Boston College Early Action 2022 Thread

Did you receive an email notification telling you that FAs out?

Son had to check his portal and his award was out. We are SO happy! They were SO very generous with him. He will have to work a bit and take out a small amount in loans per year, and our EFC will be a little more than we’ve been paying each year for his private school. Definitely affordable for us, which is GREAT news since the only other school we’ve gotten FA from was unaffordable (even after a HUGE merit scholarship). He is so excited going into Admitted Eagle Day on Sunday!

@moosiechica88 @GibbsFreeEnegry or anyone else who has received financial aid. Are these decisions on the AGORA Portal and if so where on the portal can we find our financial aid decisons? Mine says there is no decision available under the financial aid tab.

@collegekid2018 if you submitted your tax returns and whatnot to the college after the priority deadline, you will receive the financial aid decisions later than others.

@collegekid2018 I’m pretty sure he looked it up on the AGORA portal. We have yet to receive anything via snail mail. I think he got it already because hubby submitted all the FAFSA documents at the same time as DS sent in his application, so it got processed early.

@moosiechica88 @nhsstudent123 @GibbsFreeEnegry and anyone else who can help…I just checked my financial aid status after submitting my final documents this week and I was only awarded $6k a year in loans and work study. There is absolutely no way my family can afford the BC price tag with so little aid…am I missing something here? My financial aid status is listed as “conditional” but it is very unclear on what that ultimately means. Are there any other scholarships/loans/grants or any type of aid that someone else has gotten that I was not offered? Or was anyone offered the minimum amount that I was but later received more aid? Any information helps, I was already admitted early action and BC is my dream school!

Hi Everyone -

My AGORA portal says I have no financial aid award yet. However, I do have some missing documents. Is the only method of submitting these documents through actualy, physical mail? Or is there some way of doing it electronically?

Thanks.

@TrinaD1822 Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing why your award was so low. Our EFC through FAFSA was pretty low and our offer from BC has us paying almost double that amount, which we can afford if we do things very differently around here, but certainly is not comfortably affordable. I think most colleges expect parents and students to sacrifice to pay for college. It’s just the way it is. However, if your offer says “conditional,” perhaps not all your documents are in. Is your family self-employed? Sometimes that really messes the finances because colleges are wary of people who hide money for the sake of getting better FA packages, which tends to hurt those who are honest and doing things right the most. S18’s friend has gotten almost NO money from all the colleges she’s applied to, even though she’s from a single-income family of five. Dad is self-employed and they count income differently. You might be in a similar situation. I’m sorry I can’t give you more information, but I’ve been told BC’s FA office is extremely helpful - especially if you’ve had better offers from other colleges. I know of two people personally who have gotten better offers from other colleges but really wanted to go to BC and BC was able to match the offers from the other schools. Not saying it’s a sure thing, but it’s worth trying if it’s really your dream school!

@moosiechica88 BC uses the CSS Profile so the FAFSA EFC is meaningless. It is need based aid as BC determines it to be, not what you feel comfortable paying.

@TomSrOfBoston That’s exactly what I was getting at - I was trying to convey the fact that colleges expect you to pay beyond what is comfortable to pay. I was NOT complaining whatsoever about the aid that BC has given my son as they have been extremely generous and we will be happy to tighten the purse strings to make it possible for him to attend there should he choose to do so. I was merely trying to help @TrinaD1822 understand why the FA package might not be as generous as she was expecting. I hear so often from students and parents that the financial aid package is unaffordable, but often times, it’s not unaffordable, it’s just not going to be comfortable affording it. That’s why I used the word “comfortably.” In fact, my statement clearly was that colleges expect there to be some sacrifice from parents and students in order to pay for college. Judging by your tone in your post, you seem to have misunderstood my post. And I know they use the CSS profile - DH did the financial aid forms so I didn’t know what the EFC on the CSS ended up being, I only know to compare what BC gave us with what our FAFSA EFC was. I was merely using it as a comparison.

I personally find it ridiculous that colleges don’t use a standard FA form. EFC should be EFC. I understand the differences between FASFA and CSS, I just think there should be 1 consolidated app for FA. Like the common app for apps.

with all due respect, suzy, private colleges that meet full need like BC do use a common FinAid form, and that is CSS Profile. (The FAFSA is a federal form to determine eligibility for federal dollars --Pell grants and student loans.). Profile is used by many colleges awarding their own dollars.

Tina: “conditional” just means that the numbers won’t be finalized until later in the spring. If your numbers don’t change, do to late tax forms, for example, the aid will not change. One thing that tends to hit some families hard wrt finaid, is home equity, which counts as a asset in CSS Profile, and counts a 5.6% towards family contribution. Many on both coasts have a lot of home equity, even if they don’t have super high incomes. The tippy top schools (Stanford, Harvard and their ilk), cap the home equity used in the calculation of need. BC does not.

@TrinaD1822 does the aid they gave you match your EFC on the CSS profile?

Does anyone know if regular decision is out yet?

@littlechild they’ve started being emailed, but they’re being released in no particular order

Oh… okay. Thanks!

Is there a regular decisions thread?

@littlechild yep! just search Boston College Regular Decision 2022

email decisions are out now

I’ll try this question here . . . Next Sun 4/08 is Accepted Student Day and we’re wondering if road trip experts have best driving tips from NJ to BC? The most direct takes us to the GW bridge which last year was a nightmare! We are going Sat afternoon.