Complete newcomer and admittedly overwhelmed parent. Scholarship and financial aid

Paying for College
1

I am the parent of an incoming high school junior and, having started looking into colleges and universities for him, am getting overwhelmed by the complexities of the ins and outs of where to apply for scholarships. Everyone keeps telling me to apply for anything and everything. I get that but the amount of emails I get daily are stylized, unique, and usually don’t apply to him. Is there any way to streamline this process?

To give some details, my son is weighted 4.266 GPA, taking 4 AP classes junior year, class president three years, sports, chamber music and chorale, theatre and student leadership. He will be taking the PSAT this fall and the ACT early as well. His scores have been high on both in the past.

We are hoping to give him the best help with what we can do and with scholarships also. I just don’t want to fail him after he has worked this hard. Any advice or direction would be appreciated!

2

What type of college is he hoping to attend? A large in-state public university? A private liberal arts college? Scholarships vary widely depending on which type of school he is considering. Does he have siblings who will be in college at the same time?

An online feature for each school called a Net Price Calculator can give you a ballpark estimate of what you might expect to pay. It will ask you to plug in your income and other items.

By providing a little more information on this forum, you will receive answers that are likely to be more useful for you. As you say, it can seem very overwhelming the first time. But there are a few basics that can make it seem much less so.

3

Okay, thank you very much. Your answer highlights many of the areas we need to explore. He is not at all interested in an in state school. We live in Kansas and he can’t wait to explore outside the bubble. Sorry I wasn’t a little more specific. He loves the idea of NYU or Columbia, but also loves the idea of Vanderbilt. Even TCU. It is all over the place now which is cool with me right now. We are trying to figure out the best marriage of his love of music and business. And how to pay for it!

4

How much can you afford to pay each year for 4 years?

Are you aware of NYU’s reputation regarding financial aid?

When you can post his test scores, posters will have more advice on scholarships.

5

Be sure you are running the Net Price on each school’s website (usually there is a link from their financial aid page). Some people confuse this with the FAFSA EFC calculator, but that does not tell you how a specific school will allocate aid. Note that if you own a small business, have rental property, or are divorced, the NPC results will be skewed in many cases (will show more aid than will actually be given).

If his test score are usually strong, it might be a good idea from him to get a prep book and do some work prior to the PSAT; National Merit status is s possibility.

NYU gives poor financial aid, if you are worried about cost I would drop it.

Be sure he is focusing more on match and safety schools to start with. It is easy to build a list of reach schools, but so much more likely that he will be accepted to matches & safeties. And do some visiting if you can, while schools are in session is especially good. Go on a tour, have him sit in on a class, eat in the cafeteria.

6

The best scholarships are from the SCHOOLS that offer them.

All of those emails, etc, are often a waste of time. Those awards are usually small and only for frosh year. They won’t pay for four years.

I would discourage NYU…extremely expensive, lousy aid, few merit awards, many end up with massive debt.

Vandy targets merit to a few students that fill their need in some way. All of their kids are high stats, so the student would have to offer “something” in order to be selected for its merit…ethnic diversity, etc.

Merit does NOT reduce the amount that the parents have to pay UNLESS the merit is soooo HUGE that it covers all the “need” and then cuts into the family contribution. So, if you were to have $30k of need at Vandy, and your son was awarded $20k in merit, that wouldn’t help you at all. He would have gotten that grant anyway. You’d still have to pay the other $35k per year.

This is often shocking for parents. Many think that additional scholarships can be applied directly to the “family contribution”. Not so. Scholarships get applied to “need” first.

Figure out how much you can pay each year. Your son needs to know what your max is. Then run the NPCs on various schools calculators to see what the results are. This is often shocking for parents when they see that a school expects them to pay a LOT more than they can afford to pay.

So, run the Columbia, NYU, TCU and other schools NPCs and see what the results are.

Do you already know how much you can spend each year?

<<<
He will be taking the PSAT this fall and the ACT early as well. His scores have been high on both in the past.
<<<<

What have his scores been so far?

7

The most selective schools are typically the most generous with needs based financial aid. The use of Net Price Calculators as mentioned by Midwest Dad should be informative and helpful.
Merit based aid Is most generously given at Liberal Arts Colleges and Universities who are outside of top tier ranking. There is lots of merit money out there for excellent students. A search on any Colleges website will provide information about their academic scholarships.
Creating the list of schools to apply to is very important and should be carefully considered and strategic. It’s great that you are involved!

8

What is his unweighted GPA based on what scale?

In most cases that is the one that you should use because there is already an expectation that he is taking the most rigorous courses that his school offers and is doing well.

His class rank will also be important to some schools.

I agree with others that Columbia will be a reach to everyone
NYU has a reputation of not giving good aid and they do not meet 100% demonstrated need
The next few weeks should be spent prepping for the PSAT. remember he will be taking the new exam. He should take the practice test under test conditions.

You can google

PSAT/NMSQT 2015 practice test and also look at the sample test questions on the college board website.

I would definitely look at the pinned threads at the top of this forum for automatic merit scholarships and then chec the school’s websites for changes in policies

If you are chasing merit, you will have to cast a really wide net; this may even mean dropping down a couple of notches and not necessarily chase the “big names.”

9

Please make sure your son is aware of all the changes to the PSAT this year. The test he will be taking is different than the test he took last year. I agree with intparent spend some time prepping for the PSAT but make sure he uses new materials! www.khanacademy.org/sat has free SAT Prep that would help.

If he makes National Merit here’s a list of schools that give great scholarships:
http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com/

10

I don’t recommend the anything and everything approach. He literally only has so much time. You need to be more strategic than that.

Take the UW gpa as the baseline. Scores matter a huge amount for merit aid.

Right now he should be open minded and learning about the colleges, not picking. Run the NPC to see about estimated costs. Most of those will be before any merit aid. Offhand, ome schools give a lot of it and some none. Music and business combinations I know of: NYU (most expensive school in the country, often not great with aid), USC (can be good with aid), Belmont (expensive and likely not great with aid), University of Puget Sound (nice small college but prob the least amount you will pay there is 35k).

Outside scholarships won’t pay for school unless you are very low income. It isn’t failing him to have a budget. We all have to deal with that unless we are wealthy. His work has to be its own reward and success is more about your own initiative.

11

What I have found out is that OOS public schools sometimes give great merit, you have been pointed to the NMF list if schools who give full tuition and even full rides. Also some private schools might give generous merit of maybe $20,000 but sometimes that still isn’t enough because the costs might be $50k plus to begin with. But those schools want to attract high stats students to improve their academic profile and so the students that get merit will be significantly above the average GPA and SAT score.

Highly selective schools will most often only give need based aid. They have lots of high stats students who apply and so you really need to stand out there to even be accepted. Then if the school is not affordable and your income is too high for FA then it’s not feasible.

There are lots of great schools with good music and business programs.

You and your son need to find the schools that will give you enough money to be affordable and fit his needs.

If your son has worked hard in school you don’t want him to fall in love with an unaffordable school that will not reward him for his hard work.

12

The best gift you can give your child is to figure out how much $ you can pay each year towards your child’s college education. Are you married? If so, have this serious conversation with your spouse. It will take some time to gather your finance numbers and work through your family’s situation. As mentioned, if you own your own business, if income fluctuates greatly, if there are ex-spouses and remarriages involved, all these unusual situations will complicate the picture.

NYU appears to be the worst college in terms of huge costs and not enough scholarships/need-based aid to make their school affordable. But run the NPC on every college you have on your list. It is much less painful to scratch off a college at the beginning of junior year. Read stories here on cc about families freaking out at the last minute when the college costs way exceed their ability to pay. Then the emotional crisis of losing your dream school is more devastating.

Tell your child NOW exactly how much $ you can pay each year. Tell him again when he mentions an unaffordable school. This communication will save your family great anguish later on in the process.

There are thousands of colleges out there, and even filtering out those that are too expensive, too far away for your preference, etc. there will be schools that are a good fit for your child.

13

If you are like most of us, some of the particulars that make a school attractive to your student has to be mitigated by the pocketbook. Many can receive full tuition scholarships at some schools with GPA and high ACT/SAT or with NMS - so if you can afford room and board costs. If you can afford room and board plus $XXX.

You want your student to explore career fields/major, and also size and other aspects of various campuses.

Sometimes a large campus can offer some great programs (for example Honors College at a school like University of Alabama) that you need to take a closer look. Some parents have a college visit to a school like UA because they like what they see via www and want to see how the campus ‘clicks’ with their student.

You are fortunate that you are looking very seriously at this time - some have so many preconceived notions, that by the time they get their head out of ‘dream world’ they have missed application and scholarship application deadlines.

14

NYU, as stated before by many others, does not meet full demonstrated need and is very expensive. It is well known among CCers that they are not generous with aid. I would run far away from this choice. Just my opinion, unless you are wealthy and can afford it.

15

If you can swing it, it is fine, it is just so many people decide to go when they can’t afford it, then get into trouble. But realize just room and board with be 17k and books and personal expenses will be higher in NYC. And then you see how very large a scholarship would have to be to afford it.

16

For 2014, NYU told their students the COA was over $71k.

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I would not discourage NYU for a student interested in music and business. The opportunities at NYU would be fantastic, and for all the stories of terrible financial aid from NYU, there are also stories of fantastic aid (NYU tends to preferentially package/merit students it wants). You don’t know where your student will fall unless/until he applies.

The key is to manage the student’s expectations. In other words, cast a wide net that includes CERTAIN financial safeties, and make sure the student understands that schools such as NYU, USC, etc. will be off the table unless the award is “X” (whatever X is for you). No sense taking schools that would otherwise be great fits off the table when you don’t yet know what the award will be.

Also consider Syracuse and U Michigan for entertainment/business (with the same financial caveats).

18

^^^
That is just crazy! Scary to think how many kids are going to be drowning in debt trying to pay for that.

It doesn’t surprise me that NYU’s rates have really jumped recently. They seem to be trying to target a little more aid to low-income students…likely on the backs of others. However, they’re still gapping big time.

19

@mom2collegekids- There’s nothing crazy about merely applying to any school. What’s crazy is choosing to ATTEND a school that is unaffordable/a poor financial fit.

For some, NYU could come in cheaper than the instate flagship public (it did for my kid). For others, that ivy everyone swore would be oh so generous could be the most expensive choice due to how they calculate need - or rather, a lack of need for some applicants. And that merit aid that you thought would be a given from a school with stats lower than your kid’s might not come through at all for reasons that will never be explained to you.

Why toss out [fill in the blank expensive school, say NYU] before the kid has even applied? What if that would have been the best offer? NYU was BY FAR my kid’s best offer, from a purely financial perspective, if not from an academic perspective.

I firmly believe in casting a wide net if getting scholarship or aid money is the goal. The list should include dream schools - yes, including NYU if the fit is good - and schools you KNOW will be affordable (such as a school with automatic merit that will apply to the student’s stats).

BUT, the student has to understand that if the award from “expensive dream school” is insufficient (and “insufficient” includes an award that is not renewable with certainty), then the student cannot choose that college. This needs to be a clear family pact from the outset.

20

@prospect11 – I’m glad NYU worked out for your kid. In my opinion, your kid is a rarity.

For most families, NYU ends up being one of the most expensive options, and rarely provides enough financial aid. In 2013, students from families with a FAFSA income of $48,001-75,000 had an average net cost of $34,728 after federal, state and NYU grants. Students from families with a FAFSA income of $75,001-110,000 had an average net cost of $38,792. Only 11% of students with need had their full need met. Merit awards averaged $3,692. Only 69% of the aid offered was in the form of grant/gift aid; the rest were loans/work study. These are ridiculously bad numbers.

For most students from families who can’t pay these kinds of costs, NYU is a terrible waste of time that could be much better spent working on excellent applications to schools that actually do a decent job with merit and financial aid.