<p>“It appears that, in your case, we were unable to meet your financial need as determined by the University.”</p>
<p>I have no problem with that. I just want parents to know that financial aid may have absolutely nothing to do with their EFCs. Nothing whatsoever, and nothing whatsoever to do with the University’s determination of need. And, in one case, I can say with certainty, you can’t even be sure that AU will even look at it. (Which, when it happened to us, was just fine!)</p>
<p>@mini - Actually, financial aid has EVERYTHING to do with a family’s Expected Family Contribution. Whether or not we are able to meet a family’s EFC is another matter, but the EFC remains the starting point for all financial aid determinations made at the University. Your assertion that “financial aid may have absolutely nothing to do with their EFCs” is correct in so much that we do not guarantee to meet the full financial need of any applicant. So, in that sense, your financial aid package may have absolutely nothing to do with your EFC because we were unable to meet your financial need as determined by your EFC. However, the EFC remains the basis upon which we make all financial aid determinations. I appreciate your unique experience and would encourage you to contact the Office of Financial Aid regarding your circumstances if you have further questions, but for all prospective students and parents out there I do think it’s important to understand the basis of our financial aid awarding strategies and to make clear that the FAFSA form and your federally-derived EFC (at times in combination with our own institutional need analysis) forms the basis of all financial aid awarding at AU.</p>
<p>Again, I appreciate you and your family’s experiences with AU and want to make clear that my posting is not intended to refute or undermine any of your personal experiences, but for purposes of transparency I would like all future readers of this thread to understand our financial aid process!</p>
<p>“However, the EFC remains the basis upon which we make all financial aid determinations.”</p>
<p>It is demonstrably false, and I invite any parent who reads this board to write me for details. (The only sense in which the EFC is the basis for financial aid determinations is it demonstrates whether one has a need at all.) The rest is just yield management. (and I have no problem with that.)</p>
<p>@mini - I won’t belabor the point I made above regarding our financial aid process and I believe we are perhaps saying the same thing from different viewpoints (as you noted, the EFC is the basis for financial aid determinations as it does determine demonstrated financial need which our financial aid package then attempts to meet but is not always successful in doing so). If we did not use the EFC as a starting point for financial aid then I do not know how we could go about the business of awarding financial aid (which we do do for roughly half of our enrolling freshman class). Again, I would refer you and any prospective families to the Office of Financial Aid for more specific questions you may have regarding financial aid at AU!</p>
<p>mini: Thanks very much for sharing your experience; and thanks to KBJandAUandADMIS for the AU perspective – and to NervousParent and negpmom for their thoughts. As a parent who has been tinkering with the EFC calculators, sketching out our FAFSA form (we’ll submit ‘for real’ this winter), and thinking thru how we’d might finance different colleges, this has been very helpful. But at this point it seems that everyone’s position has been very clearly stated and I’m not sure how much is gained by additional back-and-forth about mini’s experience and AU’s policies & practices regarding EFC.</p>
<p>And not to belabor the point, but there is a difference between financial aid (need based, utilizing EFC and institutional calculations) and merit aid. As AU does offer merit based aid, those awards would in point of fact have nothing to do with EFC or need. There are many universities that offer no merit aid and many that offer a combination. It becomes tricky trying to compare universities financial aid (prior to application) if they are two different categories regarding the stance on merit aid. Scour websites, ask the schools directly and apply widely!</p>
<p>Mini,</p>
<p>I have to agree with you about EFC and COA at American. We have just completed the process of searching for colleges for two children in two years. It has been interesting, exciting and eye opening. Our younger child was accepted to AU and recieved "merit aid’, $2,000 for NMS and need based aid. When we reviewed all the offers, we were surprised by how much more the net COA was for AU. There were three private, academically rigorous, schools that were within $2,000 of each other. Next up the COA scale was an in-state public school that was $8,000 (even after a “merit scholarship”) more than the most expensive of the first group. Then there was AU with a COA that was $12,000 a year more than the most expensive of the first group. Fortunately, AU was not my child’s first choice. I cannot imagine the struggle it would have been to afford AU. </p>
<p>I have one comment to make about “Merit Aid”. From what we have seen over the past two years and fifteen college acceptances, “Merit Aid” usaully does not reduce the COA below a student’s EFC. The colleges just reach into a different pot of money and call it “Merit Aid”. The major exception is if your EFC is close to the total COA. In this case, the benefits are great. It is just another way that our higher education system benefits those fortunate enough to be raised by wealthier parents.</p>
<p>"(as you noted, the EFC is the basis for financial aid determinations as it does determine demonstrated financial need which our financial aid package then attempts to meet but is not always successful in doing so).</p>
<p>No, that’s NOT what I said. The only reason I am posting is I don’t want people to misunderstand. I am saying that, other than that indicating that there was demonstrated need, AU does NOT - repeat, does not - use EFC as determined by AU in coming up with financial aid packages. When queried, the financial aid office basically told us so.</p>
<p>What I am saying is that, through yield management, AU ignores the EFC except in trying to figure out what is the maximum revenue they can extract from each family, and still have the student attend. </p>
<p>And furthermore, in one year (in which we are very, very happy!), they didn’t even LOOK at the EFC.</p>
<p>(and, no, no merit aid was involved. Though again, it really isn’t “merit aid” - it is just part of the yield management project.)</p>
<p>@letort…““from what we have seen over the past two years and fifteen college acceptances, “Merit Aid” usaully does not reduce the COA below a student’s EFC. The colleges just reach into a different pot of money and call it “Merit Aid”. The major exception is if your EFC is close to the total COA. In this case, the benefits are great. It is just another way that our higher education system benefits those fortunate enough to be raised by wealthier parents.””</p>
<p>Could you elaborate on the " great benefits" if the EFC is close to the COA?</p>
<p>NervousParent</p>
<p>From what we have experienced over the past two years, if the college feels you are able to afford $20,000 per year to attend - that is what you will pay. Our children did have one college in common and our second child received $10,000 more in merit aid. This seemed great until we ran the numbers. The actual net cost of attendence was almost identical and the somewhat lower COA was a result of our having two children in college at the same time.</p>
<p>Merit aid is a great benefit if you are going to be paying “sticker price” because you will actually receive a reduction in the net cost of attendance, ie: if the college costs $52,000 and that is what you are expected to pay and you receive $20,000 in merit aid you will actually pay $20,000 less than you would have without the “merit aid”. Most top tier colleges have done away with merit aid because they feel it reduces the amount of need based aid that they can award. Also, they feel that children from wealthier families have had opportunities to improve their chances for merit aid that poorer families cannot afford (SAT prep, summer enrichment programs, prep school, etc.)</p>
<p>I am going to disagree with letort and agree with mini. Sound like letort is generalizing from their experiences with two kids, which could be coincidence.</p>
<p>Our EFC for my son was high - full cost of AU and other schools. My son was awarded merit scholarships at most of the schools at which he was accepted, which obviously had no relationship to what need based financial aid he qualified for. Some schools had clear charts explaing the rationale for the merit aid (Rutgers), others we found out by calling (he missed the cut off for UPitt by a few points). AU didn’t explain anything, but we found out that he got one of the highest awards. One of his roommates last year, also in the honors program, and from a high income family, also got a high award.</p>
<p>This is consistent with a presentation I went to from an independant financial counselor a little while ago. The presentation asserted that schools give merit aid to students that they want to attract in order to raise/keep their SAT statistics high. The presenter claimed that by matching the child with the schools statistics - choosing only schools that gave generous merit aid (known from the US News and World Reports database)- and picking schools for which the child is in the top 25% of SAT scores, he could reduce your cost of sending your child to college. Of course, you could do that yourself if you had the full data set. (I didn’t sign up for the service - it was too late for my son but I tried to replicate it myself, somewhat.)</p>
<p>The most accurate information I received about merit aid was given to me by a finance director. Private schools do as they please. End of story. Admission and aid is not about merit, its not about fair. Merit and fair as defined by private schools is whatever helps them meet their goals. I was naive to think that academic success would translate into merit aid, that students receiving merit aid had better academic credentials compared to those who received no aid. From my perspective, that would be fair. However, thats not how it works. As mentioned earlier in this thread, admissions and finance directors are charged with the very difficult job of creating the mix of students that meet their goals regarding diversity, and at the same time generating the most money possible for the school. They have little room for merit or fair to impact their decisions.</p>
<p>Katytibbs</p>
<p>Actually, your comments reinforce my position - you have a high EFC and the benefit of the merit aid was substantial. For a student who is receiveing need based aid there is little reduction in the net COA.</p>
<p>You comment about going to a financial counselor (to game the system), most lower income students and parents do not do this for various reasons. Again, this reinforces my comments about why top tier schools do not offer “merit” aid. </p>
<p>I believe that a student can do well in life no matter what college they attend, but there is a perception about “prestige”. As you mention, AU and other schools offer merit aid to attract high EFC students with great stats. Many of these students also apply to more “prestigious” schools that do not offer merit aid. By cutting their price to these students through merit aid, AU and other schools can increase the chances that these students will attend.</p>
<p>Great conversation. Much food for thought. We also have a high EFC, equal to COA. I guess it’s a trade-off between going to a safety school where the merit aid is large, cutting your costs, (because your kid has great stats there) and the loss of “prestige” in going to that school? </p>
<p>I think that letort is right in that …“I believe that a student can do well in life no matter what college they attend”. I think it all comes down to how well you do in the job interview and perhaps your GPA in college and the skillset you learned in your major. Yes/No?</p>
<p>I talk to successful businessmen and they say that they never heard of a lot of colleges they see on resumes, but that doesn’t affect their hiring decision.</p>