I have searched quite a bit and what I found was so all over the map that I decided to post this as a question:
How would you all advise someone as they (parents and student) prepare to apply to schools when the most important criteria is financial aid? (The student will not be able to attend without nearly full FA.) They do not offer any valuable demographics i.e minority status or geographical location. A strong student with 3 excellent extracurriculars. The dilemma as I see it is that the biggest endowments rest with the very best and most competitive schools.
My understanding is that many of the near full FA slots are given for recruit, under-representative minority in race or location. Being a strong student doesn’t seem to be enough at those with the biggest endowment.
I would try to figure out what would be unique about the student in terms of how the student can help the school community, start communicating with schools about that point, and apply to those shows interest both top schools and not-top-schools.
Finally, I think many schools now have greater percentage of international students than they were previously known for various reasons. They could be more inclined to keep strong U.S. student even with full FA.
@SculptorDad and @MA2012 they are definitely looking at a range. Not particularly concerned with the top schools. . More interested in geographical location and offerings important to the student. I guess I was thinking the best thinkg to do would be to look at average FA award and % of students on FA
That is a good start and something we did when my D was in a similar situation. However, she ended up with the best FinAid offer from a school with poor stats in that area.
Besides having some modest “hooks” such as geography, etc., this was a school that really was an unusually good fit. My D was just their kind of kid.
I am convinced that finding that “perfect match” can enhance FinAid where it maybe doesn’t look so good statistically.
“she ended up with the best FinAid offer from a school with poor stats in that area.”
Same happened here. If a school really wants a student, it can offer necessary FA. If it doesn’t, it won’t give FA for charity no matter how rich it is.
Endowment per student is an important statistic that should be researched and calculated (they should calculate it themselves from current published info on schools’ websites). They should apply to a lot of schools. Also, if they can, they should try to get a sense of schools’ financial aid priorities (for instance, some very good schools may be trying to raise their academic profile a bit and thus may be generous to high-stats kids who are a good fit for the school in other respects). And, although a truly exceptional student may get excellent financial aid at a school that only offers that amount to a few students, that may not be the best situation for the student from either the academic or social standpoint. Assuming this is a very intelligent child, best to hope for a school with a decent population of other intelligent kids and with a decent population of other students on financial aid. Luckily, there are a number of those, and with a LOT of luck, your friend’s child may find a spot at one.
I don’t remember if I did endowment research before or after my D’s admission, but her school has a very modest endowment and if you divide up the endowment per student, she got more than her share. Not implying that that’s what schools do with endowments, just sayin’!
^^ Agree with @alooknac. My D applied to a wide range of schools and was accepted with generous FA to a handful of them. We were surprised that the most generous offers ( one was full FA) came from the schools we least expected. You can research, you can calculate, you can predict, but… You just never know. Each school has different needs and wants as they build the next year’s freshman class.
Agreed that nothing can be predicted or expected. However, I personally wouldn’t want my children at a school where very few others were receiving much financial aid. That may not matter to other parents/children, and I didn’t actually think too much about it when my kids were applying.
I did research the % student body on FinAid when selecting BS to apply to and it was a good number at her school. It was the average award that was low.
But even though the average award was half that of the Big Boys, that’s still no small change. Her take on it, now, is that students there either get a token amount or a full ride or nearly full (in our case). From her experience and my many visits, there was plenty of socioeconomic diversity and little snobbery (but certainly some spoiled rich kids, most of whom grew out of it).
Her BS was on the very “casual” end of the spectrum so name brand clothing and ostentatious spending just weren’t issues.
The schools with the most money are not necessarily the most generous in their financial aid, and, even if they are generally good, may not be for a particular student.
I would worry first about finding schools that the student wants to attend and then see if the school wants the student, too. The money part often finds a way to work out when the school really wants to add a student.
Also, don’t necessarily give up on geographic diversity. The student may not be adding anything new to a New England school, but they may be seen as somewhat exotic in places like Ohio or North Carolina