So, for a period of time ( a few days ) Emory’s NPC calculator (specifically Emory’s!) on collegeboard was unavailable due to maintenance.
I recently put my parent’s financial information in, and the FA package was absolutely OUTSTANDING; as in, better than the NPC calculations from Vanderbilt, Columbia, Penn, NU, Rice, ect which are known for having better FA packages than Emory for middle income families (70k-110k). It’s even cheaper than UT Austin and Texas A&M!
Keep in mind, I tried this calculator LAST MONTH and I got a net cost/EFC of about 28k/year. I put the SAME EXACT information today after the maintenance and now my net cost/EFC is only $18,539. Even if the NPC was inaccurate and 5k was added to the net cost, it would still be cheaper than any other school I am applying to (Even UT!!!).
Even though Emory’s endowment is huge for a school of it’s size, I saw a lot of the thread on this forum about the mediocre FA packages that Emory often provides. Supposedly a lot of upper-middle income people are screwed in the process. Did anything change? I suspect the NPC might be bugged… Are they trying to improve their yield or something? Seriously, if Emory’s FA package is this good it’s yield will skyrocket.
Assume it is ffed up…sorry to break your spirit…but you may call the FA office to confirm.
Yeah assume there’s a problem. Emory need-based FA has always had a large “donut hole” for middle income families ($100-200k). Unless you get Emory Scholars or have a parent that works for Emory (and get the Courtesy Scholarship), families in this income range are often expected to pay an very large percentage of their income to Emory or taking out hefty loans (neither of which I would recommend doing).
Emory’s is “alright” even in comparison to other places. It’s just the fact that it is even marginally worse makes a huge difference is yield especially when the choices for the students are Emory and some comparable caliber school that maybe offers even 2000-3000 bucks more. In fact. Emory was actually excellent in 2007-2009 but then other schools adjusted their policies and Emory did not. adjust its further and has kind of paid the price as a result. Given that funds are recovering a bit, they should finally consider revamping. Hopefully whoever is the new president will come to know enough to care or have influence in this sphere (as in maybe another capital campaign but one that raises money for the college and specifically allocates it toward revamping financial aid). There is apparently the scholarship initiative which is why this past year a lot of full blown scholars were finalists and then many (33, something like that) yielded. The results are actually impressive as many of them joined BF debate and likely played a huge role in providing high numbers to the new honors linear algebra class which is only for freshman…meaning that there are some great math oriented folks. Unfortunately, I imagine most of the science oriented folks are still kind of “soft” or pre-med. The days of Emory scholars bringing in bunches of “our friend at UChicago for physics” or others who go on to pursue straight up PhD’s at top universities are long gone.
@bernie12 “The days of Emory scholars bringing in bunches of “our friend at UChicago for physics” or others who go on to pursue straight up PhD’s at top universities are long gone.” Why? What happened?
@CrispyBullet Emory’s peer schools and Ivies have revamped up both their need and merit based aid in recent years, and unless these top students have personal reasons to go to Emory (eg being close to home) they may opt for the peer schools that are perceived to have a higher overall reputation at the undergrad level (mainly from US News rankings) and also a wider arrary of academic and research offerings since the financial incentives may now even out. The top schools in the country (think HYPSM) have always offered only need based and no merit based aid, but since the need based aid at these schools has expanded in recent years they may be paying similar amounts to go to the HYPSM school than to Emory w/ Emory Scholars. This is often the case since many students who want to pursue pure PhDs do not tend to come from the upper middle class income brackets (around $250k+) that you typically see at Emory but from families with more modest means, so an expansion in need-based financial aid will significant help these students.
If anything, I would find it most productive for Emory to expand their merit based offerings (assuming they are going to put more of their endowment money towards financial aid) so that not just ~5% of the incoming class is getting Emory Scholars (and thus the academic and EC competitiveness to get Emory Scholars will be lower). This way very good students (even though they may not be Emory Scholars caliber under the current standards) who financially fall into the “donut hole” range I mentioned in the above post are able to reasonably attend.
@collegestu816 : But that is the Vandy model…I don’t think it would work for Emory. It would bias the admissions toward more standard high scorers/achievers. If we could simply offer a full scholarship to more of the same people we get now, then we’d be in better shape and the scores would increase as result. They can keep the standards the same, and simply invite more that meet the standard.
@CrispyBullet : Me and collegestu usually don’t see eye to eye on these sorts of things, but I do believe he has a point with the income bracket of pre-PhD science students when I think about it. The person I alluded to was a scholar but was also solidly middle income (maybe slightly lower). Most of my friends who are pursuing science PhD’s and hopefully myself in the near future are also in this middle bracket or lower (scholar or not…but actually many of them would have been near the standard scores of scholars). There are of course many exceptions. I know of one person, who for example at the last minute decided on science PhD despite coming from a family of doctors (needless to say her parents were initially displeased…until she went to Harvard for it that is). Also, some of the special components to Emory’s science curricula kind of waned after the recession, and usually students who are that into science actually take the curricula and special programmatic options into account. Me, Collegestu, and many folks the same age or slightly older than us came to Emory right before or slightly before the recession back when basically all science departments had honors classes or equivalents. Also, things like the INSPIRE program existed back then (I was in it and many students in it were scholars and most were scholar caliber). Emory is coming back in this area due to things like chemistry, but the what that will look like and its results remain to be seen or even revealed (I don’t think the chem. dept will release the new curriculum structure until maybe late this semester or in the spring). Also, nice that math stepped in and offered an honors course for freshmen (and taught by someone supposedly good). Idea is that to get these folks you must a) actively recruit them through various means (like through the scholars program and through straight up showing up at science competitions like some top schools do) and b) must have curricular options that specifically support those students. Right now and when I was there, departments like chemistry after 2010/11 offered too few electives. Biology was too biased toward “pre-med” sort of courses, physics and math were “very” poor in terms of course offerings and teaching quality. Needless to say, no one would want to engage with that sort of thing if they actually desire solid undergraduate training before graduate school.
Interestingly, one of my friends is at WashU for her neuroscience PhD and I was curious of the differences in their undergrad program (as she has of course TAed for several classes) and she notes how it is less biased toward a pre-health focus in that it offers more labs and research based courses. I noted to her that NBB has recently ramped up such course offerings (like a neurophysiology lab course, which is actually what she currently TA’s at WashU) and she noted that such offerings would have been much better for her when she was at Emory. However, the problem is, I’m sure such changes will go unmarketed by the NBB dept. Even physics is more effective in marketing to untapped sources (Now pre-meds. They for example, have a special brochure for the life sciences physics concentration) of talent/boosted enrollment.
@bernie12 Understood. I have nothing more to add. 