<p>US News & World Report sometimes gets vilified for its annual college rankings that seem to have helped to turn up the heat in the admissions pressure cooker since my own high school days in the pre-rankings era. </p>
<p>But here's one US News list that I think all families can applaud:</p>
<p>According to US News writer Kim Clark, this is the "ONLY fact-checked list of schools that meet full financial need."</p>
<p>Clark told me, "We search our database for schools that report they meet 100 percent of demonstrated need for 100 percent of needy students, then we check with the schools to make sure they plan to enforce this policy going forward in these difficult times."</p>
<p>Not all schools that promise to meet 100% of need will calculate this need in the same way. So this second article will help you ask the right questions, to find out how the colleges on your list determine need, how need can affect admission verdicts, how financial aid officers will regard home equity, divorce, etc., and how this need is actually met ... i.e., through grants (the good stuff that doesn't have to be repaid) or through loans, which can mean years of debt after graduation ... even from those schools that claim to meet full need. :(</p>
<p>A school with a limited endowment (e.g., Harvard NOT) can offer full-need financial aid to more students by including loans. Oversimplified, if the cost of attendance were, say, $50,000 and $5000 is met by loans, 10% more needy students can attend. If you are “one” of those 10%, you should be delighted that loans are part of the package. :)</p>
<p>*But students should beware: The schools have varying definitions of need. Some of the schools provide enough grants to make up the difference between the family’s federal expected family contribution and the school’s cost of attendance. Others calculate their own (often higher) EFC and still leave a gap of several thousand dollars to be covered by student loans and part-time jobs.</p>
<p>In some cases, these gaps are larger than the $6,500 or so counselors say most freshmen can reasonably handle with federal Stafford loans and a combination of school-year part-time work and summer full-time jobs.*</p>
<p>That part above is a problem. The article admits that some of these schools are putting loans that are too big for Stafford and part-time work to cover. That suggests that parents are required to pay more than expected, borrow more, or co-sign. For some students that won’t meet need because some parents can’t/won’t do that.</p>
<p>This list of “full need” schools has been around for a long time. I don’t see how USN&WR is offering anything new here, since the definition of “need” is determined by each school using its own methodology and “meeting need” can include a significant amount of loans.</p>
<p>YMMV always applies when it comes to financial aid!</p>
<p>for its glimpse of how many students get aid, about how much they get, and about what a student debt load upon graduation might be. Most of the colleges on the list are, of course, hard to get into.</p>
<p>““meeting need” can include a significant amount of loans.”</p>
<p>It depends on one’s definition of significant, but the amount can be only what the student is obligated to repay (and can sign for), not the parents. If the school is offering parent loans to cover more than the school-calculated EFC, the school is not meeting full need. (I hope I worded that correctly.)</p>
<p>I agree. Many parents can’t/won’t take on plus loans. And, with so many divorced parents, the situation often worsens. Others can correct me if I’m wrong, but when NCP info is used, and FA is determined, the expected family contribution (and gaps) are not divided up by ability to pay amongst divorced parents.</p>
<p>When they say loans, they don’t include PLUS loans in the “Schools that meet 100% need.” FYI - Rice University caps student loans at $10,000 total for all 4 years (that’s $10,000 at graduation) for families that make more than $80,000 a year - no loans at all for families that make less than that! And outside scholarships replace those loans up to the value of the loans. :)</p>
<p>My advice is to look at the US News information regarding the average indebtedness of grads and don’t believe the PR spin by the school. </p>
<p>One Liberal Arts College of which i am aware makes repeated bold boasts that it meets 100% financial needs of its students and that no student borrows over $4,000 per year-- yet the US News information for that Liberal Arts college indicates that the average indebtedness of its grads is over $20,000 which indicates that the aid which this Liberal Arts College believes satisfies full financial need is not the same as what parents and students believe.</p>
<p>otis, does the school report the percentage that graduate in four years and six years, e.g., in the Common Data Set? That might explain the difference without spin. Sometimes the USNWR data is older, so if a school recently reduced a loan cap that could also create a disconnect.</p>
<p>mom, that’s right, PLUS loans don’t count toward meeting need; they help with EFC. Apples and oranges.</p>
<p>This list in varying forms has been around for awhile. Meeting full need sounds good but you need to read the fine print - if you can find it. Some of these schools will meet full need with substantial loans and/or work study and others will deny high need applicants.</p>
<p>Again, these loans are only what a student can sign for, typically somewhere roughly around $5,000 per year. Parents are not involved in loans that meet need.</p>
<p>Schools can give sub staffords, unsub staffords, Perkins and their own college loans directly to the student, and it’s not unheard of to have work study up of $4,000 a year. The staffords alone are close to $30,000 over the 4 years. So a school that meets 95% of need but does it primarily with grants can actually be a better deal than a full need school. But there’s not many deals these days. It’s becoming increasing common for full need schools to deny based on need. Reed, Oberlin and Gettysburg all do that.</p>
<p>Ok, to be sure your favorite school is not one of those (few?) giving big student loans, google for its “common data set” and check section H5, “the average per-undergraduate-borrower cumulative principal borrowed.”</p>
<p>I know in our case a non 100% need college beat the 100% need in the end. Also, Conn College came under H.Cross and Wheaton, MA was second. You can’t really know until you see your packages.
I also found the average indebtedness interesting. I saw 16,900 for Drew which is a very expensive college, and over 35,000 for St. Joseph’s ¶ which is known to give a lot of aid.
I think the number of affluent students offsets that a lot, if a school like Connecticut College has a lot of full pay students or close to that (which they did when my son applied) the averages will be skewed differently.</p>
<p>This website has a chart that tells you how much the college requires in loans, work study, and student contribution after the EFC is met. This is very useful for students who know their EFC is going to be evaluated at $0, and it’s also a good tool for figuring out how much will be owed before any gap.</p>
<p>I have a package from a school that meets on average 77% of need. So far this school offered my son the best financial aid package by far (and he applied to schools that are listed as meeting 90-92% of need) and this has nothing to do with merit aid, although he was offered some merit aid. Go figure.</p>