<p>I am a nc resident and my first choice is UNC, which i have been told by my family that we can afford as well as other in state colleges like NC State. I know Out of State Publics are off limits because I dont have high enough stats to get merit aid. So I was just wondering if you can receive enough finical aid to make a private college as affordable as a public in state if I get accepted. My parents income is under $100k, probably lower, if this makes a difference. I am mainly referring to need based aid as well. So if you could please tell me what colleges on my list I should even apply to because they give good aid that would be appreciated!</p>
<p>Reach: Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Boston College</p>
<p>Match: Wake Forest, Villanova, Syracuse, Boston University, University of Miami, George Washington</p>
<p>Keep in mind I know Vanderbilt and Georgetown meet most of need, but they are very high reaches for me. What do colleges use to determine your "need"?</p>
<p>The above stats are from another thread the OP made…a chances thread. </p>
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<p>These schools meet full need…but with a 28 ACT and your GPA, they are a HUGE reach for admissions.</p>
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<p>These schools do NOT meet full need and they don’t. Their merit awards go to the students in the tippy top of their applicant pool. I’m not meaning to offend you…but the stats you posted do not put you in that range. </p>
<p>It IS possible for a private school bottom line cost to be at or less than a state school when factoring in merit aid awards…but you have to pick the RIGHT private schools. In my opinion, your list is not going to net you merit awards that will bring your costs down to similar to instate at UNC. You need to revisit your list if you want to garner merit aid awards at a private school. Look for schools where YOUR stats are in the top 5% of admitted students OR where your stats give guaranteed merit aid. I don’t believe any of the schools on your list fit those criteria.</p>
<p>NOW…regarding need…all of the schools on your list (I believe) require completion of the FAFSA AND the CSS Profile as financial aid application forms. Need based aid is based primarily on parents’ income…and to some extent assets. With an income of $100K per year and one student in college…your family contribution as an estimate will be about $25,000 to $30,000 per year. The schools using the Profile include things like the equity in your primary residence (with varying caps on the %age used). The Profile schools use their own formulas to award their institutional need based aid. Federally funded aid is determined by the FAFSA EFC but with an income of $100K per year, you would likely not be eligible for anything but Stafford loans.</p>
<p>You DO have the potential to receive merit aid. Do a search for a thread by momfromtexas (what I learned about full ride scholarships…or something like that). She found significant merit awards for her two kids. The thread is old but the strategies she used still apply.</p>
<p>In the meantime…you are SOOOOO lucky to have UNC-CH as your instate flagship. It’s great and many folks strive to get accepted there from OOS.</p>
<p>Thumper has pretty much covered your situation. Yes, there are situations where a student can do better than their state schools when the private schools give generous financial aid or the kids get big merit awards. It is possible. But getting those awards is not easy. </p>
<p>First of all, find out what the schools will likely consider your family need by using some of the institutional estimators. They do include primary home equity most of the time which FAFSA does not do. But give it a go and see what kind of aid you would qualify for, at MOST. Because that figure you get is only if you find a school that will meet 100% of your need. Only a few schools do, and the admissions to them are not easy. The schools that don’t, tend to use enrollment management techniques to give the best aid to those who they want the most. By using the techniques momfromtexas describes in her threads, you can find schools where you have stats where they are willing to pay for you, but they are not likely to be the well known schools. Getting a lot of merit money really depends on your stats, and even those with high ones are really entering a lottery in terms of getting a lot of money.</p>
<p>My one student did have very high stats, and he did get merit awards, but the best deal for him still would have been our in state schools. It’s tough to beat in state rates, especially if the school throws in some merit money as well. You are also fortunate to be in a state with some good college options at affordable prices. </p>
<p>Duke is a school that meets full need, and being from NC, you would get some extra consideration for admissions, but even then getting accepted is not a given by any means. Still, throw in some schools that you really like, and see how it goes. Just make sure that you also have some sure bets that your family can afford and understand that those are the schools where you are probably going to attend. The rest are chances.</p>
<p>I would look a bit lower on the USNews food chain, particularly if you need merit money. Given your numbers, I would suggest that your ‘Reach’ list is really a High Reach list and your ‘Match’ schools are really a Reach, as is UNCC. But as Thumper notes, none of those Match schools meet full financial need.</p>
<p>Hi,
We are in the Midwest, so I am going to mention a different set of schools for others that might be reading too.</p>
<p>My daughter was a 3.9 GPA, 28 ACT, great writer, below average extra curricular. She ended up going to UW Madison, a great school in it’s own right. She sits at about the 5-60th percentile there. Their sticker is about 20K in state tuition. Our EFC was about 7K that year. Not poor, not wealthy. We did have to do the CSS - we have a lot of home equity, but not a lot of other assets. She ended up getting about 4K in grants average her first 2 years. The rest is Staford, and her and our cashflow from current income</p>
<p>When choosing schools, she applied to quite a few small mid to higher end LACs, since at that point she was not sure what she wanted. Most of them had a sticker price of 32K-45K or so. As she got her acceptance and award letters, she/we weeded out quite a few because of poor FA offers. Lawrence and Beloit come to mind. A few were just not a fit after looking into them more, but would have had a ‘net’ price of about 20K-24K. </p>
<p>The best offer financially was from Coe College in Iowa (great Writing Program - strongly tied in with the Iowa Writer’s Workshop Graduate Program) where she sat at about the 90-95th percentile, and would have only had to pay about 7K out of pocket of their 35K sticker price. </p>
<p>Her 2nd runner up was St. Olaf in MN. (very overlooked school in my opinion - they beat the Ivies in many stats) She sat around their 50-60th percentile (just like UW Madison) but are actually much harder to get into statistically. Their final FA offer would have been around 20-22K out of pocket from their 40K sticker price.</p>
<p>So to me, it seems that many very good to great schools can be competitive with the State Schools. Every situation is different obviously. I have seen way to many people not even consider the Privates just assuming from hear-say that ‘they are just to damned expensive’ or ‘We make too much to get any aid’ which is often false. </p>
<p>Colleges like Coe can be excellent deals when the grants offered bring the cost down to levels where they are competitive and lower than even the in state and/or commuting options. However, bear in mind that such outcomes are not guaranteed. You have to apply to a number of schools and hope that something like that crops up. So you should have a guaranteed option in your mix that you know you can afford and that will take you.</p>
<p>Agree 100% that you should be looking at the “sure thing” schools also, even though for many they would be a ‘compromise’. I know many kids would like to go to their ‘dream school’, but that always should be balanced with the reality of the families finances.</p>
<p>In my daughters case, she applied to about 13 all together (many of them used the ‘Common Application’). I know, a little excessive, but many did not have application fees either, and she was quite undecided at that point. </p>
<p>She had her ‘reaches’ like Carleton, Macalester, and Grinnel, all of which she did not make it into (the thought also made her nervous of being in the bottom 10-20% of the gene pool at those places), her ‘probablys’ like UW Madison, Lawrence, Beloit, St Norberts, and the like, and her ‘safeties’ like Coe College, Ripon College (where she would be in the top 10-20% of the gene pool), and our #2 State School UW LaCrosse (mostly in case she decided ‘big school’ and did not get into UW Madison.) I know some friends of hers/ours thought that was a lot of schools, but the reality was she was unsure of Big vs LAC, and although we had read up on likelihood, average Financial Aid, etc… we did not know what to expect for sure. This way if she got into a reach and got good FA, great. If not good FA, we would have to think REAL hard about that. If our finances got worse, a school like Coe or Ripon who basically said ‘we need to charge you something, what would it take to get you to come here’ would be ready for her.</p>
<p>I think one area in particular that the smaller LACs shine is if they have an area of interst that they are known for; Coe for Writing, St Olaf for Art & Psychology, etc… Within these ‘specialties’ some of the lesser known LACs will do just as good or better than the ‘big names’.</p>
<p>Does Coe practice preferential packaging? How do you think they might treat a student from the Pacific NW who has much financial need and is a strong writer, but poor at math?</p>
<p>It seemed like Coe was VERY willing to work with her for a couple of reasons. </p>
<p>1) She had very good stats compared to their ‘average’, which put her up above the 90th percentile there. The FA guy basically implied that they seek kids like her with great stats to ‘raise their numbers’ - of course he did it more tactfully than that. </p>
<p>2) She fit well into some of their areas they are trying to grow, one being ‘custom degrees’ meaning the student does a proposal of what they want for a degree, makes their argument for why it makes sense, and what mix they feel would achieve that. Her interest was Psychology/Art/Writing = ‘How Art affects our thoughts/mental health, or the treatment of mental illness, and how to convey that info to the general public through writing’. It seemed they thought she got the idea pretty well, and no one else was proposing a similar idea.</p>
<p>3) She is a VERY good writer and had a great essay, her ‘values’ seem to mesh with theirs. She has also been published in prominent teen writing publications, which I assume gave her a leg up.</p>
<p>So I guess the summary is that they look at the ‘overall package’ of what a student has to offer. Look up how your stats compare to their averages, and that will give you an idea on how much 'bargaining power you might have :). They do have a good sized Endowment for a college of their size, and give generous aid based both on need and merit. Out ‘out of pocket’ would have been very close to our EFC, so you could say “They met our full need”. But remember, she was at the upper end of their student stats too. So if you might be more in the middle, they might offer a good FA package, but with more loans vs. grants/scholarships. </p>
<p>I think there is probably a lot of little LACs like Coe around the country that have good FA packages if you do your homework and find one where you are towards the upper end (maybe top 1/3?) of their gene pool.</p>
<p>Djdietz is right. The problem is that it’s really difficult to get colleges to out and out say they do preferential packaging. Even some schools that meet 100% of need do this by giving the grants to the kids they want the most and putting self help things such as loans and work study in other packages. But it’s a pretty good bet that if you are in the upper echelons of a private school that is not one of the top colleges, that you can get full need or even full need+ met with merit within need packages. These colleges frequently do not meet full need of all of their students but do so for those students they most want. </p>
<p>However, you can’t guarantee this will happen. It is very possible to apply to a school where you are in the upper 5% of their pool and still not get a full need or generous package. There is luck involved in some of this too. That’s why when you need or want money for college, you do have to cast a wide net. If you have a demonstrated need figure, applying to some schools that guarantee to meet full need is a good bet in terms of getting you need met, but those schools tend to be selective and you may not get admitted even if you fall within the likely zone for such schools. A lot of kids don’t get into those schools though they have the stats. That’s why having a couple of true safety schools that you can afford on your own that will likely take you is important. When it comes right down to it, you don’t know what you will end up getting offered. It is not an entitlement thing, so you need to have some easy options. Once you have those in place, you can play the lottery all you want. </p>
<p>I have a good friend who comes from Iowa and from a large family with many members who went to Coe. The school has a good reputation in the area. She graduated from there and went on to a top school for graduate studies as did many of her siblings.</p>