Just wondering if anyone has experience with colleges giving substantial aid freshman year, but not so much the other three. I’ve seen a few articles about it, and wondering if it really happens.
I think it happens. I’ve probably seen the same articles as you have. It hasn’t been the case for us but my kids went/go to schools that meet full need.
One case would be if there is a merit scholarship with a high GPA requirement (e.g. 3.5 or higher) to renew, increasing the risk of losing the scholarship in later years.
It happens.We looked up average freshman student aid versus average student aid for all undergraduate for the schools my kid was interested in. There were some schools who front loaded to one degree or another.
Not really much at rich elite privates who care about maintaining a very high graduation rate.
It depends on the school.
Most schools do not bait and switch their awards packages. One does have to make sure merit awards are renewable each year. Sometime the students and parents do not read the descriptions carefully.
Most all of the schools get more expensive each year, and even the most generous schools tend to expect upperclassmen to assume more of the financial cost of their college. That is somewhat reflected in increased Student Direct Loan limits. More summer work is also expected.
Sometimes, later year costs can be controlled or reduced if there is cheap off campus housing near the college and if the students can go on an austerity regiment.
My kids’ schools were very specific and upfront that the FA/scholarship award was for 4-years.
If you’re concerned about this for a particular schools, do what @Madcity suggested. Some schools do have a fairly noticeable difference between freshman aid vs. aid for other years. American University has been a subject of news stories because of this.
This article lists 10:
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2015/06/16/10-colleges-where-upperclassmen-get-less-financial-help
The NAACP has several stories of this happening to black students, and the NAACP raises money to help students cover the gap or transfer to another school.
I think it happens most often with merit scholarships that require a high gpa to retain, so be careful. My daughter had a 3.0 requirement for one, a 2.8 for the bigger merit award. It was never an issue for her and I’m not sure if others at her school felt threatened (I do not thing so). I do know more than just a handful of students lost their Florida Bright Futures awards because of low gpa.
Looks like two other commonly recommended schools on these forums, University of Rochester and Northeastern University, make this list that is undesired to be on. New York University also makes this list, but that is more of a case of FA going from bad to worse, since its FA reputation is already not very good.
Some of the colleges seem to be saying that they give worse FA to transfer students as a way of explaining why their FA for all students appears worse than FA for frosh.
Thank you - this is one of the articles I read. Trying to figure out if it’s a common occurrence. One of my daughter’s top choices gave her a nice merit based scholarship that we know she has to maintain grades to keep for all four years. They have also given her an institutional grant. It’s this award we’re curious about.
If you have a concern, just ask your kid’s college: if my income/assets stay roughly the same over the next four years, will the financial aid be similar each year?
Have done so. Waiting for a reply. Thought I’d ask on the forum in the meantime.
Some colleges will outright tell you one way or the other. My oldest attended Colorado College, and they explicitly stated that her aid would stay the same all 4 years
One type of front loading not mentioned yet is that almost every school that packages Direct federal loans in FA allows them to increase each year with the Fed limits. $5500 the first year grows to 6500 then 7500 for the final two.
@ucbalumnus – interesting. My daughter went to Northeastern with a financial aid grant – which the school guaranteed for 4 years.
It’s been a few years but, I used to serve on a private scholarship board. We saw this happen often enough with SMU in Dallas to suggest that students ask about it before attending.
Northeastern has the “Northeastern promise” which states explicitly that the award will not change.
In the case of Northeastern, the numbers are absolutely due to transfers as it has a direct policy guaranteeing that aid will not decrease in future years.
https://studentfinance.northeastern.edu/applying-for-aid/undergraduate/the-northeastern-promise/
Edit: Beat to it but including the link
It seems like generally that article requires more specific data to actually calculate that top 10 to any level of important accuracy.
Hmmmm, we asked this question of URoch and were told if our income was generally the same (allowing for incremental raises and/or bonuses) the FA award would not be reduced. We shall soon see if this is the case as we are awaiting aid figures for d’s sophomore year. Of course they also told us how easy it would be for d to get an on campus job (which was part of her award) which she has not been able to do. They do seem to have a high turnover of FA staff - we are on our third rep to-date.