FA package for sophomore arrived today.

Colleges and Universities A-Z Swarthmore College
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<p>Just received our 2nd FA package. Good news. Our EFC was only a couple hundred dollars more than last years. The EFC was also accurately predicted by the NPC on college board. We are a double income family with 1 in college and one in middle school. We have home equity, but when entering the home equity on the Swat NPC I entered the purchase price of the house and the value of our mortgage. I did this after reading the FA office's 2008 response to a student groups petition about the school's FA policies. (link is below) One section of the response explains how Swat uses home equity
"Home equity—the difference between the current market value and the outstanding mortgage debt—is a standard part of the analysis but Swarthmore works to reduce the influence of home equity. Rather than including the reported home equity, we might instead base the equity on purchase date and purchase price or we might instead cap the home equity to equal family income—whichever way allows us the greatest reduction of the influence of home equity."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/documents/administration/financialaid/petition_response.pdf"&gt;http://www.swarthmore.edu/documents/administration/financialaid/petition_response.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p>I highly recommend reading the entire document. Someone posted the link on CC several years ago and reading it last year helped me better understand Swat's FA policies.</p>

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<p>Thanks for the information dadlab. I didn’t realize a school like Swarthmore had a generous FA program? Do they offer scholarships as well?</p>

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<p>Swarthmore’s financial aid is need based, with the small exception of the McDade Scholarship, which is available to 6 students (per year I think): 2 from the Delmarva Peninsula, 2 from SE Pennsyvania, 2 from the rest of the U.S. and 2 international students.</p>

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I’m just checking in to give an update for my daughter’s senior year FA package. Once again Swat’s actual package was pretty close to the amount listed on the net price calculator. (It was $920 under the NPC estimate.

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dadlab … I am delighted to confirm your findings with my child’s fin aid package!