<p>Once you get admitted, does the Financial Aid package depend on how competitive you are? For example, candidate A gets 1500/1600 SAT and 4.0 GPA. Candidate B has 1350/1600 SAT and 3.9 GPA (all else equivalent). Both are accepted but neither received merit aid. Both have the same EFC.</p>
<p>Will Candidate A get a bigger FA package than Candidate B (assuming the school supposedly meets all needs 100%)? Or will Candidate A have a larger grant portion?</p>
<p>Assuming it’s not merit aid, the packages will be the same if the numbers are the same. GPA, etc. has nothing to do with it.</p>
<p>Depends on the school. Some need-blind schools like, NYU and BU, practice “preferential packaging” – meaning kids who they want to come will often get a better FA package. This usually linked to how competitive the student is, but can also depend on other factors (like URM status, special talents & abilities etc).</p>
<p>Wow, I had no idea. None of the schools I applied to worked that way.</p>
<p>For some related thoughts, check out this thread:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/697685-why-disparity.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/697685-why-disparity.html</a></p>
<p>Yes, except at the few schools that meet 100% of need for all.</p>
<p>Difficult to say really. My daughter having high stats certainly helped her financially as she got a very good merit money from her school. This along with her need based aid almost completely covered her costs with just a little in loans ($800 this year). However she would have got the merit money even if she had had no financial need whatsoever. </p>
<p>It will not make a difference for most Federal aid. The exceptions I can think of off hand would be for grants that have an academic component such as the ACG, SMART and (I think) the TEACH.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/695437-inside-financial-aid-office-boston-university-new-york-times.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/695437-inside-financial-aid-office-boston-university-new-york-times.html</a></p>
<p>many private colleges are similar to BU…</p>
<p>Even schools that meet 100% of need could be offering one student no loans and another large loans… they get to count loans and work/study jobs as “meeting need”.</p>
<p>Only the tippy-top schools have a policy of meeting full need with no loans for families under a certain income. Of course they have already declined to even consider the kids who get the “less than ideal” packages from schools a notch or two down the prestige ladder.</p>
<p>Public schools follow different rules, but at most pricey private schools, your loan and work/study compared to grant/gift aid depends on how much they want you.</p>
<p>Had not thought about that. Does anyone know of schools that meet 100% of need and give some loans and others no loans?</p>
<p>Reed, e.g., guarantees four years of 100% need, including an average of $4000 per year of student loans.</p>
<p>it has been posted here before thought I can’t find the source, but by definition, the schools counted as “meets full need” include the official gov loans only (Stafford and in some instances Perkins). So, they don’t meet 0 EFC with 40 K loans, though they might offer 40K PLUS loans for a family with a 40K EFC–in other words, to help with EFC, not to meet need.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wake Forest posts that it is one of the few schools that meet full need (and is need blind), but Wake does in fact include private loans in its aid package. WF even footnotes it on its common data set (clearly against the directions).</p>
<p>I’m guessing that there are others.</p>