate. Or to answer questions that involve, long, complicated (often variable,) answers.
One has to start with their own ādue diligence.ā
You can Google a lot of background info- about colleges, general admissions info and terms, fin aid processes. Etc. Then run it against what your specific target colleges say about themselves.
You can get a copy of the Fiske Guide to Colleges or Princeton Review. You can watch a collegeās online videos. Etc.
Then take smart questions to the Q and A.
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The important thing to realize is that schools generally donāt base their aid packages on some number that the FAFSA or CSS spits out (e.g., the FAFSA EFC). Rather, they apply the information gathered by the FAFSA and CSS Profile to their own aid formula. For example, the Profile asks about home equity, but a small number of schools simply ignore equity in estimating studentsā need. Similarly, other aspects of a familyās circumstances may be given more weight by some schools than by others. As a result, a school may be less generous for one person than for another, even if their familiesā circumstances are in many ways similar.
A few years ago, I saw a post in which a student mentioned the size of the need-based aid packages he or she had received from various schools. The post caught my eye because several of the schools overlapped with the schools that my own kid had gotten into. To my amusement, the school that cost the least for the student who posted the message (Colby, I think it was) was the school that had the highest net cost for my own kid; clearly our family didnāt meet Colbyās definition of having substantial need as well as the other kidās family did. For other schools, my kid seemed to benefit more than the other kid. All of this underscores the point that ucbalumnus made: running the NPC using your own information is much more valuable than asking general questions about the schoolās aid.
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Arenāt you a transfer student? Colleges who are running FA webinars are likely gearing them to incoming freshman, in which case the information may not apply to you. Many schools have a transfer admissions person, you should reach out to them with your questions. Larger schools also have specific sessions targeted to only transfers.
Edited to add: NPCs are often not accurate for transfer students eitherā¦only way to know is to ask the transfers admissions people.
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The collegeās financial aid people are the ones to ask if the net price calculator gives good estimates for transfer students, or if transfer students need to do something special with it. However, it is unlikely that any general answer from the collegeās financial aid or admissions people will be any more helpful to you than the collegeās net price calculator. If the collegeās net price calculator is of low quality or cannot be relied on for transfer students, then you may have to apply almost blindly with respect to financial aid if you want to apply as a transfer student to that college.
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