<p>sblake7, do you know of a list of private FAFSA only schools? Is there one on the site somewhere?</p>
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<p>There’s a huge catch. The private schools that only use FAFSA do not meet 100% of need. I personally don’t know of one that’s an exception, but others here might. Some meet a reasonable percent of need on average, but that’s just an average and meeting need is often done with huge loans. Most of these schools will not be of interest to a student looking at ivies and MIT.</p>
<p>Need aware during admission means they take ability to pay into consideration when deciding who to admit.</p>
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<p>Correct. Both Colgate and Reed meet 100% of need IFF accepted, but financial aid can be a consideration in the admissions process. (Need-blind schools do not consider financial need in admissions.)</p>
<p>chaieverymorning,
My situation is very similar - low income and high home equity. MIT’s finaid offer for my son (now a senior at the other institute of technology) was great. Our experience was that finaid varied greatly from school to school and it didn’t seem to matter if the school was PROFILE or FAFSA . Finaid wasn’t good for my son at the UC’s - most of the finaid was loans. Though DS was offered Regents interviews at two UC’s and that might have changed the picture - he didn’t do the interviews as he’d been accepted the early round at both Caltech and MIT and had decided where he was headed. I’d say its worth it for your son to apply to MIT and see what happens - when my son applied MIT offered him a no loan package.</p>
<p>My dd’s financial aid letter from Swarthmore had a very good explanation of what they considered and what they didn’t. It said that they did not count home equity.</p>
<p>I found it interesting that Yale calculated our expected contribution based on the Profile and came up with the same number as our FAFSA EFC, even though we have a lot of equity in our home also. </p>
<p>Looking at your son’s list I would think that Dartmouth, Stanford, MIT, and Swarthmore would probably be very generous to a family with a 60K income, even with the home equity. The other two schools I don’t know enough about to make a guess.</p>
<p>Another possibility for him might be Harvey Mudd. </p>
<p>My dd’s first list looked a lot like your son’s, which was alarming to me because of their selectivity. There is a lot about the financial aid piece of this puzzle that we have no control over, and just have to wait to see what the school offers. What we can control, though, is making sure that the list includes some schools that there is no doubt about getting into. </p>
<p>May I add that I’m in awe of your family’s ability to pay a 2K mortgage each month on your income? I think a financial aid office would find that impressive! Best of luck to your son.</p>
<p>50 is the new 40, by the way, I love your name. If you have any suggestions about schools for my son, who’s a math/science/computer guy, that are not as upper echelon as he’s considering, I’d love the suggestions. I know he needs some safer schools for sure, even if he doesn’t.</p>
<p>I wish I had some great recommendations for you! We had a hard time coming up with schools that had the academic rigor and small classes that my dd wanted but also admitted more than 20%. I thought Rice was a good option, but she only wanted CA or east coast schools.
What we came up with for safeties was UC Davis and UCSB because both had good honors programs with some possibilities of smaller seminars and offered generous money for Regents scholarships. She was guaranteed admission to those two because of her ELC status (top 4% of each high school) so then I could relax about the rest of her list!</p>
<p>I see WPI and Rensselaer mentioned on these boards often as good tech choices that are not quite as difficult for admissions.</p>
<p>50ishthenew40, I’m new to the boards…not sure was ELC means…my son is in a tiny high school. I think there are only 40 in his class. He’s probably #3 or 4 in his class with above a 4.0…still, with such a tiny class, he’s not in the top 4% percentagewise, even though he’s one of the top students. Do you know how that works? I don’t even think they do ranking at my son’s school.</p>
<p>^^ELC is for participating California high schools. Top 4% rank as decided by UC guarantees admission to a UC campus, which in past years has been Davis, Santa Barbara and Riverside.</p>
<p>My guess is that my son’s school isn’t part of this since they don’t do class rankings.</p>
<p>susgeek, where does one find the kind of stats that you cited for Colgate? That’s great info to have about any college we look at.</p>
<p>chai:</p>
<p>Many/most high schools in California do not rank. ELC is a special process whereby the Univ of California performs its own ranking, based on UC criteria. But, yes, a HS has to participate, and I don’t know if private schools do…</p>
<p>Chia, I use the College Board website:</p>
<p>[::</a> College Planning Made Easy | Inside Source for College Admissions Requirements](<a href=“http://www.collegeboard.com%5D::”>http://www.collegeboard.com)</p>
<p>Search for the college and click “Cost and Financial Aid” for the stats I quoted. There is a lot of different stats on each school too!</p>
<p>I didn’t realize a high school had to choose to participate-I’m constantly learning new things on this board!
With or without ELC status though, you will probably feel confident that a couple UCs are “sure bets” for your son (after you know his SAT scores) and you can find a couple great private schools where his scores are in the top 25% (Look on the CollegeBoard website for each school to see the mid 50% score range) Once you know those schools, then you can relax about all the others on his list!
Maybe I’m projecting too much here, but I can tell you that I was much happier discussing Stanford, MIT,super-reach #3, #4, #5, etc. with my dd after I knew they weren’t the only schools on her list!</p>
<p>I believe that Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Stanford all waive costs for those making $60K or under - Harvard for sure - regardless of home equity. For those making $60-180K, the cost will be about 10% of income.</p>
<p>Here is a “cut and paste” from a related article:</p>
<p>According to NACUBO’s latest statistics (pdf file), four private universities currently have endowments worth over $10 billion�Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton. These universities also saw double digit returns on their investments last year. This windfall attracted the attention of the Senate Finance Committee, which held hearings this past fall to explore regulating endowments, either by repealing universities’ tax-exempt status or by mandating that universities use a minimum percentage of their endowments each year to reduce tuition. In December, Harvard, whose tuition had risen 3.9 percent in 2007 despite a 23 percent return on its endowment, responded by announcing a sweeping new aid program that would allow even wealthy families to send their children to Harvard for far less than its $45,620 sticker price.</p>
<p>Student loans would be eliminated, replaced entirely with grant aid. Families making under $60,000 a year would be able to send their children to Harvard for free. According to The Harvard Gazette’s article on the new changes, those making over $60,000 but less than $120,000 would pay between 0 and 10% of their yearly income. Those making $120,000 to $180,000 would contribute approximately ten percent. And, just in time for the housing slump, Harvard will stop taking home equity into account when computing financial aid (though families having assets atypically large for their income level may see the amount of aid they receive reduced). Children, regardless of their income level, will be expected to make a student contribution to their education, but that number is typically small, and funded by work-study jobs of less than ten hours per week.</p>
<p>Yale and Stanford have followed Harvard’s lead, with remarkably similar programs. Princeton, which eliminated loans in favor of grants in 2001, recently wrote a letter to the Senate Finance Committee (pdf file), detailing their own financial aid package, in which families making under $75,000 a year pay an average of less than $5,000 to send their children to college. And there is evidence that even universities with smaller endowments will follow suit. Brown University, whose $2.7 billion endowment is less than half of Harvard�s returns for last year, recently announced its intention to replace loans with grants for those families making less than $100,000 a year. Families making less than $60,000 would not have to contribute any money to their child’s education. At the University of Pennsylvania, by 2009, grants will replace loans for all families on aid.</p>
<p>Many families don’t need any extra incentive to push their kids towards elite universities, but for those who remain unconvinced, the numbers are beginning to speak for themselves.</p>
<p>Also, have you looked at Harvey Mudd for your son??</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd keeps coming up in people’s recommendations for my son. My only concern is we’d like a school that has liberal arts as well as a strictly tech orientation. His interests can be narrow enough as it is. I’d love to see him in a school that also requires a liberal arts/humanities curriculum, so it’s not just science, math and computers. So I’d love to hear from people about Harvey Mudd in that regard. And any other suggestions…to a broad curriculum with a deep science/math/tech groove. Since we’re at the beginning of our search, anything is fair game to explore.</p>
<p>All this info is very helpful. I’m new to the Boards and my son is just starting his searching out of schools. I’m not at all attached to him going to an elite school, though of course the $60 K and under free ride is very attractive, so trying a couple seems like a good idea even if it’s a total crapshoot. </p>
<p>But I’m always open to other ideas…</p>
<p>i don’t have time to elaborate on this more but harvey mudd is a strictly science/math/engineering school that does require a substantial number of classes also be taken outside the tech areas in humanities, social science, and arts. graduation requires a very sizable common technical core for all students as well as 11 or 12 hum/ss/arts requirements and of course your technical major requirements.</p>
<p>comprehensive education - yes. i paid full price and it was worth every single penny. (not to mention that it will pay for itself within a few years) to put this into perspective… at my super high-tech aerospace r&d company funded by a billionaire (ceo of a dot-com) only two people that i am aware of have ever been hired directly out of an undergraduate program into engineering. both were from harvey mudd (myself included).</p>
<p>thanks, rocket DA…I’ll look. You paid full ride…do you have any idea what their financial aid policies are?</p>