@Britmom5 and @mperrine , I hope I’m tagging the right people. I’m finding it hard to keep up with all theses posts! But I’m totally right there with making what feels like almost a foolish financial decision for a Dream school that seems to have all the things my D is looking for. How can we deny her this? We can do it without loans but depending on how much we spend, we’re just going to more and more nervous about money. But I know that’s just something we have to decide on and then decide that we’ve made the right decision and move forward. But it’s still scary at this moment when we’re weighing options. We’re in the process of submitting an appeal. Keeping fingers crossed. Don’t want this all ending in divorce court because we become so stressed over the money. I’m sure we’ll be fine, but hate shelling out do much money that we’ve worked so hard to save up… for our kids and for us.
@PianoMom88 and @pianomom74, I hope I have the correct names here, but I am responding to others waiting for Mannes/The New School. We are also waiting for the financial aid portion and are going to try to appeal for more scholarship money. This is D’s #1 choice, so I’m hoping for the best!! She’s Mannes vocal performance (soprano).
We’re also anxiously waiting to hear about teacher assignment! She really liked her first choice, but if she doesn’t get her, she’ll want another trial lesson. Would really like to schedule this ASAP, but must keep waiting … sigh. It could make the difference between school #1 and #2.
@AmyIzzy thank you for clarification on the Stafford loan. You have done a much better job than the FAFSA rep I spoke to on the phone earlier. Thank you also to both you and @akapiratequeen for shedding light on the parent Plus loan.
The Parent Plus seems like it has a lot to offer, in terms of coverage specially, but we are hoping to find something with a lower interest rate and preferably for my student - I believe more effective to build accountability and the bonus of creating credit history. Now those monthly payments mentioned by @akapiratequeen are a bit scary if they were to be handled by a starting musician. So many variables on the employability there. I am making a comparison since the amount for us would be up there as well.
@tripletmama - agree on that one needs to be careful re. interest rates. S and I are making a comparative table for private lenders. Happy to share when ready! Oh also, my S and your D can go shopping for Noodles stock together… and packaged noodles that is of the Maruchan type lol
@jejeje i agree with you 100%. But other thing is, schools like Julliard, MSM, even Mannes have waiting lists. If it wont be your kid, they will take somebody from waiting list who is willing to pay without any questions. Do you agree?
@JeJeJe , I definitely have thoughts about “our mind” EFC vs the FAFSA EFC. Don’t know that it’s of any help. My thoughts are that it’s very frustrating. Our EFC Is pretty high. But spending $260,000 on a bachelor’s degree seems utterly insane. But then to the discussion of giving your kid the opportunity she’s dreamed of, even if it’s a financial stretch comes into play. Maybe instead of being such good doobies and saving our money, we should have enjoyed it on lots of vacations and other things. And to think… all those years I could’ve had a maid (I have a chronic pain condition but because I could no longer work, we thought we couldn’t afford such luxuries, because we were trying to save money … for college and for us in the future). Sorry if I’m ranting and being a downer. But as I said above, it’s just frustrating.
Oh @JeJeJe don’t even get me started on that EFC logic! For us, it is even crazier/worse as we moved to the US in the middle of the fiscal year 2017 and that created havoc - part of it was spent in The Netherlands. Our tax return forms from there are not even something you can input into the FAFSA and I think they look at those Euro income salary numbers and think we are millionaires haha… Let’s hope next year paints a more realistic image!
@meltedbutter , check your inbox.
@pianomom74 regarding your question about if music schools take people off the wait list who can pay in full, it’s hard to say what music schools do because hardly any are schools that guarantee to meet full need. They might offer to the student they want the most, figuring the student may be willing to take loans if necessary. I work at a college that does guarantee to meet full demonstrated need, and while I don’t know the ins and outs of what admissions does exactly, the college definitely has to figure out how many full pay students they need in order to be able to afford providing aid to the others (and then figure out how many they can take at the varying levels of need). In that case, at some point when the school is out of aid money, being a wait list student who doesn’t need aid will definitely help you get in over someone who does need aid (they can’t give what they have run out of).
About waitlist——— Because schools don’t have a time in April, I can imagine they will choose one or two “most” attending waitlisted students without any financial questions first. I totally agree with PianoMom88. All schools need “full-pay” or “nearly full-pay” students to provide aids to “need” students AND programs they offer. Most schools aren’t “need-blind” application process. Before and / or after live auditions, they will look applicants’ financial to estimate $$$ balances for the year before sending out all admission results.
Anyway, while I was appealing with one school, I found out the school calculated in their way based on our FAFSA/EFC and CSS Profile to come up with “EFC” they go with. It turned out the school thinks that our EFC should be about $7000 more than our FAFSA/ EFC which we had in our mind for last several months. I now think that this is a reason why there is a gap between our FAFSA/EFC and a financial offer. What can we do??? They say so, and we say “No”?
@coloraturadad , I got your message but I don’t think I can send a response since I’m kinda new here. Thanks for the info. She had a lesson with Beth and that’s her first choice. Can’t wait to find out!
@songbirdmama thank you for your message!! You’re correct about the teacher 
@meltedbutter - I think you need to get up to 15 posts - so post away!!! Comment on anyone’s post anywhere on CC!
Regarding FAFSA and CSS - the only information that I can contribute is that we got the most merit and/or FA from those schools that asked for the CSS. (Berklee and SFCM). But - we are in a different ballgame than probably most, if not all of you. My hubby had a brain injury and has had 3 brain surgeries over the years which wiped us out (we were on Obamacare which was not good)… We will also have 3 kids in college next year (and another one at a boarding ballet school). We have an EFC of 2,200 per kid. So, if anyone gets financial aid, we do. Having said that, most of the colleges that our 2 daughters applied to only gave them the standard fed loans ($5.5k) and Pell grant ($5k to $6k) a year. Nothing to write home about. The only colleges that gave them more than that in financial aid are Berklee and Lewis University (a Catholic University in IL that our aviation daughter applied to). Maybe SFCM if her merit was need informed. So do NOT lament about your EFC. It is meaningless unless you apply to a 100% “meets needs” college - which in the music world, is only Oberlin (that I could find). There might be colleges that are “need informed” but I don’t think that they go wild in their awards based on need.
I hope that helps any of your EFC angst. It is what it is. In addition to the health care system in the U.S. being broken, the college system is also in serious disrepair. I wish we have moved back to Europe before our kids went to college - but we didn’t. Our jazz daughter is very happy that we didn’t (she says that jazz instruction is only good in the U.S.
It seems that grad students in top programs come from all kinds of undergrad schools. I think teachers are important, obviously, but going to a less than dream school may work out fine. Avoiding debt is so important for artists.
From USC (Thornton) website:
"USC is need-blind in its admission process—a student’s financial need will never influence an admission decision.”
“At USC, we meet a student’s full USC-determined financial need, with available funds from federal, state and university sources.”
They use FAFSA and CSS Profile to make that determination.
Yeah, in our case the dream school also happens to be the closest to home and honestly I think that’s best for my D’s mental health. We moved right before her sophomore year in HS and it was really rough. Very unsettling to be moved without much notice when she’d lived in one place all her life and never imagined she’d move. I think she feels going farther away is once again being ripped from the place she just finally got used to. I think being close to home is extremely important for her and if she knows she can get home easily it’s more likely she will be able to focus on school. She said she’d rather live at home after first year at #1 choice (to reduce costs) versus being on campus at #2 (more affordable) choice. So even if we have to pay a lot, I feel it might be for the best. Because I agree that it’s not all about the school with a better name or anything. A lot of it for us is location.
@goforth and @vistajay I did start a thread called Reality Check that someone was kind enough to pin… For the follow-up of after your kid lands at the place they’ve chosen and how the reality is living up to expectations. That would be a great place to shift to for carrying each year’s journey forward!
khill87 that thread seems to show a concern for privacy, with many posters and responders referring the conversation to PM. I would think that similar privacy issues would prevail on the “journey” threads but they don’t seem to. The thread for year’s applicants has 189.5k views. It’s almost like a reality show! Maybe someone will run with that idea, but my kids don’t allow me to write anything about them at all
Random thoughts on waitlists…schools typically extend acceptances to more students than they need with the expectation that some will decline. Colleges have to play the odds to yield their target class size. So even though students are declining offers this month, there may be no waitlist movement until after May 1, or not at all.
At the start of the application process in high school, our children have more in common than at the end of the BM. Information shared beyond acceptances becomes less generally relevant to the community as a whole, so if someone asks a specific question, I prefer to PM a response (including financials). This is also a privacy issue (as @compmom states), because the music world is pretty small and it is often easy to figure out identities from this board. However, I do think that if people are already sharing specifics about their awards, better to have it in one place. That might prevent the sort of rumors like “school X gives TONs of full rides, just appeal and you will get more like I did”. One could look at school X and see, if in fact, that HAS happened many times. Yes, I would feel bad if our family was not recipient of a pure merit award at school X, but at least I’d know whether we were in good company. However, the utility of the spreadsheet will be dependent on the presumed integrity of the anonymous reporter, which is not always as would be desired.
Once again @compmom you are perfectly entitled to whatever level of privacy you care to have. I would ask that you let people enjoy this thread and the camaraderie they have without comments of privacy concerns as you did frequently on our thread last year. No one is suggesting that anyone be any more or less private. They post what they are comfortable to post. Most musicians who are out in the public eye have websites and a lot of social media presence so privacy isn’t even suggested for kids who want to make it in the music industry. Live and let live!