<p>If your son is accepted to other Ivies, Cornell will consider matching fa offers</p>
<p>2018dad…
At least CA has great in state options from what I understand. Who knows what number crunching goes on inside those calculators, but apparently things are completely different at different income thresholds depending on the school. For me RPI was much higher than HPY and Vanderbilt. 10K more than Vanderbilt, 20k more than Harvard!!! For you RPI is the lowest. Dartmouth, Duke, MIT also lower than RPI, and Brown was the same. No rhyme or reason. Too much…Try Swarthmore if your D has any interest. Unusually good aid, but no major for S15 unfortunately.</p>
<p>danstearns-
yes, thank you. Someone else pointed that out and it was (great) news to me. Easy Peasy, just get into Cornell AND another Ivy! At least it is an option I can present to my son and if he can’t pull it off the blame shifts to him, lol.</p>
<p>Ha, yep "you wanna go to Cornell? Well you better get into Harvard "</p>
<p>@ProudMomx3
I guess we’re fortunate that we have the UCs. Somebody says that if you apply to all the UCs, basically you covered all your Reach/Match/Safety schools.
RPI (also Tulane) has some merit aid based on ACT and/or SAT (Verbal/Math). Maybe my daughter’s Verbal/math score made the difference at RPI. Who knows?
I tried Swarthmore and it came out as 40K. Hmmmm, I’ll definitely mention that my D. TY.</p>
<p>I know this is “bitter sweet”, but my parents make too much money that I cannot get aide from ANYWHERE and I cannot get most scholarships :(</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>Why? What are your stats? </p>
<p>What are your parents saying about how much they’ll pay?</p>
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<p>ProudMom, have you tried running the NPC’s with a couple of different income scenarios? For example, reduce your income by 5k or 10k and see what that does to the results of Cornell and some of your other choices. I did that with one of my son’s top choices, and found that after about 105k income, almost every $ over that decreased our aid by the same amount. Maybe Cornell’s formula is similar?</p>
<p>I was playing with the calculator and noticed the most bizarre thing! They consider home equity as assets along with savings and investments. Fine. Odd part was that they did not use my purchase price or my valuation but rather a figure pulled out of…somewhere. Okay, fine again. Here is where it gets bizarre-I was reducing my income by 10K increments just to see what would happen and every time I lowered my income the calculator lowered my home valuation! Apparently there is a correlation between income and home value? Who knew? So if this is the scientific process Cornell is using to determine my need no wonder I can’t understand it. :)</p>
<p>Stanford limits home equity at 1.5 times the income for considering it as asset. I wonder if Cornell has similar limit.</p>
<p>OP, my siblings and I are all Cornell alums, for both undergrad and grad schools. Our parents were profs there until retirement so it made sense for us to attend, although the the tuition break was only about half the sticker price. Anyway, for more reasons than cost, although that is definitely one, none of my kids has or will apply to Cornell – which is not to say that your son shouldn’t love it (or believe at 15 that he does :)). That was a long preface to say, if Cornell proves unaffordable, a/o he doesn’t gain admission to another Ivy as a bargaining chip, have you looked at Rice or Wash U? They both have endowments equal to Cornell’s for undergrad student bodies a quarter and half the size of Cornell’s, they have similar pre-professional focus and campus culture, and I would guess can offer a degree in his area of interest. We’ve been very impressed with the faculty we’ve had contact with at both universities and advising seems to be much more robust than at Cornell. Rice is just a straight up bargain, and Wash U offers more different kinds of scholarships than practically anywhere else we’ve looked, plus better FA than some others, at least for us. Apologies if someone has already suggested these alternatives; it’s late and I skimmed the thread. Good for you for getting such a head start!</p>
<p>Honeybee-he is graduation class of 15-perhaps I used the S15 incorrectly. Still, we do have another year to sort things out.</p>
<p>He expressed some pretty legitimate reasons for wanting to attend Cornell, not that I necessarily agree with them. First, the proximity to home. He is reluctant to be too far away. His intended major is fairly obscure, atmospheric science, and Cornell arguably has one of the best programs in the nation, and is certainly the highest ranked university overall that offers the major. Then there is the “prestige” of Cornell, and he feels it is at least a feasible reach, especially if he applies ED. He also visited the campus and said it just “felt right”. I thought he would be put off by the size but he wasn’t. Same for the area.<br>
Are you referring to WUSTL? He is at least looking there, but Rice and Texas just seem like another universe to him. When I suggested Alabama he had a panic attack-hey didn’t hurt to try…it’s free! Maybe if I threaten SUNY? Thanks for the suggestions, and fortunately a lot can change in a year.</p>
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<p>SUNY should not be a threat. It should be part of your bottoms up approach to crafting a list of schools. SUNY should be on the list as a financial safety especially since you have stated that concerns with what your family will have to pay for 4 years at Cornell with 2 other kids coming down the pike. You need to have a this is what the deal is talk with your son and let him know exactly how much you are willing to pay/borrow for his education. if the concept of having to spend 43k/yr at Cornell is painful, you need to stop stringing him along about this dream school that is financially a nightmare. Help him get excited about schools where he can get merit money and where you can afford to pay for 4 years of school.</p>
<p>Your son needs a true safety that does the following; a school where he can get admitted (preferably through rolling admissions), a school that offers his major, a school that is a financially feasible option for your family and a place when after all of the dust settles, if it is the last school standing, he would be happy to attend. IF your son wants to study atmospheric science minimally Albany and Stony Brook should be on his list. Since he has a year, take him there, let him tour the facilities, talk with professors and discover the opportunities. Find out the advantages of the Honors College at both schools.</p>
<p>sybbie-
We’ve looked extensively at Albany and based on Atm Science it would be the SUNY safety-except for the happy to attend part. I suggested that we visit over Columbus Day weekend, but he doesn’t want to. Frankly from what I have heard about the campus a visit might make things worse.</p>
<p>Before I get posts about what an entitled brat he is, I will take responsibility. Until about 6 months when I discovered the NPC, I had encouraged(pushed) him to always work harder, to be the best, to achieve more, with the singular goal in mind of getting into a top college. He has had laser sharp focus and has exceeded our expectations. Suddenly we change the game? </p>
<p>I haven’t drawn a line in the sand yet regarding price, but I have made it clear to him that it is an issue. I don’t think I can do that until he has acceptances and financial packages in hand.</p>
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<p>Shouldn’t this happen anyway? Shouldn’t learning and doing one’s best work be intrinsically motivated not not necessarily based on the goal of getting into “a top college”. While they can go hand in hand, the working hard to be the best is not lost if one does not attend, HYP, Cornell (or name you dream school). The working hard and striving to do and be your best will help give him a firm foundation to live his life long after he finishes his formal education.</p>
<p>You and your son are going to have to work together to find a safety that he loves or he could be left out in the cold without any real choices (having a choice that is financially unattainable is still being left without a choice).</p>
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<p>I would set that line now. As a student myself who had very clear budget guidelines before the process started, I focused my college search on schools I could afford-- price drove my college search. Both my parents and I understood that even if I got into awesome school X, if school X didn’t have a net price of no more than $15k, whether through need-based aid, super-lucky merit, or automatic merit aid, it was not going to happen, period. I worked really hard through high school as well, but I leveraged that success into making affordable college choices. I applied to some super-reach colleges (and was rejected from some, accepted to others), some match colleges, and some safety. The majority of my acceptances were affordable, but this wasn’t by accident. I applied only to schools I knew thad a fairly good chance of being affordable and then got really, really excited about those schools; that way, I didn’t ‘lose’ anything by choosing any of the schools on my list.</p>
<p>If you’re worried about ‘top’ colleges, I would encourage both you and your son to look at honors/scholars programs at ‘non-top’ colleges. My safeties almost all had incredible opportunities for top students that included travel and research stipends and guarenteed research opportunities.</p>
<p>I had friends who were amazing students through college at well-- some better than me. However, they didn’t have the ‘money’ talk with their parents beforehand-- they took the same approach that ‘things will work out.’ And then they got accepted to their ‘dream’ school (NYU, Berkley OOS, Georgetown) and they discovered that it was financially impossible, and they were really, really upset-- with their parents and with themselves. Because their mindset during the search had been “I want to go to NYU/Cal/GT,” and that wasn’t able to happen even though they were accepted, they felt they had to “settle” for UT-Austin/UTD/Bama, instead of being excited about their safeties from the start. I would strongly suggest against just ignoring price.</p>
<p>Alternatively, you can have him make a ‘dream’ list of colleges and a ‘realistic’ list of colleges. The ‘dream’ list could have Cornell on it-- I’ll apply, see if I get in, and if I can get them to match. However, if it’s not less than $X, I can’t go, period. Even if you don’t limit options now, make sure to expand them and include financially reachable schools.</p>
<p>I am jumping in here not having read the whole thread but I just read somewhere that if your income is between 75-120K then Cornell limits loans to 3k/year. Am hoping this true since we are in that range and my D15 is looking at Cornell. Is this not other people’s experience at Cornell?</p>
<p>[Financial</a> Aid Initiatives | Financial Aid](<a href=“http://www.finaid.cornell.edu/cost-attend/financial-aid-initiatives]Financial”>Financial Aid Initiatives | Financial Aid)</p>
<p>Loans for that range are 5k/yr. Of course, keep in mind that this is not the AGI, but a larger definition of income. Beyond the 5k/yr loans, private loans may also be necessary if you are unable to afford what Cornell calculates to be the family contribution. (So the loan doesn’t reduce the family contribution amount that Cornell expects.)</p>
<p>Ok, that info must be old as I looked at Cornell’s website and it says between 75-120k is 5k in loans. I just ran their NPC and the 5K in loans is fine depending on what they decide is “your need” and what they decide is your contribution.</p>
<p>Cornell got rid of the $3k loan program two years ago, I think at the same time they decided to match those other schools.</p>