<p>To the best of my knowledge, the only CA schools that meet full need for EFC0 students are: HarveyMudd, Occidental, Pitzer, Pomona, Scripps, Stanford, USC. All are super selective. If her stats are tops, she’d probably get nice merit at Chapman, LMU, or Mills, but run the Net Price Calculators to make sure since these three schools don’t “meet need” and choose who will get good financial packages (typically, students in the top 10% applicants).
<a href=“Colleges with Need-Blind Admission for U.S. Students”>Colleges with Need-Blind Admission for U.S. Students;
(This is a website for first generation students, with useful information. Check out the Fly In information in August, for instance).</p>
<p>To answer your question: most full-need colleges that are “generous” (like UChicago, Harvard, Yale, etc.) do package the student’s roundtrip ticket and if you book the tickets early she can keep the difference to help defray other costs. The student typically goes to friends’ for Thanksgiving and Spring Break. Parents aren’t expected to go with for the move-in in that case though. You’ll have to rely on your child connecting to skype and sending you images from her laptop.</p>
<p>and that will be based on CSS Profile, not fafsa. and those schools will include NCP income, if the parents aren’t together. </p>
<p>also, even tho those schools promise to meet need, that is not all with free money. all will include a student contribution (which is roughly the COA estimate of personal expenses, books, and minimal travel)…and most will include full loans as well. </p>
<p>“To answer your question: most full-need colleges that are “generous” (like UChicago, Harvard, Yale, etc.) do package the student’s roundtrip ticket”
I’m not sure about this…with Harvard being about as generous as it gets I plugged a 0 EFC into their NPC first as a NY resident, then CA. For NY is was 300 and for CA the travel allowance only went up to 600. Good luck with that! </p>
<p>Again be aware that even the most generous schools are expecting a student contribution which is money the student is expected to come up with somehow.</p>
<p>As I said, don’t exclude all such schools with distance costs as, yes, it is possible that a merit award, full fin aid could make some such schools a better deal than anything she gets closer, but make sure you have a lot of varied eggs in that basket because you can’t count on it You can’t count on her getting into any school that would meet all of her need, or get generous money or would come up with a nice little travel bonus. You can’t count on much of anything other than the sure things that are so spelled out. </p>
<p>I think bottom line is, don’t get sucked into the “dream school” thing. We told ours, if they don’t offer the right aid, it’s not a dream school. I was also very concerned about how easy it actually is to get to some colleges- not all are a non-stop to the destination or easy enough to get to once at the final airport. I remember one desirable that would need a plane transfer, then a 45 min bus ride to the closest town, then somehow to the college itself. </p>
<p>First of all, do not assume your D will get a lot of financial aids. Do the NPC for each school to get some estimates. Merit aid is not as easy to predict as need based aids. If you count the number of top 5 students from all high schools in the country and you know how competitive it is.
Second, make sure if the school meet the need. Full ride merit aid is limited unless you aim lower and has NMF status. Some top privates and in state public do. Top privates are extremely competitive.
Third, even if the school do meet the need, part of it may be a loan or work study. That means those are essentially your money (or future money).
Last, all these calculations based on the estimate CoA. Even if you get a full ride, the estimate may be not sufficient. For my D’s school, I can tell at least the tuition/fees, boarding, and book cost are significantly underestimated already.
In other words, the travel cost would be likely out of your pocket even it is included in the calculation of CoA.</p>
<p>Many of us do find COA includes some slack. Eg, my kids never spent on books what was allocated. But the harder the financial challenge will be to a family, the more you need to really build some knowledge and a sharp approach. No assumptions. No pie in the sky. Plus, nearly every school raises costs over the four years. Our aid did go up a bit with these. but the best advice still starts with: eyes wide open. </p>
<p>A lot of students who go to far-away colleges don’t come home for Thanksgiving. Even if the money is there, many families don’t think the travel time is worth it for the small amount of time being home.</p>
<p><<<<
Are low income students typically forced to move in alone
<<<</p>
<p>I have never heard of any school including any funds or budget to cover parent travel costs.</p>
<p><<<
To answer your question: most full-need colleges that are “generous” (like UChicago, Harvard, Yale, etc.) do package the student’s roundtrip ticket and if you book the tickets early she can keep the difference to help defray other costs
<<<<</p>
<p>I am not sure what you mean by this. ii dont think there is any pkging of a “ticket” based on where a student lives.</p>
<p>I think that there is one estimate for travel costs within the COA, but since these schools have a student contribution that is beyond the cost of travel, the student is really paying for his tix himself. PLUS, the tix to school is purchased before aid is distributed.</p>
<p>OP…your child will be moving in and moving out twice per year for four years (8 times). If you need to avoid travel costs for YOU then your d should take the minimum of stuff so the process is easier.</p>
<p>Frankly, because of these issues, it is often an issue for low-income kids to go far away. What about graduation? will you be able to pay for a trip to Calif for yourself? (plane, rental car, hotel, restaurants) if not, then maybe it is better to find schools that you can drive to.</p>
<p>Even those paying full freight often choose to save money by not buying plane tickets across the country for thanksgiving and spring break. Many come across the country to move in all by themselves. These expenses are truly “extras” to many people. </p>
<p>While it may be nice to think that some college will cover these types of expenses, you must do your homework as everyone above has said to see what a financial aid package will really look like.</p>
<p>Kids will be fine moving themselves in and out, but coming home for Christmas (and summer if applicable) are expenses that need to be budgeted for. I agree for the others that you will need to evaluate aid offers closely to see what is covered for direct expenses (tuition, room and board) and what is left for discretionary items like books, supplies, and potentially any transportation. Perhaps your D can earmark her work earnings for books and transportation or just the transportation. A job during college will cover the sundries. It will be important as well to make sure you understand what you can contribute. It can be doable as cpt points out, but college is an expensive proposition so give it all a whirl, but like every family make sure she has an option that is affordable for the family. </p>
<p>Oh and two of mine went 1800 miles and 3 airports away and they did not come home for Thanksgiving or spring break. Too much time and too much money, but they never had a problem hanging with other out of range kids and the internationals during that time - it can be a bonding experience especially on a smaller campus.</p>
<p>We actually considered all these when putting together the list of schools my D was going to apply last year. Not only we estimated the travel cost, I even factored in the cost of stuffs that she need to buy instead of bring from home due to the luggage limit. So most of the schools she applied are within driving distance (500 miles).</p>
<p>You can check websites for “Academic Calendar” or similar to find date info. For example, at DS’s college, the dorms are only closed at Christmas break. They remain open for Thanksgiving and Spring Break. I think other colleges often close for the shorter breaks too. </p>
<p>D had one college offer her a “travel scholarship” of 2K a year to help her get across country on top of the merit aid offer. None of the other schools offered that. </p>
<p>My D is not attending that school but another equally far away. She will only come home winter and summer. We are moving her in but that will likely be the only move-in she gets. I was super bummed that they planned “parent weekend” a month after school started… like we’d be able to do that trip twice in a month!</p>
<p>Any awards you get, FA or otherwise, are limited by whatever the schools budget is with some rare exceptions. </p>
<p>Any part of the college budgets after tuition, room and board are just estimates that are determined based on averages and frugal living. Students typically spend more than that, especially those who come from far away. So the answer to your question is no. </p>
<p>Be aware, even if you did get a school to fully fund you anything above tuition is taxable income to the student. </p>
<p>My kids all went to school far away. We paid for them to come home the first year, but afterwards they seemed to find other things to do even though the offer was often on the table from us. My college kid decided to stay in college town this summer since he has a 12 month lease anyways, and he found a job there. </p>
<p>The kids I know here, and one is a homeless orphan, EFC zero, still had to come up with a student contribution from the most generous schools and their COAs do not include a lot of lee way for parents coming to help move in, pack up etc.</p>
<p>My one son did get an offer to come visit the school after acceptance with air fare provided for him and one parent. But I know he had a housemate from overseas on a very strict budget who could not go back some years, spent holidays here and his parents did not even come for graduation. He was on full aid, but it was still tight for him.</p>
<p>We always invited home kids who couldn’t travel to their families. And some preferred to stay on campus. I don’t think OP was arguing it’s torture to move oneself in. I find the comments her D will likely receive “numerous handsome offers” is more worrisome. But we covered that.</p>
from her laptop.</p>