<p>I've heard that Dartmouth is a very generous school. Is this true? Is their financial aid program really as good as people have claimed it to be?</p>
<p>I hope so .. .</p>
<p>My offer was very generous, yes.</p>
<p>probably because you are americans :D</p>
<p>I'm actually an international (Swedish) student who happens to live in the United States. I'm not a citizen or permanent resident and was considered an international applicant.</p>
<p>wonderful! A ray of hope! did you apply ED or RD?</p>
<p>I applied RD. My credentials are [url="<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=302463%22%5Dhere%5B/url">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=302463"]here[/url</a>] (yes, I know it's the Princeton board, but I don't feel like typing it all out again).</p>
<p>Hey guys, I haven't been on here in ages. I am a Dartmouth 06, and I wish I could say that the financial aid office was generous, but it was not.</p>
<p>I love Dartmouth, and I hate to say anything bad about it. I'm sure there were people with better experiences than I had. My parents dropped me off for orientation, and got back home to a letter in the mail saying that they had adjusted my aid package and I actually owed another $3000, which my parents absolutely did not have. I couldn't check in for the term and this led to a very dramatic scene in which I had to take out a huge loan the day after classes started. And I wish I could say that this only happened once, but it happened 3 times (!!!) that they adjusted my aid at the last minute. They also charged late fees for checking in late, which was unavoidable given the last minute nature of the tuition change, and then they gave me a really hard time about waiving them. I had to really battle with them for it. And their idea of your need versus your actual need borders on comical.</p>
<p>Dartmouth is an amazing school, and I would recommend it to anyone, but it is unfortunately not good when it comes to aid. They are used to dealing with rich people, or people who get full tuition scholarships and they are NOT good at dealing with working class people who can afford to pay a little, but not much.</p>
<p>In the end you get your money's worth, you really do, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be careful, call to confirm your aid packages relentlessly, be on top of deadlines, because they will shake you down for EVERY PENNY.</p>
<p>Oh one thing though, the people who deal with paying back your loans are awesome.</p>
<p>Dartmouth's aid is need based, and for US students, that means they will meet 100% of need by some combination of grants, loans and work study, in varying proportions. "Need", however, is formulaicly determined, and different types of assets and family circumstance factor into the evaluation differently. </p>
<p>Sybbie can weigh in on this much more cogently. </p>
<p>Many families WILL find the financial aid offer to be VERY generous (our middle class family did), but Athena's experience is an illustration of why you cannot generalize. Every single applicant's situtation is different. And Cameliasinensis' experience as an international applicant cannot be generalized to all international applicants.</p>
<p>You can perhaps begin to get a sense of what to expect by checking out a FAFSA calculator and also these Instititutional Methodology calculators:
<a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/apply/financialaid/calculator/%5B/url%5D">http://www.dartmouth.edu/apply/financialaid/calculator/</a>
PLEASE READ THE CAUTIONARY LANGUAGE ON THIS PAGE AND KEEP IN MIND that you cannot rely upon the results as a predictor of your potential financial aid offer. Every family situtation is different, and subject to change.</p>
<p>Athena's post is not fair. Dartmouth meets 100% of need as determined by them, and it is very easy to figure out what that means for your family with the help of Dartmouth and calculators.</p>
<p>There are many, many families who have a different idea of what their need is than colleges do. Your EFC is not just based on current earnings. Colleges anticipate families have been saving for college. They don't recognize that many families live above their means, it's not their problem. Many people can not go to expensive schools because of this.</p>
<p>AD Officer, an adcom, wrote an interesting post on this. About how parents arrived in their Merceded talking about needing more aid.</p>
<p>How is my post unfair? I did not deny that Dartmouth meets 100% of your need "as determined by them", my points were that a) their calculations were RIDICULOUS and b) they changed mine at the last second 3 times.</p>
<p>Also, families don't always live above their means because they want to. A person with a BMW complaining about needing more aid is full of it. WORKING FAMILIES live "above their means" because they couldn't live at all within their means. Hence "consumer debt" is actually just credit card debt that went toward necessities. THIS is what Dartmouth is unfamiliar with, and it's not their fault because children from this age bracket basically resign themselves to state schools because of the very situation I described above. Hence it is not something they deal with as often. That is just common sense.</p>
<p>Dartmouth did a lot for me, but this is one area in which I was royally screwed, and I hope that other students can avoid this scenario, which is why I posted it.</p>
<p>So for an '11 who got a generous financial aid package, what should I do to make sure it stays the same?</p>
<p>Just call to confirm, particularly right before you leave. Make sure that you update them immediately if anything about your financial situation changes. That's really the best you can do. Nothing about our financial situation changed to warrant the last minute change, but it can't hurt.</p>
<p>Just stay on top of things, up to the last minute.</p>
<p>The problem with financial aid always centers around how much the college says you can afford. But at least at Dartmouth, they are not trying to keep this number secret, they provide a aid calculator right on their web site. I found that my child's financial aid was within about $250 of what the Dartmouth web site calculator had predicted.</p>
<p>As others have said, every family has different situations, they also have different expectations about what they can afford. The truly needy (Pell grant recipients) are given aid packages that reflect the family's limited ability to save much for college. For those in the 50,000 - 100,000 income levels, problems often arise because people have not been saving for very long and they can't possibly pay the EFC out of current income. But colleges expect that families have made choices to save. For people in this income range there are always ways to set money aside, what is lacking is often the willpower to do it. The result is a burden being placed on the child that is actually the fault of the parent's choices, not the school's financial aid policy.</p>
<p>MidWest Dad, I'm going to have to disagree in part. First of all, I think it is a mistake to lump $50,000-100,000 in one range. There is a huge difference in that income range, particularly when you factor in cost of living in different locations. I am from New York, and if you are making $50,000 per year and living in New York, good luck saving money. Perhaps someone making $100,000 living in Kansas would have more luck.</p>
<p>My parents didn't save for college because they always expected me to put myself through college in Europe; we didn't move to the US until 2001, and I didn't decide to apply to college here until 2004. They've agreed to pay $7,000 of our $22,000 family contribution. I'll graduate nearly $60,000 in debt, but thanks to the generous terms of the student loans offered by the Swedish government (<2.5% interest over 25 years) I'll manage. </p>
<p>I still call Dartmouth's offer generous-- it was $4,000 higher than Bryn Mawr's and $21,000 higher than Wellesley's, and even though the amount of debt I'm incurring looks uncomfortably high, my payments will amount to less than $300 monthly. I guess I'm finally reaping the benefits of the Swedish tax system. :p</p>
<p>athenaNY, I grew up in New York and now live in Chicago, I am painfully aware of the cost of living. I plugged in some numbers on the Dartmouth financial aid calculator. 50000 in AGI 25000 in total saving and no home equity. The result was a reasonable 1300 EFC. If the family had 150000 in home equity the EFC jumps to 7188 to reflect that asset. These numbers do not seem "ridiculous" to me. If your financial aid was significantly different than this web site, you would certainly have cause to appeal, which is a process I understand is often successful. Parents need to do what they can, and if they do, schools like Dartmouth will be there to help. Unfortunately there are not many schools as generous as Dartmouth.</p>
<p>dartmouth is very generous. Generosity doesn't depend much on how much the school expect you to contribute but on how much the school is actually willing to help you (instead of filling your package with $10,000+ loans. <em>coughcornellcough</em>) Dartmouth really makes your education affordable. You don't need to live your next 15 years with thousands dollars of loans each day.</p>
<p>Athena is not telling us her whole story. They don't just change your aid for no reason. They will change it if what you estimated as income isn't what income turns out to be.</p>
<p>athena:</p>
<p>Methinks you are being a little too harsh on your soon-to-be alma mater. In a earlier post, you mention that your dad "retired," but then went back to work. Thus, your family income changed to the positive. To expect any school to ignore this new, additional income is rather naive.</p>