<p>Ok, so i understand that collegeboard says their EFC is just an estimate. However, it put our EFC ~20k higher annually than my parents say they can actually contribute. Assuming my parents are telling the truth, and I believe them, what's up? Will Caltech EFC be better, or just generally what's going on?</p>
<p>My parents can afford to contribute around 15, 20k a year. Their EFC is 45k. I got a similar EFC at all schools I got in, which was also around 45k. </p>
<p>Unless you get a scholarship, welcome to my world. That is, the world of loans.</p>
<p>EFC is driven by both income and assets. It is common to have EFC far higher than many parents can afford ( trust me on this). Planning is essential for families with an EFC near the total cost of attendance. This usually requires a number of years to minimize exposure ( ie. maximize retirement as an example). If I had studied this issue more fully a number of years ago maybe the pain would have been less over the next few years.</p>
<p>One lovely aspect of Caltech is that they offer more than $1M in upper class merit awards, given for both academics and ECs.</p>
<p>Given as axlines and the lingle to freshman...both of which are for the top~6% of CALTECH ACCEPTEDs. I hope to be in the caltech accepteds, forgetting percentages. are there non axline, non lingle fresman scholarships to get? also, there upperclassman scholarships availible. how hard are these to get as compared to admissions, axlines, diamond, etc?</p>
<p>bookworm was referring to the upperclassmen merit awards, which are significant in amount, I believe. I think 10% of upperclassmen get it; I'm not sure.</p>
<p>51 people this year. I'm sure many have financial aid and did not apply. The awards include Carnation and others. Ben can add more details. Other ways Caltech is generous is with jobs that pay decently. You can get money to take a professor to lunch, or to take a friend out for entertainment.</p>
<p>I wasn't any kind of academic superstar so I didn't get an Axline, Lingle, Carnation, or any of those, but Caltech's assessment of my family's ability to pay was $10K more favorable than MIT's back when I was deciding where to go. I preferred Caltech anyway, but that sure made the choice more painless! A friend of mine currently at Caltech, who had a rather complicated situation due to the fact that his father was retired has a family contribution of only $5K--his MIT offer was several TIMES worse.</p>
<p>There's definitely a reason Caltech was always Money Magazine's "best buy college."</p>
<p>Anyone gotten those yet?</p>
<p>So yeah, I am hopeful to start seeing a shift away from merit based scholarships, especially under this Business and Finances VP. My view is that a price war is starting for the top students. Caltech doesn't need to buy into this since we get our best students based on who we are. Therefore, we would simply be wasting our money on pumping merit-based scholarships... anyone that would be swayed by them one way or another isn't worth the special effort, in my opinion.</p>
<p>Also, I think that the (fading) Housing Bubble is having a large effect on these EFCs. However, this is unfounded, as my father deals with the finances in my household. Does housing equity play into your assets at all?</p>
<p>Finally, does anyone know about Ath waiting? It seems to have died off. Who was the last student Ath headwaiter?</p>
<p>Hmm, that's an interesting take on merit scholarships. They certainly have costs in that they stratify the student body into haves and have-nots -- an arrangement that is not healthy for anyone.</p>
<p>On the other hand, merit scholarships are good because they put Caltech's money where the school's values lie. If you come here and are well prepared and work very hard and do very well, you have a chance to significantly reduce the burden on you and/or your family -- either through Upperclass Merit awards or scholarships given at the time of admission. This incentivizes extraordinary acadmic achievement in a way that is rarely seen these days. It does involve an implicit judgment that academic and research achievement is better, in the school's eyes, than the lack of such achievement. That judgment is too pointy for some, but I am grateful there is still at least one place willing to make it so clearly.</p>
<p>Finally, it's not clear to me that students whose college decisions were swayed by the opportunity to avoid a crushing financial burden for themselves and their families are, for that reason, not worth a special effort aimed at recruiting them. But I agree that it's an open question whether Caltech's merit scholarships will, in the long run, do an appreciable amount of good for the school. It does seem like they would be hard to change or reroute, since many of them are funded by an edowment earmarked in a will.</p>
<p>Well, my reasoning is that Caltech already does a reasonably good job in reducing the amount of loans that a student needs. If these people are good enough to deserve merit-based scholarships, odds are, they're receiving scholarships from other sources as well (generalization, I know). Why provide enough money to make those other sources completely meaningless? Why not provide additional help to those that really need it? $3250 a year (the minimum a student's family needs to pay) can be too much for some families, but it is one of the lowest in the nation, especially among top-tier schools. However, the recent increase to $5250, with $1500 being required from students for each summer, seems to me like an examination of priorities should be in order.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it is true that merit-based scholarships are good PR and clearly show what Caltech's priorities are. And they're good priorities, in my opinion. It's just that I've heard that the Ivies (namely Princeton) and a few other 'top tier' schools are on the brink of a price war for these students. There's no point half-doing things, it provides a negligible incentive in that case, and there's definitely no good reason to follow the other schools into providing increasing amounts of money to the same pool of people. </p>
<p>Axilines (sp?) have only been around since the 90s, other upper class merit awards a little more recently (or maybe preceded axilines, I don't quite remember). It's definitely not a case of 'it's always been that way,' (a very common impression many people have about many social/general issues, with student institutional memory being 5-6 years at most) and my impression is that the trend lines are quite clear. The EFC is on the rise across the board, meaning more of a "crushing financial burden for [students] and their families" for everyone. Additionally, one of most meaningful (sadly) points made by Ben is that merit-based scholarships are (increasingly?) tied to named endowments.</p>
<p>Yes, by all means, make special note of those who really exemplify the Caltech vision and mission. Encourage them and others around them. However, these people are already highly motivated. We've seen this either by the work they do here or what they did in HS. They come here because they love math/science, and any financial help above and beyond need is just an added bonus. Maybe some sort of priority examination is in order.</p>
<p>Craig,</p>
<p>It does not seem to me that Upper Class Awards are aimed either at recruitment or retention as is financial aid. The Upper Class Awards are just that - awards and recognition. I think that any potential effect on recruitment is small. (That is, I doubt that anyone attends Caltech because they might make the top 5% of their class and might get an award.)</p>
<p>To stretch an analogy (perhaps to the breaking point), would you hold back the $ from Nobel prize winners because some other scientists' research is not well funded?</p>
<p>I agree completely that reducing to 0 the contribution required of a poor student (merit aid or not) should come significantly higher in the priority list than making it profitable to attend college for people whose families are already rich. Cannibalizing one Axline could reduce to 0 the amount asked of 8 or so students, and that would probably be very much worth it.</p>
<p>Price wars are a business strategy issue, of course. Sometimes you have no choice but to stay in them, but it's often more profitable to switch and do something else, or change focus. This will be an interesting thing to watch.</p>
<p>Middle -class folks are often the ones with no hope of financial aid, but assets that include a house in a nice area. Having paid research positions, well-paid jobs, internships, and upper class awards (which include ECs as well as GPAs), make a parent grateful.
I don't know much about outside scholarships. NMF pays an incidental amount (enough for a new laptop). The colleges that offered substantial merit aid would definitely not have provided the same peer group and challenging courses.</p>
<p>Purple: I think I drifted off topic a little when I brought up upperclass merit. My main point was not recruiting/retaining but rather keeping the bottom line (the minimum a student and family has to pay to attend) as low as possible through the full time a student attends. Merit-based scholarships should help to make note those that do especially well, but a place like Caltech doesn't really need to use finances as an incentive for people to do well, in my opinion. If finances /are/ an incentive to do well, then that will get you (general form of the word) really stressed out here, as I've seen before.</p>
<p>Ben: Not necessarily 0. Everyone's gotta pay something. If it's debt, it's debt for the promise of the degree leading to a better life. Both of my parents worked through their five year college careers to pay for college. But yes, keeping the amount as low as possible for those who cannot pay is crucial. </p>
<p>bookworm: Yes, middle-class folks get screwed the worst. I don't have a solution for that, and it happens everywhere as far as I know. The middle class are most likely to come out of here with more sizable loans than Caltech says is the maximum, because we may need to substitute federal loans for portions of your EFC. I know very little personally about work-study at Caltech, but most people seem to get by. I'm not quite sure how they do this with the work-load most people have, but we survive. On the other hand, Caltech's financial aid office is fairly understanding, despite being in a financial crisis of sorts. I suppose I just don't know much about the middle-class and paying for college subject generally, though.</p>
<p>Although the university is in the end responsible for the distribution of scholarships, I doubt that anyone would refuse to let Axline students return some of the money in favor of more generous need-based aid. It seems a little silly in light of the amount of money spent on ripping up the grass twice a year, but if the compromises are truly going to be made within a set budget for financial aid...</p>
<p>Of course, Singer complicates everything, because once an individual is choosing to give up the money it is harder to justify making a "donation" to Caltech for affordable education rather than immediately addressing cheaper-to-help-with problems like starvation or malaria.</p>
<p>I have to admit to being one of those students you don't think is worth the effort, Craig... I was swayed by merit aid because it meant I would be completely independent of my parents financially four years earlier than I would otherwise have been, and not because my family would have been unable to pay tuition elsewhere. Sure, that's just an added bonus, but had I been actually been more attracted to the culture at, say, MIT, it might have made a difference.</p>
<p>In any event, giving a few students a year more than the minimum family contribution above a full scholarship seems a bit overly something. Perhaps it is a very naive assumption that the financial aid office would care and perhaps rethink the aid distribution if several current students returned a portion of their scholarships to be used to reduce work study/loans. But personally I am starting to feel pretty greedy even considering accepting Caltech's money, especially, as has been pointed out, on top of other scholarships.</p>
<p>Um, right, back to theory.</p>
<p>My EFC was quite good, but colleges did not match it. I think the EFC is pretty much useless.</p>
<p>"but had I been actually been more attracted to the culture at, say, MIT, it might have made a difference."</p>
<p>Don't take this personally Kim as I'm glad that you're coming to Caltech... but maybe if people fit better at other universities but come to Caltech for the money they shouldn't be at Caltech. That's something to think about.</p>
<p>Shouldn't people be where they fit best?</p>
<p>Yes, they should; I don't think it'd do the university much good to attract students who didn't really want to be there. Then again, fit isn't something anyone knows in an absolute sense before going to college, and most people would be happy at a fairly large number of schools--as long as the attitude going in isn't "I wish I were at ----- but this is cheaper." Anyway, that wasn't meant to sound as arrogant as it did =)</p>