<p>LavaLava, I’ve been following SCU board too but don’t post as often as before. I have the same feeling. Although turtlerock likes to add a line that his wife also graduated from SCU to pose a neutral position whenever he makes points that’re not favoring SCU, some of his old posts made me feel his wife didn’t have a great experience at SCU.</p>
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<p>I used Stanford as a financial “stickyard”, if you will. If another school is a better fit for the student and makes it more affordable for the student/family, then yes, that should be a “better” school for the student, if all other factors that are important to that student/family remain equal, of course. Hence my example of the one student I had spoken to who passed on Stanford for SCU over the same said reasons (fit and financial). So, yes I agree and no school in CA is perfect for every single student. I’m not quite sure what your point is, if you even made one at all.</p>
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<p>Yes. You can reread the post you quoted: “SCU is the most financially similar to Stanford than all, if not most, all other private CA schools.”
So, it is more appropriate to say “most”, which is why I left it like so. Again, I’m not sure of a point here since that quote still seems appropriate.</p>
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<p>Admissions does not decide how to structure scholarships – dealing with the money in things is not their job, that’s what the Budget office is for. Very crude and simple example: Say the Admissions staff say “We want to create a scholarship to give $6,000 to every student with a 3.2 GPA.” The Budget office may reply “Well, it looks like every student at the school would qualify for that, so SCU will be dishing out $30M ($6,000 X ~5000 undergrads), but we have only set aside $20M for Financial Aid this year. Sorry, Admissions staff, you will need to create scholarship parameters that fit within the school’s budget so that we are not giving to much away.” Simply put Admissions does not do the numbers work in deciding how FA is spent, they only use that final determinations made by the budget staff as a tool of the admissions process. If you really think Admissions staff are taking their time to determine how much FA is going to be in any given year, or that the school would trust them to make informed financial decisions based on its behalf, then you are certainly entitled to your opinion, but from the conversations I’ve had with staff from Admissions and Budget at SCU, it is not this way. If this too does not “make sense” like you describe my other responses, then I just don’t know how else to put it.</p>
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<p>That is your experience and it is certainly appreciated here on CC.</p>
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<p>I agree. Anything I’ve stated or will state I based off conversations and sharing I’ve had with (many) faculty, staff, current students and alum of SCU over the last 6 years. These are all only opinions I have come across and do not account for the other side of the coin. Please do adequate searching online, and offline if possible for you, to make the more informative decision you can.</p>
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<p><— Personally attacked for having an opinion? It seems this thread has turned a little personal against me because of some disagreements of my opinions. In conjunction with the above, my wife is not the only alum I speak to about SCU. She still has really close friends who are alum that we see at least on a weekly basis, and a good handful of my co-workers are alum, and my wife and those friends are still in contact with some of the staff and faculty members who still work at the school. My wife and I recently had lunch with one of her old English professors from SCU (her favorite English professor too), so I’ll admit that I haven’t spoken to a current student face-to-face since mid-2011, but we’re always talking to staff that are still currently at the school.</p>
<p>And in case other CCers are wondering: My wife extremely enjoyed her time at SCU and even plans to return for Law School.</p>
<p>I hope that ends the personal speculation.</p>
<p>I just spoke to a student working at the financial aid office. She told me that everyone will get a new offer in late March that includes FAFSA calculation.</p>
<p>Anyone know if this is what happened in the past? Thanks.</p>
<p>Does that mean the offer might go down?</p>
<p>I hope not because our offer was already low. She implied that it might go up or just stays the same.</p>
<p>But she just a student working at the FA office. I don’t know how reliable that information was.</p>
<p>I just got into this thread and it went a little circular for me to keep up. Not sure if relevant to conversation, but I always heard SCU doesn’t give good merit money and we found it to be the opposite with the offer my son got a few weeks ago. From what I understand Stanford doesn’t give merit money so SCU may be the choice for some cause at least they can get something based on achievements. Just sayin’. Not sure if relevant to discussion.</p>
<p>You’re son is very lucky then Cadreamin. My daughter didn’t get any merit $, her stats,
4.0 uw/ 4.4 w
2020 SAT
31 ACT
4 yr varsity athlete in 2 sports
Lots of community service, etc.
We’re very disappointed, this was her dream school, but I don’t know if I can pay the sticker price.</p>
<p>Runningwy, did your daughter get any need-based aid?</p>
<p>Yes, a modest amount. But shouldn’t merit-based and financial-need based aid be independent?</p>
<p>It should be, but I don’t know if it always is. I got a $14,000 need-based grant from SCU, but when I did the net price calculator for another school (with about the same COA as SCU), it said I would get $1,000 in need-based aid. I figured the difference accounted for the fact that I received no merit aid from SCU, but a $19,000 merit scholarship from the other school. I’m not sure though.</p>
<p>Hmm. Interesting. Thanks puppylove95.</p>
<p>Puppylove95, although need based and merit based awards should be separate, it’s come to my understanding that they will determine your overall need and give it to you in merit based aid, need based aid, or split it between both, but that they won’t give you any more than your calculated need. So, in reality, no matter if you’re getting merit or need money, you’re getting exactly what they allocate for you based on your family’s need. So I’m not sure the merit aid does much in this situation, it only makes up for the money you’re not getting in need based grants.</p>
<p>turtlerock:
“Something tells me that SCU’s budgeting problems are having the school make the decision to offer less in merit this year (and future years), though your weighted GPA may have just put you out of some as well.”</p>
<p>turtlerock, can you please elaborate on your reference to SCU’s budgeting problems? Please tell me more.</p>
<p>Thank you.</p>
<p>Santa Clara got a donation amounting to I believe $8.2 million last month for scholarships as well as some other large contributions. I have heard confirmation that ten students will be getting actual full rides to Santa Clara (previously full tuition scholarships were given, but room and board alone still costs quite a dime). Obviously, this isn’t huge with regard to the massive volume of merit aid given out, but I imagine that those ten scholarships (whether the number ten is pertinent to offering or actual matriculation, I don’t know) will free up resources for more scholarships, albeit smaller ones. Turtlerock has posted lots of useful information on here about SCU finances, which I know little about other than that we have a massive endowment relative to size. My layman’s thinking is just that 10 full-ride scholarships is $540,000 a year, which leads to some comparable sum that is now freed up to be distributed (I assume that the full ride candidates would have gotten large scholarships anyways), which should raise merit aid packages/create more. The school may rather use the freed up resources on our new parking garage or something, but I for one hope they’ll just give good students more help. </p>
<p>Then again, I may just not understand the way university finances operate. Turtlerock will have to help there. I can just confirm the new scholarship offerings.</p>
<p>Although she will not be attending SCU, I was incredibly surprised at how generous the financial aid package was for my daughter. They covered tuition, room and board (all grants and scholarships). </p>
<p>SCU has been on her list for two years, but in the end she has chosen to go out of state to another school that gave her a full ride.</p>
<p>However, my son is a junior and I am hoping he will like it enough to apply (touring over the summer). Personally, think it is a hidden gem – I like the values, size and location. Not to mention, if he gets anything close to his sister’s package, the price.</p>
<p>calimomof4,</p>
<p>Congratulations on all these scholarship offers!</p>
<p>I wish I could say the same about our financial aid package from SCU. Ours came way lower than expected, 60-70% lower. I heard the same from others too.</p>
<p>Hopefully, SCU can give your money to other admitted students : )
I certainly will not mind taking the over your package : )</p>
<p>Thanks, wish I could share!</p>
<p>My daughter applied to 7 schools…got so far accepted at 6 and got from all of them very generous merit scholarships bringing the cost of tuition down by 40% to 67% (USD is one of them, the others are Tulane; TCU; Baylor; Trinity U. and University of Alabama Honors College…
So far she was deferred from SCU to RD and has not even heard as to whether admitted, but given that they deferred her to RD we don’t expect much in merit aid…go figure…
We would never pay full tuition fare if there are higher ranked schools with better business programs that want her so much that they give her a tuition break, so she will likely head east.
SCU needs to do better.</p>
<p>Calmomofthree, we had the same situation. It is too bad because we made the trip out there and my son really loved the school and still has it near the top of his choices. The others are higher or in the same ballpark ratings-wise and all came back with scholarships, honors options etc… So the deferral took some of the wind out of my sails. He is better at handling adversity than I am evidently as he is patiently hoping that it will be an option for him to still consider.</p>
<p>Flipflop43 …Never fall in love with a school…it may not love you back…this mantra in real estate seems to apply to college choices as well…we are ok…D has great options and this will be an adventure for her… It was more my hope to have her stay closer to home…while she wants to go and fly far…so it may all be all for a reason …good luck to you daughter as well…</p>