<p>For people who were accepted this year, or current students, how is CMU on financial aid? I have heard that they kill you in loans, but I guess people's opinions vary everywhere.</p>
<p>We don’t know what our packages are yet.</p>
<p>Got my fin aid package today:</p>
<p>(per year)
$33,000 total in aid</p>
<p>$8,000 in loans</p>
<p>$2,500 in “work/study”</p>
<p>$16,000 remaining for my family to pay</p>
<p>my parents expect me to contribute about $2600 a year, in addition to the $8,000 loan. I need to find more scholarships.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if Carnegie Mellon sponsors National Merit Finalists?</p>
<p>No, they don’t :-(.</p>
<p>Did you get your official finaid package or did you use that estimate thing?</p>
<p>That sucks.</p>
<p>Estimate.</p>
<p>how do u get an estimate?</p>
<p>There’s a form somewhere on the site.</p>
<p>I hope this helps:
“At Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, the financial aid office invites students to send in better offers from other colleges. The competing offers are run through a computer program that compares different factors. William Elliot, Enrollment VP, says, “I’m making a market call: What’s it going to take to get that student to think more seriously about Carnegie Mellon?” Carnegie Mellon increased awards to 460 of the 800 students who submitted competitive offers and more than half of those students enrolled.”</p>
<p>source:<a href=“http://www.collegeplan.org/cpnow/bhs/bhssp99/bhssp99fp.htm[/url]”>http://www.collegeplan.org/cpnow/bhs/bhssp99/bhssp99fp.htm</a></p>
<p>mcp is correct. “Negotiate” is not the term that I would use. See topic: How hard is it to get scholarship to CMU?
Reseach CMU’s policy on web. Research “Peer”.</p>
<p>Back when I was deciding where I wanted to go, I was deciding between RPI and CMU. RPI gave me a much better financial aid offer, so I sent it to CMU and they pretty much matched it. Saved me a ton of money over the course of four years.</p>
<p>Same here with S. We faxed them Johns Hopkins plus another school, I can’t remember…it might have been BU since they offered him a ton of $. Anyway CMU came back with an increase which was all grant not loan, and that increase carried over for all 5 years he was there (got masters too).</p>
<p>They have no obligation to match other schools, of course, they never say that, but there’s a decent chance they’ll bump it up. Remember you’re not putting them into some kind of a bidding war and CMU’s endowment holds it back. But it may be enough to make CMU possible. Give specific reasons why you need more $ (for us it was a younger sibling scheduled to enter college the next year).</p>
<p>Also, if you’re interested in a department which isn’t that popular, you can try stressing that you’re really just interested in that. Generally freshman engineering students are admitted as “Undecided,” but I knew I wanted to do materials science, so when we were talking financial aid I mentioned how I was really interested in that specific department. Wound up with a $2500 a year scholarship from the department for each year I was there. It might not seem like a whole lot at first, but because of that I wound up graduating with $15000 in loans instead of $25000.</p>
<p>Does anybody know how close CMU comes to the EFC from the Fafsa for Early Decision candidates?</p>
<p>Also, my son applied early decision and was accepted before any other applications were due. He therefore did not apply elsewhere because CMU is where he wanted to go. I had thought that once accepted ED you are committed and cannot go elsewhere. Should he have applied elsewhere merely to get competing financial aid offers? I thought you had to withdraw your applications when you were accepted at CMU. I spoke to the Financial Aid officer who said that an ED candidate does not have a chance to negotiate like RD candidates, but they will meet 100% of financial need. Is this the number generated by the Fafsa? Does anyone know how this works?</p>
<p>Ditto thisoldman’s post #9.</p>
<p>They were pretty much right on the EFC (my d applied RD, however) But a lot of it was loans. We had heard about the peer factor in regards to finaid so d also applied to some of the peer schools that were known for good merit aid. Then we went to CMU and asked for a review. It helped a bit (replaced some loans with grants) but when her EFC increased the next year the grants disappeared.
They are very frugal with the $.</p>
<p>You can’t really negotiate with them if you do ED right?</p>
<p>moo.mike.moo—Was that your impression? That w/ED negotiating w/other offers was not an option???</p>
<p>Well if you do ED then as soon as you are accepted you withdraw your other applications so you have no other offers to compare it with. And “negotiating” is really showing them what other colleges are offering and saying if they don’t do better you will go to another college. If you do ED, you have agreed to go there if accepted and you have no other offers.
So no you can’t.</p>
<p>lkf, how is your S doing in NY? Is he ready to go to grad school?</p>