Though it doesn’t hurt to get some “ballpark figures”, MyIntuition isn’t 100% accurate. You’re going to wind up double-checking its results against the college’s own NPC interactive site:
The variance of financial aid is wild. When I ran estimated costs on MyIntuition last fall, Colby and Rice appeared very generous. But when I did an NPCs at both school after my tax returns this year, each school’s estimate had more than doubled. Meanwhile, the NPC estimates for Williams and Smith and other colleges went down. But that’s fine. We don’t want/can’t afford to apply to 15+ schools, so it’s easy enough to remove colleges.
I’ll check out St. Olaf, which I’ve heard good things about. The underlining question is always whether a particular school at a particular cost is preferable to Nevada for free. Fun fact: I associate St. Olaf with my childhood in the 80’s because it or a town with its name was the subject of many Betty White jokes on The Golden Girls: Every St. Olaf Story .
Have you looked into Vassar? It’s supposed to be great for studio art and generous with aid. For whatever reason, Vassar’s NPC is dramatically higher for us though.
Williams …
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