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Not close to our experience at all (unless you consider $40k in grants, and $17.9k in loans close. - and we had none of the above conditions)! But, granted, the plural of anecdote is not evidence.
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<p>I need to test for understanding.</p>
<p>Smith post their cost for room, board, activity fee, and health insurance as
$42,986</p>
<p>Is this some type of bait and swith tactic when after you are admitted they tell you it will cost you 57K to attend. Or is the $57k how much it cost your family for your daughter to attend Smith?</p>
<p>No - the difference between the worst offer and the best offer from 100% of need schools that we received (there were multiple offers), based on exactly the same financial information - there being no "confusing" or confounding situations, was $40k in grants OVER FOUR YEARS and $17.9k in loans, again over four years. In other words, had my d. decided to accept the school with the worst offer "meeting 100% of need", it would have cost her and us a total of $57.9k over four years more than we are actually paying. (It is actually costing us signficantly less than $57.9k over four years, so contrary to what I said in the first post - 1.75x to 1 - the actual difference to us was over 2X.) We could have "stretched" to afford, but it would indeed have been a "worry", which is why I'm very glad indeed that she didn't apply ED (and she probably would have chosen the wrong school, to boot!)</p>
<p>You experienced different offers from two "100% of need" schools as well, didn't you?</p>
<p>I'll get more specific -- with my son 5 years ago two need-based only financial aid awards from two different colleges had a $7K difference in EFC -- the EFC range for CSS Profile colleges was about $12K-$19K. </p>
<p>I would have assumed my son would have gotten good financial aid from the college offering the least, as his stats were well above the mean for that school. I was surprised by the strong need-based award that we received from the college that he ended up attending, especially when they later awarded him in additional $2K annual National Merit scholarship and allowed him to keep that on top of the need based award. (In other words, he got the full need-based grant + the NM award)</p>
<p>You never know. The CSS Profile and IM methodology gives every school a lot of wiggle room - and they get to say what your need is. </p>
<p>You can try to pretty things up any way you want, but the truth is that kids from truly poor families rarely have the resources or school preparation needed to even enter the ED race; and middle class families who have a real limit as to available resources cannot afford to gamble over costs. ED is not geared to help financially needy students.</p>
<p>OK, now that you have explained it, I understand where you are coming from.</p>
<p>Yes, we had different offers from each school that D was admitted to and they were all need blind meet 100% of demonstrated need schools. Like yours there was a wide range between the "best" and the "worst" offer. </p>
<p>We got 7 different EFC's and 7 different packages all from need blind schools which meet 100% of your demonstrated need. Some packages gave no loans in their package, others gave both perkins and subsidized stafford loans. She had work study raning from $1000 to $2500 and a few thousand dollars difference in scholarship grant aid.</p>
<p>Like your daughter, mine did not apply ED either because she did like all of her schools and did not have a clear choice and we really did need to compare packages.</p>
<p>The offer that we ultimately took wasn't even the "best" financial offer on the table, we just requested a finanical review of 2 similiar schools. So while she did not choose the "most affordable" school the ability to compare packages (got an increase in grant aid, reduction in loans, and reduction in the EFC) made her choice more affordable.</p>
<p>Just over the course of 2 years we "saved" $13,000 between the original package at Dartmouth and the one we negotiated. Yes, in hindsight, had she applied ED, she probably would have ended up at a different school.</p>
<p>Harvard picked 30% of ED applicants, and how many do you think need no financial aid whatsoever, probably </p>
<p>Citysgirlmom, this is incorrect. Harvard does NOT have a binding early decision program. Rather, they have single choice early action, which allows applicants to still compare offers from other schools.</p>
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No - the difference between the worst offer and the best offer from 100% of need schools that we received (there were multiple offers), based on exactly the same financial information - there being no "confusing" or confounding situations, was $40k in grants OVER FOUR YEARS and $17.9k in loans, again over four years. In other words, had my d. decided to accept the school with the worst offer "meeting 100% of need", it would have cost her and us a total of $57.9k over four years more than we are actually paying. (It is actually costing us signficantly less than $57.9k over four years, so contrary to what I said in the first post - 1.75x to 1 - the actual difference to us was over 2X.) We could have "stretched" to afford, but it would indeed have been a "worry", which is why I'm very glad indeed that she didn't apply ED (and she probably would have chosen the wrong school, to boot!) You experienced different offers from two "100% of need" schools as well, didn't you?
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<p>Well, well! Would it not be a lot more helpful to compare schools with similar policies as opposed to lump them in one big basket of "meeting 100% of need" -or almost 100% in the case of Smith. Major differences can be created by the merit scholarships as well as their specific application in the final analysis. </p>
<p>I think we can all assume that the recipient of 50% tuition scholarship (Zollman) and a $2,500 (Stride) could see a pretty large difference, which I estimate at about $17,500 per annum and climbing. Also, TheDad has posted several times that the Stride scholarship -as well as the work-study- are deducted from the EFC. On a side note, I am not sure how a scholarship that lowers the EFC -and not the annual student contributions- is in perfect agreement with the regulations on the distribution of federal aid. This indicates that the need-based awards shoud remain pretty much untouched by the merit aid. At least for the first year, I may add. </p>
<p>So, Mini, if the difference was only $57.500 for four years, would this not also indicate that the Smith offer was less generous on a need basis than the other schools, especially if they did not offer merit aid? Could this be one the reasons Smith did not join the 568 Group despite being one of the 23 members of the Overlap Group that met to agree on financial aid levels for students from 1957 until 1989-1990 when the Department of Justice brought a suit against the group claiming a violation of antitrust laws</p>
<p>To avoid comparing apples to oranges, the merit aid of all sources needs to be segregated from the need-based aid.</p>
<p>Xiggi - there were lots of other schools besides Smith in our little "experiment", so your point is irrelevant. </p>
<p>The admissions folks told us point blank that neither the STRIDE nor the Zollman increased her financial aid package one penny. In other words, merit aid reduced need-based aid dollar-for-dollar in the first year. (As noted, there were some advantages in successive years in that the merit aid was not an amount, but a percentage.) What it did do, however, is eliminate the mandatory part of the package to be made up of loans. There was another school with a "need-based" package the same size, with a mandatory loan component. The final choice did not come down the size of the packages, however. And I have no reason whatsoever to assume Smith offers better packages than other schools (I actually expect the contrary might be the case); only that with such a large proportion of the student body (28%) with incomes under $40k, and 21% of the student body under $30k, they offer more of them.</p>
<p>Pure need-based offers varied quite widely, as Sybbie and Garland experienced as well. But the main point is not so much what the packages were made up of, but whether we (or Sybbie) would have been willing to even consider applying ED without knowing. In the case of Smith, they are quite open about using their Zollmans and paid research assistantships to tempt students who might otherwise go elsewhere. Anecdotally, I can tell you that they are rarely given out to ED candidates, for obvious reasons. It might have made little difference in our case, or it might have, but we weren't in a position to find out.</p>
<p>"Xiggi - there were lots of other schools besides Smith in our lltlle "experiment", so your point is irrelevant."</p>
<p>Why is that irrelevant? I thought your posts were about comparing the awards at various schools. I am puzzled! </p>
<p>"The admissions folks told us point blank that neither the STRIDE nor the Zollman increased her financial aid package one penny."</p>
<p>Now, you cause a double puzzlement? Do you mean that your EFC and unmet needs did not change? Most people I know do consider that the conversion of loans or work study into grants is an increase in NET financial aid, but that could be semantics. Does your daughter have to perform "work study" or was that replaced by the scholarship? </p>
<p>Also, are you saying that Smith applies different policies to your awards than to the TheDad's? Why do outsiders consider the use by Smith of its Zollman or Stride awards as tools to attract students who plan to enrol somewhere else. If I were working at Smith finaid office, I'd make sure to dole out all my scholarships to people with large need-based aid. But, why make a difference between merit and need based aid? Unless the plan to use them for people who do not get much aid? I guess that, after all, there are differences between in-house scholarships and outside scholarships.</p>
<p>you are correct. As mini has pointed out, the deck for highly selective schools is stacked in favor of middle-uppper income kids. How else will they obtain top grades, great SAT scores, and outstanding ECs. I just don't buy the adcoms comment that working in a convenience store is just as good as national EC awards.</p>
<p>But, I would suggest that low income, high stat kids should apply ED to a school like Pton since they waive loans. It's a virtuall win-win if they get in. Moreover, Pton is not likely to offer a lot of full rides, so applying early increases the odds of attendance.</p>