<p>Okay, IBSenior, that makes sense. :)</p>
<p>Okay, I’m really depressed. Why is it if the EFC for student #2 is 13K that his accepted colleges are expecting us to take out loans in excess of 25K? Getting very discouraged. Thank God student #1 is at a school that meets need, and even with that he has to take out max loans. This whole thing makes me very grumpy. :(</p>
<p>*Why is it if the EFC for student #2 is 13K that his accepted colleges are expecting us to take out loans in excess of 25K? *</p>
<p>which school is this? Many public and private schools don’t meet need. And, OOS publics can sometimes be worse.</p>
<p>Hi Mom2kids,
No, it’s not the public ones. I expected little to no aid from them, and in fact was surprised to see that my son’s safety public actually offered him a small scholarship, even though their tuition is quite low. These are the two privates we’ve received financial letters from thus far. Both around 42K. I just don’t understand. I reviewed the fasfa to see if we made a mistake, but it looks okay. They are expecting us to pay much more for this one son, with two in college, than we did last year with one in school. It may just be that they only meet need to a certain degree, and it’s much lower than they say on their websites. I did call one of the FA offices and they said they put the students GPA, class rank, need onto a grid to decide on aid, so on their website it says ‘meets 70% need’, but for my son it was recalcuated and he only earned 53% needs met in actuality. </p>
<p>I think we should all hold classes on this stuff and compare notes with other parents. Nothing like this ever came up in any financial aid lecture I’ve ever attended, nor can you find it just researching aid.<br>
Sorry again for the vent. Don’t mean to be grumpy! Really seriously reconsidering all the Accepted Students Days though…not sure if it makes sense.</p>
<p>*They are expecting us to pay much more for this one son, with two in college, than we did last year with one in school. It may just be that they only meet need to a certain degree, and it’s much lower than they say on their websites. </p>
<p>I did call one of the FA offices and they said they put the students GPA, class rank, need onto a grid to decide on aid, so on their website it says ‘meets 70% need’, but for my son it was recalcuated and he only earned 53% needs met in actuality.*</p>
<p>That 70% of need is probably an “average”. Unfortunately, that doesn’t tell families much. They can give meet need for one child at 100%, and meet another child at 25%, but the “average” won’t be right for either kid.</p>
<p>The school practices “enrollment management” since it uses grids with stats and need to determine FA packages. That means that the higher a child’s stats, the more his need is met. If a child has lowish stats for the school, he’ll get minimal aid. </p>
<p>Sadly, schools don’t give money away for nothing. They give it mostly to kids that make them look good and help them with their rankings.</p>
<p>If your son applied to some other schools where his stats are high for the school, he’ll likely get better packages.</p>
<p>I saw that with my son, he would get much better packages at some schools than with others with the same need met. I assumed at the time, he was wanted more at some than others, but also looking more deeply into some colleges later, endowments weren’t very high, and I’m sure they wanted to spend money on the highest stat students or students that had something they wanted that year.
At one college on this board a student said she got a large award and asked for no FA. Another student with need, similar stats, got less, much less. They obviously wanted the other student to give her an award, it was their choice.
If you try to figure it out, you can’t, there are too many variables, which is why I “tried” to have my kids throw a bigger net this year, although I don’t think things will be dramatically different.</p>
<p>Lessons learned for sure. Regret is not a comfortable arm chair for my Monday morning quarterbacking session on my parenting decisions. My husband and I sat up last night talking about what we ‘should’ have done in freshman year with my [incredibly bright] son with special needs and how letting the system coerce us into doing it their way has really impaired his college chances, to what they could have been. Getting slammed financially only adds salt to the wounds. Thanks for listening. If nothing else, I think I can be a good resource to younger parents who are going through the system now. Don’t want to derail the thread, so I’ll stop there! Thanks again.</p>
<p>One thing I wish I had paid better attention to was how large the school’s endowment was. Our FAFSA basically split between the two kids. For child one (currently finishing second year and doing well), her school has a good endowment, meets 100% of demonstrated need and caps the federal loans it offers at 2K a year (sub Stafford). They indicate that they will be meeting the increase in aid. For child 2 (stats not as good and schools not as competitive-he is lower middle in terms of acceptance pool), about 15-18K of the EFC not met by scholarship or grants is either “gapped” or ignored. I have asked for reviews and the story I keep getting is that they are not as “well-heeled” (their term) as D’s school. No one yet has been willing to admit to the SAT/GPA grid.</p>
<p>*No one yet has been willing to admit to the SAT/GPA grid. *</p>
<p>LOL…only some schools will admit to using enrollment managers and enrollment modeling software to determine how to get the best students to enroll at their school. There are consultants that help colleges with this. The end result is that a school gets better students, better rankings, and better donations.</p>
<p>Here’s a grid reference:</p>
<p>[Alternative</a> Admission Chart | Office of Admissions](<a href=“http://admissions.uoregon.edu/apply/gpachart.htm]Alternative”>http://admissions.uoregon.edu/apply/gpachart.htm)</p>
<p>Open and public, nothing to hide. Why the objections?</p>
<p>I don’t think that the question was about an admissions SAT/GPA grid – it was about an SAT/GPA grid that determined the financial aid that would be offered. Oregon’s seems to be just for admissions.</p>
<p>Ah, thanks. Shows how much I know. :(</p>
<p>Here’s an SAT/GPA grid for financial aid:</p>
<p>[Boston</a> University - Office of Financial Assistance - Applying for Financial Aid](<a href=“http://www.bu.edu/finaid/apply/incoming.html]Boston”>http://www.bu.edu/finaid/apply/incoming.html)</p>
<p>Click “Probability of Receiving University Scholarships and Need-Based Grants.”</p>
<p>That is the most honest and upfront FA statement I’ve ever seen.</p>
<p>Your academic record is an important factor in determining your eligibility for Boston University scholarships and need-based grants. Key indicators such as high school grade point average (GPA), rank in class, and standardized test scores are considered, as well as the strength of your academic program and your extracurricular activities.</p>
<p>Nope – I can’t either.</p>
<p>I just got it to open. It was hidden behind my open window for some reason.</p>
<p>$99,999</p>
<p>Upset about this, but then again most of the options are still open.</p>
<p>The BU financial aid page is good. Unfortunately with my son, a 3.3 GPA still put him in the bottom 50% at our high school. Cuts your potential scholarship in half, even if the SATs put him in the higher catagory. Live and learn. Our college searching for our youngest and third son will be with eyes wide open. Unfortunately, he will also get a an awful lot more hounding and lectures about ‘if you want to go to a good school’…
It’s sad, I just want him to be a kid and have fun, and not have to worry that his 8th grade math class will determine what college he goes to…and in fact, in our town, it sort of does. If you do not get placed in the higher math class, then freshman year you are not allowed to take Algebra II Honors, which means you get out of synch with tracking through to the highest levels of math at the honors and AP levels.<br>
Again, that’s another thread, but is related in that because colleges are so expensive now and it’s so stressful doing the searching, you have to start so early. Or I suppose, maybe it’s what you make of it.</p>
<p>I am in the financial aid business, and I can’t figure it all out! 
Some schools are & always will be a mystery.</p>
<p>I can relate to the feelings of frustration. So many factors come into play. My first was an academic superstar, and she had very strong leadership activities & great EC’s. She has maintained very high grades in college, and she is involved in some interesting activities on campus (with honor societies & leadership positions). She attends a school with a very large endowment (I am being good … I was so tempted to phrase that differently …). Her aid is nothing short of wonderful. S is a high school senior with a 33 ACT, most difficult curriculum in high school, AP Scholar. However, his grades are high but not all A’s, he does not participate in school activities, and he has no leadership positions. He wants a particular program of studies that is only available at a limited number of schools. He was able to get into the program at several schools, but he did not get large scholarships. Two of the schools were OOS publics, so they were too expensive even with scholarships. One of the schools is a private, which does not offer scholarships to students in this program (they don’t need to - they get more applicants than they can accept even without scholarships). The financial aid package meets need, and S got a pretty large grant in the package, but the 6 year timeline of what aid would look like is not good … and years 5 & 6 would be grant-less, even if D were still in school at that time. Bottom line is that S will be attending a state school he is not especially excited about attending. I do feel that their program will be a good fit for him, and it is a well-established program. Being in their honors program will really benefit him. Do I wish I could give him the “cool” experience his sister has? Sure. We all want our kids to be happy. Am I willing to pay that much more for it? Nope. Will I feel guilty? Not a bit. I have lived all of my life making choices based on my circumstances. My kids have been raised to understand that we do not overextend ourselves financially, so S is not exactly surprised. He knew from the beginning that he could apply wherever he wanted, but that the financial aid package would dictate his actual choices.</p>
<p>Oh, and I should add … they expect me to pay WHAT!!! My EFC is laughable, so I feel your pain.</p>