<p>so i have been contemplating if i should or should not apply to Barnard Early Decisions and i have realized the only thing holding me back is that i want (more like need) a full ride to Barnard. My family houseincome is quiet low and i (and my parents) do not want to think about having to pay for college. </p>
<p>so my question is… does Barnard give out full rides in ED?? b/c from what ive been told people have advised me to no apply ED bc colleges will not give you a good financial aid package since you are bound to go to their school anyway :/</p>
<p>Barnard is completely need-based…they’ll give you the same aid whether you apply early or regular. </p>
<p>That being said, if you only WANT a full ride and don’t NEED it (they determine need based on several forms you submit), you won’t get it even if you apply regular. If finance is such a great concern, your better option may be RD so you have the opportunity to compare packages (i.e. getting a merit-based scholarship at a state school may be a better deal financially than Barnard’s need-based package).</p>
<p>i understand Barnard is completely need based, and i am pretty sure my family qualifies for a full ride but i do not want to risk it … i just really want to go to Barnard, i can not picture myself anywhere else , thats why i want to do ED, to ensure a place there</p>
<p>Well, although churchmusicmom is very sensible, I am not. My D applied ED and we needed FA. The admissions office assured us we could get out of the commitment if we absolutely couldn’t afford it, but they would do a lot for an ED student.</p>
<p>As it turned out, DD was deferred, so we did get to compare aid packages. Barnard’s was not the best, but it was close to it. I am not sure if DD would have gotten in without that ED interest.</p>
<p>However, we’re from LI so she had no geographical diversity to offer.</p>
<p>I am gambler, and it probably wasn’t the best strategy, but I was willing to risk it.</p>
<p>We also applied to our state u and got an early write so I knew she’d have someplace to go if we had to back out of the ED agreement.</p>
<p>But I should warn you that most people think my tactics too risky and too bold. Even DD was scared, but I wasn’t.</p>
<p>Well, Mythmom, we probably would have done the same thing as you. But my daughter did not really decide that Barnard was her first choice until after the ED deadline.</p>
<p>You are correct, if the financial aid package offered is not sufficient, you CAN get out of an ED commitment.</p>
<p>So, to the OP, I am going to amend what I said to encourage you to consider the ED strategy but only after sitting down and talking all of this over very carefully with your parents. Maybe even encourage them to come on here and ask questions themselves if they need to so they know fully what is going on.</p>
<p>Best to you! And thanks, Mythmom, for offering another very important take on things!</p>
<p>thank you so much for your advice! i did not know you can get out of an ED commitment like that, i will speak to my parents and college advisor about this</p>
<p>MAKE SURE that you do calculations, for institutional as well as federal EFC. I like Williams’s FA calculator–look only at the expected family contribution, because Barnard may expect more in the form of loans/work.</p>
<p>IF AND ONLY IF these calculations show that you qualify for sufficient FA, and ONLY IF Barnard is your PARENTS’ first choice–Are they willing to stretch to their limit to pay? What if another college was a few thousand dollars a year cheaper?–then GO for ED. Be prepared to decline the admissions offer and have merit-based cheap backups if Barnard’s calculation is drastically different.</p>
<p>I applied EDII to Swarthmore and will be paying only about 1/4 the actual COA–all need-based aid. If you’re depending on need-based aid, ED to a full-need school with transparent loan policies can actually be the BEST financial bet.</p>
<p>mdh, Barnard will probably not give you a “full ride” as that term is commonly used.</p>
<p>People use the term “full ride” to refer to merit scholarships where the student is left with -0- obligation – tuition and room and board fully paid for. </p>
<p>Even if your EFC is -0-, Barnard’s need based packages expect students to take subsidized loans and also a student contribution from earnings – each year they will attribute an expected amount of summer earnings and your package will include work study. It’s not a huge amount of money – I think around $1500-$1800 your first year for expected student contribution … but my point is that even in the best of circumstances you are not going to get a “free” education from Barnard.</p>
<p>Now it is possible that you could earn some sort of outside scholarships that would be enough to meet that part of your expense – and end up attending Barnard without the loans or the need to earn a couple of thousand… except that life in NYC can be kind of pricey.</p>
<p>You wrote, that you "do not want to think about having to pay for college". If that’s the case, I am sorry, but you don’t want Barnard. Every year you will have to “think about” having to pay. It may be that the amount of contribution you have to think about is only $2000 … but you will also face the reality that if you earn substantially more than the student expected amount in one year, it will show up in the form of a somewhat increased EFC the following year. </p>
<p>And if you aren’t thinking about it going in, you will think about it coming out when you’ve got roughly $20K in subsidized loans coming due. </p>
<p>The whole idea that you can “get out” of an ED offer if the financial aid isn’t good enough is kind of stupid, in my eyes. Actually, I think its very stupid. The reason is that you won’t have a basis of comparison, and if you get in and turn down an offer because you think it isn’t good enough, and then you don’t get anything better in the spring – you can’t come back to reclaim the offer you turned down. I mean – supposed a student from a low income family gets into Barnard and is told that they have to pay $8000/year-- lets say hypothetically that even though the FAFSA EFC is 0 there is something on the Profile that pushes the EFC somewhat somewhat higher. The family thinks that is way too much and turns Barnard down. But in spring, there are no better offers - the student has only been accepted to colleges that do not meet full need the best alternative offer available would require the student to pay $11K. Now that Barnard offer looked pretty good in comparison … but its long gone. Now what’s worse? Not getting into a school at all, or turning down a school you wanted because you don’t think you can afford it, only to find out later that no one else has offered you anything better.</p>
<p>But those aren’t the terms under which I undertook the endeavor. I reasoned that most offers of need-blind, meets 100% need would be close, and they were.</p>
<p>I spent an your with asst head of admission who told me that if D were wanted ED they would do everything in their power to make it work.</p>
<p>I figured if that didn’t work, it would be instate U, which in NY is very reasonable.</p>
<p>I don’t think my thinking was stupid at all. Just different. And it did have a very good outcome.</p>
<p>We did not want to compare offers. D had one school she really wanted to attend, and we went for broke to make that happen. Maybe an unusual circumstance, but under the circumstances I refuse to think our strategy stupid.</p>
<p>You got lucky, mythmom – my kids’ offers from colleges supposedly meeting full need were miles apart. (Roughly $9-$12K apart, to be more exact). Just the comparison between the Barnard and U. of Chicago award for my d. was a stark difference - probably magnified greatly over 4 years. Obviously those are comparable schools and I should reasonably have expected near identical offer… if I was naive enough to believe that “most offers of … meets 100% need would be close.”</p>
<p>Since your d. did not get accepted ED in any case, the “strategy” is irrelevant – in the end you had appropriate information on which to make a decision. Your d. applied ED but was admitted RD – so she could just as easily applied RD and had the same results. </p>
<p>After 4 years at Barnard, I know full well that the admissions department has nothing to do with financial aid. “Everything in the power to make it work” is admissions hype – the financial aid office works based on the numbers, and I’ve had enough experience appealing awards with them to know that to get a change in an award, you need to document a reason for a change in the numbers. I mean, I have literally been on the phone with them with a long sob story about financial issues that were very significant to me – to be told there was nothing they could do - and then mentioned in passing a relatively trivial expense that did fall under a category they could consider, and have them leap on that and tell me immediately that my d’s grant would be increased once I documented that particular expense. </p>
<p>The OP wrote that she wants a full ride, and she doesn’t want to think about paying for college. As I posted, there is no such thing as a “full ride” at Barnard. Barnard’s financial aid policies require loans and student earnings, and require a gradually increasing level of student “self-help” from year to year. Under current policy, they do not meet full need for senior year, but expect seniors to find off-campus work rather than work-study.</p>
<p>You wrote:
And in the end your d. wasn’t accepted ED, but was accepted in the RD round. Did your d. apply to any other private schools RD? Or did she just stick with Barnard and SUNY/CUNY? Because I think that for a student who wants Barnard… “going for broke” is also a pretty risky strategy. Its not as if there are only those 2 choices-- there are a whole lot of schools that are more like Barnard than they are like SUNY which might possibly award more generous aid, especially when the possibility of merit aid is thrown in.</p>
The counterargument against ED’s escape clause is reasonable. However, your conclusion–that it’s a “stupid” practice–is not reasonably applicable to all cases.</p>
<p>I reference my own situation again: my parents were willing to pay as much as they could afford, period, for me to attend Swarthmore because it was also THEIR first choice. My mother said explicitly, when she OK’ed my ED application, that she was willing to pay 5k/year more for Swat than for Pomona, a comparable school but much farther away geographically–she was willing to pay more for the privilege of having me close to home. And if Swarthmore had NOT worked out, I would have declined with no regrets and attended a school that my family could afford after RD decisions.</p>
<p>Any FA ED applicant should be fully aware of the “risk” that their ED school will be unaffordable, as might comparable schools in the RD round. If you are concerned about regret due to a “better offer,” then you shouldn’t apply ED. Think of it another way: if you were accepted to every school on your list with “affordable” FA packages but Barnard was the MOST expensive on the scale of “affordable,” would you still choose to attend? Would your family be willing to make that sacrifice?</p>
<p>The OP and her parents appear to be willing to pay 0. That’s what she said in her post. </p>
<p>I think that a lot of people who come from middle class families with some flexibility have an unrealistic view of the financial aid system as compared with students who may come from families with little or no flexibility. By “flexibility” I mean that some of us may definitely need financial aid, but also have some wiggle room when it comes to raising money – that is, we may have excellent credit (more borrowing power), home equity, assets outside the view of the financial aid system that can be liquidated or borrowed against - such as the cash value of a life insurance fund or money in retirement accounts, educational credentials that make it realistic for a parent to take on a 2nd job or increase hours, or self-employment that enables some flexibility in terms of income and expenses. (Face it: I’m self employed. The first thing I did when my daughter got a college that was more expensive than I had planned was to raise my rates. I couldn’t radically increase income that way – I would have lost my clients – but a small rate increase could push my income up by a few thousand.)</p>
<p>The OP didn’t give info about her parents, but there are some families that come to this decision point already maxed out in terms of what they can do to raise money for college – they are already carrying all the debt they can bear, or working all the hours they can possibly manage, or they simply don’t have the skills or credentials that give them the ability to increase their earning capacity in the short term. </p>
<p>A parent who is willing to pay $5K more for a desired school is NOT in the same boat as the typical 0 EFC, Pell-eligible family. If you are standing on the 4th rung of a ladder, it is easy to see that your are lower down on that ladder than the person on the 10th rung… but for some reason people giving advice don’t seem to understand that the person on the bottom does not have the same options. One very big difference is that the lower the person is on the economic ladder, the HARDER it is to move up a rung. </p>
<p>Too many people confuse the concept of “want” with “need”, and the concept of “preference” with “affordability” when discussing financial need. Most parents probably include their perception of college quality or desireability in their financial equation - but then the reality is that the parent can “afford” whatever is the maximum they would be willing to pay for the prize school. So if your mom was willing to pay $5K more for Swarthmore than Pomona… it means that she had $5K more to spend (though she probably was also accounting for travel expenses, so the actual out-of-pocket might have been a little less).</p>
<p>calmom: I know you don’t agree with me, but different people have different strategies. I don’t think that makes them stupid. I knew the risks I was taking and so did Mia, and we were comfortable with them, and we viewed things slightly differently than you do.</p>
<p>I have met may folks who had good outcomes applying ED and needing FA.</p>
<p>I <em>do</em> understand that there are risks involved.</p>
<p>No. But that would be a good question for admissions or FA. They are usually very forthcoming about things like that. I know of someone getting an almost “full ride”, very close.</p>
<p>I agree that ED is not a good option for anyone needing a full-ride. </p>
<p>Loan free schools and certain lower tier state schools trying to attract students are the best options for a full-ride, not Barnard.</p>
<p>have you read “the glass castle”?
you are saying that kind of thing won’t happen nowadays?
too bad.
OP, look into Questbridge, no Barnard but Ivies, SWA, Wellesley, Scripps ( you mean this, Keil?) etc real full rides with special ED package</p>
<p>well when i said i did not want to pay, a few thousand for Barnard i think my parents would do it if they see i love barnard so much, we know someone that pays roughly 400 a semester at Barnard, if i were to get a package like that i do not think we would mind, i know it builds up… but maybe i will able RD, i still have a summer to think about it</p>
<p>bears and dogs: im not that into ivy leagues, im a minority (hispanic) and i think it would be hard to feel at home… barnard seems more diverse than most ivies plus its in nyc (i live here/there)</p>
<p>mdh625, don’t fret! You just make your decision according to what is best for you and your family. Don’t worry about us parents sounding off about our own opinions on things! It’s all in the name of disclosing all points of view and making sure you have all the information you (and others who will read this) may need.</p>
…</p>