<p>I’ve never heard of anyone getting a really incredible financial aid package.
Of course, there are always loans and outside scholarships, but I’m talking about grants from Barnard.</p>
<p>Barnard does provide decent financial aid, but most packages will include loans and work study. </p>
<p>You do not have to be “rich”, but you do need to have some skin in the game, as they say.</p>
<p>I’ve always figured that if I were accepted to Barnard (I’m applying as a transfer student), I would do the work-study program. I have extremely limited funds for tuition.
Do you think this could make a significant contribution to costs of attendance?</p>
<p>Work-study will only give you $2-$2.5K probably. If you mean the federally funded program.</p>
<p>Barnard’s financial aid is pretty good … it may not be at the Harvard, Yale, Princeton level … but compared to FA at the 3000 colleges in the US it’s pretty near the top. Do you have better FA offers from other schools to which you attended?</p>
<p>I’m paying in-state tuition for a public college, and I also receive a hefty scholarship for residents of Georgia. My current financial situation is ideal; unfortunately, my academic situation is not.</p>
<p>I’m talking about Barnard’s work-study program.</p>
<p>Work-study is designed to give you the ability to earn enough funds to cover incidental expenses (text books, day-to-day supplies, food, etc.). Barnard meets full need, based on its own determination of “need”, to domestic students who are accepted as first year students. Barnard is not able to guarantee need-based aid to transfer students.</p>
<p>yeah, Barnard calculated my EFC to be $23k, Columbia calculated it to be $12k. I was leaning pretty hard toward Barnard, but I can’t pass up Columbia’s FA. Both schools gave me work-study (their own programs, not the federal ones), but that only amounts to two or three grand, which, considering that the total cost is ~$55k-$60k, isn’t that helpful.</p>
<p>My daughter’s best friend had a pretty hefty FA package to Barnard. Just about everything.</p>
<p>I know multiple students just on my floor (I’m a first-year) that have very generous financial aid. My roommate is only paying a few thousand to come here. Barnard actually gave me more aid than Wellesley and a lot of other schools that I applied to. I don’t know why people think Barnard doesn’t give good financial aid-- from what I’ve seen and heard, it’s pretty good!</p>
<p>My EFC on FAFSA was 00000 and my loans were 1,750/semester my first year. I only had to pay $362.00 for parent contribution my first semester and my second semester I had $32.00 leftover. Hope this helps!</p>
<p>Of course if you only survey the students enrolled at Barnard, you have a selection bias. The kids who couldn’t afford it didn’t come. </p>
<p>In my dd’s case, Barnard wasn’t bad with financial aid, but there was a $10k gap and Haverford and Bryn Mawr didn’t gap. My dd dropped the idea if Barnard right away. It would be great to make decisions not based on finances, but that’s the reality of college.</p>
<p>But the point is that the strength of the financial aid package depends on individual circumstances, since the colleges are all making their own determination as to need, and have different policies about how they treat certain types of assets and income. Home equity? College are all over the map on how they treat that one factor alone. </p>
<p>Your d. may have dropped Barnard because of a better offer from Bryn Mawr or Haverford, but there are probably students at Barnard who turned down offers from those schools because, in their cases, the Barnard offer was stronger. </p>
<p>I would note that Bryn Mawr does give merit money, so that factor alone may lead to a stronger award. At the same time, Bryn Mawr offers some students Perkins loans, so in some cases Bryn Mawr students will have substantially more in loans – and in debt after graduation – than Barnard student, as Barnard loans are limited to federal direct Staffords. So whether a package is better or worse may be subject to interpretation. That is, there may be students who are looking at the out-of-pocket expenses as being less at one school as the defining criteria for the strength of an award, while others might be more focused on the total amount of debt incurred.</p>
<p>Speaking for myself, I got a very reasonable financial aid package from Barnard for fall 2012. My family is by no means poor (we make between 60 and 70 thousand per year) and I received a grant that almost covered the cost of tuition. When compared side by side, I would have paid almost the exact same amount – including taking out the same amount in loans – to go to Barnard as to go to the University of Michigan (and I’m instate!). Honestly, I was very surprised when I received my aid package, because I had heard the same thing as you, OP.</p>