My son was one of the lucky ones who was accepted early to the Harvard Class of 2023. Now that the initial excitement has worn off, the reality of trying to figure out how to pay the tuition is setting in. My son handled his application but failed to mention to me that he needed to submit his financial aid information along with it on November 1st, so I have no idea what aid, if any, he can get. We have to submit our information now.
I filled out the FAFSA and apparently I can not only afford to send my son to school, I can pay for someone else’s child. Just kidding, but it doesn’t look like much need based aid is coming my way. My wife and I make good salaries, but we live in the Northeast in a high cost of living area with a big mortgage and high taxes. We also have 4 kids under 18, but unfortunately only 1 will be in school at a time, so that doesn’t help us. I don’t have $250k sitting in my bank account, so I’m going to have to find some money somewhere.
My wife heard that if you get into more than 1 highly competitive college, especially another Ivy League, it’s possible to use that as a way to get additional aid from a school. Has anyone heard that before and is there any truth to that? My son is pretty burned out and would prefer not to have to submit more applications, but if it can help get some money from Harvard, he will have to do it.
Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Congrats to your son!!
It appears that you haven’t filled out the FA app (CSS not FAFsA).
Have u run the NPC on their website?
HYP are the most generous schools in the country. If you don’t qualify for FA there, then slim chance elsewhere.
Hope he has applied to other affordable options- state flagship etc.
You should check out the thread on Parents forum discussion if full pay is worth it!
@NCKris. Thanks for the info. He actually was accepted to one of the federal service academies but he really hoped to get into Harvard. He’s worked hard and given up a lot to accomplish what he has so far. I never wanted to tell my kids that they weren’t allowed to apply somewhere because it was too expensive. I figured we would cross that bridge when we got there. Now I have to try and pay the toll.
If another Ivy school offers a better FA package than Harvard, you could write a request to have Harvard at least match the other school’s FA. The problem is Harvard’s FA is more generous than most other Ivy schools. The only other Ivy that can possibly offer better FA than Harvard is Princeton. Even then, hardly by much. Unlike H and P, Yale’s FA calculation considers your home equity, so Yale isn’t as generous as the other two. You really should run Harvard’s NPC and see where your EFC is at.
Now that you’ve secured Harvard admission, are you planning on applying RD to other schools?
It’s semantics, but Harvard (or YP) will not “match” FA offers. But, if another Ivy offers a better package, Harvard will rerun the numbers after you send them a copy of the FA award.
That said, if the NPC for Harvard kicked out a number that you felt was unaffordable, it is unlikely that any other Ivy will be better, and no Ivy will match merit aid. If Harvard deems you qualified for aid, and your paperwork is late, it just means your FA decision will be late; it does not mean it will be denied aid.
@TiggerDad my son applied to Johns Hopkins RD and was already accepted to the US Naval Academy. Princeton, Yale, Duke and Tufts were the other schools he was considering applying RD, but Harvard was his number 1 choice. If it won’t make a difference as far as the amount of aid he gets from Harvard, I may just save the cost of the applications to those other schools and the time my son will have to spend writing the supplemental essays.
@skieurope. Thank you so much for all of the information, not only here but also on the Harvard early action 2023 thread. You are a wealth of information. Are you currently, or were you previously, an AO at one of the Ivy League schools?
So it sounds like you didn’t run the net price calculators ahead of applying or have a conversation with your kid on what you can pay. And you need to be on the same page with your spouse as well.
I’d go today and run the net price calculators on every school on his list. And sharpen your pencil to see exactly what you can afford.
If he is also excited about the service academy, then at least he has an affordable option. If not, and you need to seriously rethink his list, come back and we would have suggestions. Good luck — he sounds like a great kid!
Agree with your strategy. However, my recommendation is to run the NPC at least for P and Y just to see. Running the NPC doesn’t really take that long.
He is also seriously considering an ROTC scholarship, so if he’s lucky enough to earn one of those, that will take a big chunk off the bottom dollar for the any school that he goes to.
@ intparent. You would think that running the numbers and discussing affordable options would have been the wise and prudent move before we started this, however like I had mentioned, I figured the odds were already stacked against him and if he somehow managed to get into one of these schools, we would worry about that at the time. Now he got in, so now it’s my time to figure out how to try and make this work. Unfortunately, most seventeen-year-olds have no concept of what things really cost and the fact that the government likes to take a big chunk of what you make and put it towards taxes.
I’m sure we will be able to figure something out, I just wasn’t sure if there was a way to leverage one school against another. I know that at least for recruited athletes, they can use their ability on the field to get them better deals at colleges. I’m sure we could probably do something similar at a lower tier school, but I guess the Ivies are in their own class.
“I filled out the FAFSA and apparently I can not only afford to send my son to school, I can pay for someone else’s child.” If it’s that high, how much aid do you think you’d get now? Likely, the Ivy NPCs will show similar. They’re “meet full need” only. No merit awards or enticements.
Even if you get, say, a few thousand or the student loans, that’s not going to be substantial.
I’m sorry, but it’s not just your son who missed the impact of costs and actual affordability. And as a “need blind” college, H would not have factored in your possible full pay status, when reviewing his app.
It seems your income and asets show on the Fafsa as prety high. “…we live in the Northeast in a high cost of living area with a big mortgage and high taxes.” Any family’s discretionary choices won’t be a reason for a college to offer generous aid. There is some factoring for the state/its taxes already in the Fafsa formula.
Not at Ivy League schools. All aid, including for athletes, is need-based. Yes, there are schools who blindly match aid, but these 8 are in a group of their own, figuratively and literally.
Do you own a business? Are you self employed? Are you divorced? Do you own real estate in addition to your primary residence?
Are you an international applicant (I know you said you live in the northeast but so do international folks?)
If NO to all of the above, run the net price calculator on the Harvard website…and see what it says. And believe what it says. My understanding is it is very accurate.
I know someone who got into HYPS. H offered the best aid, with P being essentially the same. It is very unlikely that any ivy will offer more aid. What I suggest is for your son to apply to other excellent, T20 schools. It is highly likely that he can get a full ride merit scholarship to Rice, Vanderbilt, WashU or maybe even Duke or JHU. These are excellent top 15 schools as well and may save you 250k, which is well worth it imo. Also he can apply for lots of outside scholarships. Because he got into harvard he pretty much has a chance at any scholarship and he can probably land some of the big 15-20k outside private scholarships which can easily add up.
It looks like your case is like ours, too rich to get freebies and too poor to pay sticker price for four years. Unfortunately, it’s not likely for you to get any aid, at best few thousands in loan. Things won’t come to enough aid from any Ivy nor to Harvard matching others. Unless, you are ready to break bank or get ROTC scholarship , go to service academy or try Duke, Vandy, Rice, USC where you may secure a good merit scholarship.