<p>I'm still deciding on whether to apply to Dartmouth or to Columbia for my early decision. I would just like to know which typically gives better financial aid. Ie, by how much to parental contributions typically vary between the two?</p>
<p>Also, does the parental contribution as calculated by Columbia tend to be close to the estimate made using the College Board calculator?</p>
<p>Can't offer any specific comparison because I didn't apply to Dartmouth, but I'll say that you shouldn't allow this to factor into your decision. It's not going to be a major difference.</p>
<p>Thanks. I've actually heard that Columbia is the least generous of the Ivies so I was a little worried about applying to it.</p>
<p>Oh and in case you might know, how much might my parents expect to pay at Columbia if their AGI (basically income before taxes) is about 90k?</p>
<p>If you have any concerns about financial aid, you should NOT apply ED to any ivy except for HYP, especially if you make 90k.</p>
<p>My D received a better financial aid package from Columbia than she did from Penn. It wasn't a deal breaker...had she wanted to go to Penn it wouldn't have made a difference, but there was a difference. It's not accurate to make such a broad generalization that Columbia is the least generous. </p>
<p>Noboby here can give you a reasonable estimate of your EFC. Use the financial aid calculators. Your EFC will be based upon more than just your parent's AGI...siblings, savings, other assets, etc. could factor into the equation as well.</p>
<p>My question is though, how accurate are calculators for Columbia?</p>
<p>Check out this thread here:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=243590%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=243590</a></p>
<p>Our son received virtually the same offers from Columbia and University of Chicago. Cornell would have cost us around $2,500 more out of pocket. </p>
<p>momoffive</p>
<p>p.s. our finances aren't complicated either. No divorced parents, self-employment, trusts funds (unfortunately :-P ) which may have made the calculators fairly accurate for us. I remember on some of the CC forums last spring there were some threads about financial aid and offers to some students varied widely (I don't remember any specific stories about Ivy League) even though the universities were all using the same raw data.</p>
<p>In one week Columbia 2002 has spoken for:</p>
<ol>
<li> The Admisssions Committee;</li>
<li> President Bollinger;</li>
<li> And now Financial Aid.</li>
</ol>
<p>Makes you wonder.</p>
<p>Although I don't have the other threads in which Columbia2002 has posted on open right now, he's 100% right on this thread. I applied RD to both Columbia and Dartmouth, and the fa offers were withing 1 or 2 K of each other, which isn't that huge of a difference considering the full cost of attendence is now officialy over 50K per year. And even if 1 or 2 K is a big deal for someone, he/she shouldn't let it influenece his/her choice. You can work-study off a couple thousand, or take a very low interest rate loan and pay it back after you graduate.</p>
<p>Additionally, I would have to assume that Columbia2002 is correct about the other issues, since he's been on college confidential for so long that even if he hadn't known anything at all about Columbia when he first got here, he would still know more about everything Columbia than a very large majority of the people on here.</p>