<p>Careful with “meet full need,” as the college calculated what “need,” “full,” and “meet” mean, and it can often be rather disappointing. See some of the comments on [that</a> first link](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2010/02/18/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-the-full-financial-needs-of-students]that ”>http://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2010/02/18/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-the-full-financial-needs-of-students ):</p>
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I do not believe that Boston College should not be on this list. Boston College advocates that it meets 100% of need based on its instituional methodology. I submitted the Profile and based on the Profile our EFC was $35,000, however the FAFSA showed the EFC to be $51,000. Instead of offering BC grant money, BC did a bait and switch from its written material, and only provided a federal student loan of $3600 and work study of $2400. When I asked why was the Profile completely ignored, the financial aid office indicated since the FAFSA was higher, BC defaults to the higher amount. Can someone tell me why did BC have me pay to complete the Profile, if they were not even going to use it. There own literature states that the Profile more accuratel reflects a family’s need. BC’s position that they meet 100% of need is false.
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Keynon claims to cover 100 percent of demonstrated financial need. However, they use the Institutional method of calculating need versus the Federal. In our case this was a HUGE gap. Using the federal method our contribution would have been around $12,000 however based on the institutional method our contribution was $47,000!!</p>
<p>The reason for this is that the institutional method looks at all family assets including home equity and monies in our other children’s names. Given that we have about $600,000 in home equity this calculation assumes that be could borrow about $30,000 per year against that despite the fact that our incomes are quite low at the current time. I was shocked to find out there could be this massive discrepancy.
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I honestly think Chapman should be taken off this list. My daughter applied, and our EFC was less than 1000. That means we are pretty low income. Chapman is posting COA of about $53,000, and offered $42,000 in aid. That left an additional $11,000 unmet need, and the aid package itself included over $10,000 in loans plus $3,000 work study. They said that they might be able to squeeze out another small amount of aid, but the only other solution would be more loans. So, their solution to “meet all need” is over $20,000 in loans a year? Get real!!!
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Accepted to 8 liberal arts schools all which appear on the list and our financial aid packages vary by more than $20,000. Remember, it is the schools which get to determine your ability to pay. Not you or even common sense.
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<p>Whether these people complaining received fair packages or not cannot be concluded from the limited information at hand, but it does go to show that “meeting full need” is not so simple.</p>
<p>Personally, I can only attest to the outstanding financial aid at Notre Dame. They asked for far more information than any other school I applied to, and went with the lowest possible EFC from the various forms. The vast majority of students seem happy with their financial aid (possibly contributing to the very high yield). There are, of course, some people with unrealistic expectations that are disappointed, but you’ll find that anywhere.</p>