<p>Making it short and to the point:
Hopkins EFC - $10,000
Georgetown EFC - $2,500
FAFSA EFC - $2,000
Should I contact Hopkins?</p>
<p>I’ve said this multiple time on this forum, when my D with very competitive stats applied to school 3 years ago, she spread a wide net and applied to 6-7 100% need met schools, many with fairly equivalent endowments. There was a difference in 25K/year between the most generous school and the least generous school. The schools use different formulas to help calculate their financial aid. I would only talk to Hopkins and use the other awards as leverage if that was her number 1 first choice.</p>
<p>Yes, you should contact Hopkins and find out why they expect you to pay so much more than GT does. That is, if you truly want to go to Hopkins over GT, and this is what is making the difference. There could be something as simple as a mistake there. </p>
<p>With schools that use PROFILE or their own financial aid applications along with the FAFSA, there can be a wide variance in what the schools expect you to pay, since they take different things into consideration. One thing, for example, is how the primary home value is considered. FAFSA does not include the value of your family home. Some schools cap the value but do consider it as an asset. But schools have different caps. Some schools include the value of your cars. Others will incude your parents retirement and other tax sheltered accounts. So the variation can easily be due to what Hopkins includes and GT does not. </p>
<p>What’s even more puzzling is that schools that say the use the exact same methodology, will even come up with different figures…</p>
<p>So do ask, because sometimes an error is made, and sometimes, especially if a business is involved there are different ways to look at the same thing, and sometimes in such cases, a school will capitulate on their view if it is something that is unusual and a like school is viewing it differently.</p>
<p>Hopkins didn’t seem very generous to us either… Using your format</p>
<p>JHU EFC - $40
Barnard EFC - $30
Bryn Mawr EFC - $20</p>
<p>I don’t have as good an apples to apples as you do with Georgetown because JHU was the only mid sized uni my dd applied to, but the results demonstrate to me that a wide net is necessary for admissions when financial aid is important.</p>
<p>And yet I know people to whom Hopkins was the most generous. They do practice enrollment management. However, there must be something in the formula that does snag a lot of people and increase their family contribution requirement. I would have expected Barnard and Bryn Mawr to have been more similar being very like schools, and the $10K difference is surpising there.</p>
<p>My family owns no house, no car, no business, nothing that would be viewed differently from one school to another…except maybe a sibling is in graduate school and Hopkins explicitly said “evaluation based upon 1 in college”</p>
<p>Does JHU promise to meet need? If not, then the comparisons are meaningless.
A school that doesn’t meet need can’t be compared like that to those that do.</p>
<p>If they do promise to meet need then you could try to get more money, but their rep is that they aren’t generous.</p>
<p>edited to add…**JHU does NOT promise to meet need. **So, comparing is worthless. Their “EFC” is just whatever you have to pay after they’ve give you aid. </p>
<p>You have high need. JHU probably thinks that giving you about $40k is more than enough. having to pay $10k per year for JHU is still a huge bargain.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the average need met stats are for those who ENROLLED. There were likely a lot of FA pkgs that were like yours (for high need students) who didn’t enroll…so their stats aren’t included.</p>
<p>Regardless of all of the possibilities, if you really want to know, you have to ask Hopkins. Mistakes can happen. If GT does include the grad student sibling as another college student, that would explain it. That could be a mistake on GT’s part, too, you know. Not saying it positively is, but usually the expected contribution is 60% of what it would be if there are two considered in college. But grad students don’t usually count in that split. Also, GT recognizes younger siblings in private school and Hopkins does not.</p>
<p>I just looked at the list of schools meeting full need, and Hopkins though close did not make the mark last year along with Vanderbilt. These numbers do change from year to year. Since Hopkins does not guarantee to meet full need, like Mom2collegekids says, it is a moot point. You got gapped , is very likely. They ran out of money to meet your need but hoped it was close enough for you and your family to find a way too meet the gap. With GT as an option, that is not necessary, as you have an excellent low cost alternative.</p>
<p>As it stands now, I am leaning towards G-town 65:35. If Hopkins were to adjust their award and possibly match (unlikely), then I would only be favoring Hopkins 55:45. Parents obviously wants me to go to G-town, I’ve experienced the G-town curriculum, and it’s not what I initially had in mind…maybe Hopkins does it differently.
I should point out that family is willing to cough up 5 to 6k a year for Hopkins, but rather pay nothing for me to attend, in their eyes, a better school. (Hey, what do they know? They didn’t attend college and initially wanted me to go to a community college…)</p>
<p>If your parents weren’t Pell qualified, it wouldn’t be a big deal for them to commit to $5k-6k per year for four straight years (which is about $500 per month).</p>
<p>However, I have to doubt how reliable it would be for them to always come up with that much money. Every family has unexpected expenses come up (broken major appliances, major car repairs, home repairs, medical expenses, dental expenses)…and to expect that a Pell family to consistently come up with an extra $500 a month really is NOT realistic.</p>
<p>My parents just had a change of heart: they’ve suddenly become cheap-asses that are unwilling to pay 7k a year. They’ve been able to contribute $300 per month car insurance and $500 auto loan for older (mistake prone) brother without much qualms for what now is 3 years. And then he suddenly sells the cars and the scenario would appear that he had rented an overly expensive mediocre car. Now I only ask for them to listen to my side of this, and they avoid the discussion like the plague. (It seems like I’m the only adult here)
I know our family can afford the $700 per month, but if I cannot even consider attending my #1 school because of cheapness, that is simply wrong.
BTW, for some perspective, parents are native Asian.
If I in any way sound condescending and hateful towards my parents, it isn’t the way I hope to project this, just perhaps ignorance on their part and my overpreparation for this process. I have asked them countless times “Would you be willing to pay 7,000 a year?” Their answer, “Yes, of course.” Now its “Uhh, look at how fast that plant is growing!”…Language and intellect barrier at this household…</p>
<p>Edit: I love my parents, wouldn’t trade them for the world, rant over, for tonight.</p>
<p>Your parents have an EFC of $2k…which means that they’re LOW INCOME. That does NOT make them “cheap asses” for not being able to pay $7k per year. Jeez!</p>
<p>Yes, they may have overspent on your older bro and that’s probably made things even tighter.</p>
<p>* know our family can afford the $700 per month*</p>
<p>NO YOU DON’T. You don’t know that. And, just because there may be some months that your parents could pay $700 a month, that doesn’t mean that they can do it for 4 years straight. During that time there will be emergencies and unexpected large expenses that would prevent them from coming up with that money. EVERY family has these unexpected expenses come up every couple of months or so. </p>
<p>Unless you can get JHU to cough up more money, you have some excellent back up schools. Be grateful!!</p>
<p>Honesty…usually people with EFCs that are less than $5k can’t pay much/anything for college. Seriously.</p>
<p>“Without much qualms” is not necessary how they may be feeling. I have friends who have many qualms about paying for expenses for their kids, some of which may be due their kids’ mistakes and stupidities. Many times, they pay with many qualms that they keep to themselves, and only after a lot of agonizing and coming to the sad conclusion that to pay is the best alternative out of an array of bad choices with worse possible consequences. Please don’t compare such choices with your very up lifting choice between two top universities. </p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that all parents should try to stay in a position to be able to meet unexpected expenses that often arise in life. Maybe your parents can come up with $700 a month, though with their EFC, it will be tough–it would be tough for me to do with a huge EFC. But they have to anticipate any number of needs far more essential than a kid preferring GT over JHU. Please, give them the break. They are just being wise about this. I congratulate them for having this kind of leeway at their income level.</p>
<p>They were willing to pay 2.5k/year for a top notch private HS (comparable to the one the president’s daughters attend now) for sister, which was greatly unjustified by her 60th percentile SAT scores. In reality, I believe both schools in fact met need; they gave almost exactly the same amount of grant money (differing by a few dollars), but I was eligible for an extra scholarship at G-town which greatly lowered the EFC there. So maybe perhaps the FAFSA EFC was not as accurate as we initially hoped.</p>
<p>The difference between $2,500 per year and $700 per month - $8,400 per year - is not small. Not to mention your intimation about your sister makes you sound really whiny and self-absorbed.</p>
<p>FAFSA EFC means nothing beyond what federal aid is offered. School-based money is doled out based on individual formulas that vary widely from place to place.</p>
<p>I did sound like a brat in my last post (way too early to continue a late night rant). Looking over the fin aid awards, it seems that G-town will cost us ZERO…but this doesn’t mean they determined my EFC to be 0. That’s where the “both schools offered the same amount of grant money” comes to play. Adding on to my previous point, two schools that calculated our EFC to be the same cannot be wrong…can they?</p>
<p>Different schools evaluate different factors with different weights. Is that too hard to understand?</p>
<p>No, its not that hard to understand. It’s actually logical. So that’s why my point being was that they offered the same amount based on their own differing factors. And they (nearly) both meet need.</p>