<p>It’s really not that easy to evaluate packages, Kelbee. Two aid packages from two schools that cost exactly the same and and are for the final total amount as each school talleys it can mean a big difference to the recipient. One package can include the Stafford and work study which then means your niece can’t use those amounts toward her family expeted contribution, since work study means she has to work to make that money towards her aid award, so those hours are used up when she could be working for pocket money, for example. PLUS awards and State loan awards are all LOANS and they have to be paid back. Subisized Staffords and PERKINS are really the only loans I would consider for those families who are low income with the added possibility of the non subsidzed Stafford because it is MURDEROUS to repay those things. I know so many kids already behind the 8 ball because they can’t make the loan payments, and some adults still paying on student loans with their kids coming up in college years So even when the final packages arrive, the composition of them have to be taken apart, and columns added to my quickly put together sort of chart, so that your niece can see what she truly being offered. </p>
<p>She needs a few more true safeties, IMO, because being high need, and with some of those schools need aware in admissions, and some not going to meet full need, and some being highly selective, they are all high reaches in terms of geting in AND getting enough money to go there without being in debt for over $30K (with accum interest) by the time she gets out. That $30K is pretty much a given, by the way unless she gets very lucky. It’s not good when a kid is backed into a safety school. A little nicer to have some choices even among safeties instead of getting that one “raggedchoice”.</p>
<p>We did that with our last son. He had a few schools that we knew we could afford and that he would get accepted. Though he was the typically teen in talking about them scornfully during the process, it was pretty danged sweet that he had some choices that offered him money. His chest puffs up with pride when the subject comes up now. Like I said, he’s a bit wistful about that full tuition local Catholic school now as he sees so many of kids he knows there thriving. I’m serious about this. He is at an OOS public and it’s tight. No car, no extra money, had to take that student loan when some things came up last year (and yes, things come up, believe me they do), feels a bit left out and lonely, far from home and homesick, no car (which he would have had if went to that local school), and surrounded with kids with far more discretonal income than he has. And we are in the upper income brackets and paying most of that college cost for him. It’s just that it is at the limit of what we can afford, so he has to be careful, something he did not have to be during his earlier school years, and what many of his freinds there do not have to be. They are talking off campus places at prices we cannot afford. If he goes off campus, it can’t cost more than what current room and board are, and preferably less. You feel poor when you are around others who have a lot more than you do. He would have been one of the well to do kids had he commuted</p>
<p>So if Westfield was not the Cinderellla choice, it would be sweeter. To have a B, and C safety choice really makes it a bit less bitter. None of the other additional school are safetiies because of the money they would have to come up with in order to make it a go for her. The most difficult schools to put on the list are safeties because they are usually the local non well known school. To peel off names from lists that have name recognition is cherry picking and easy to do.</p>