<p>I would greatly appreciate hearing from anyone with experience with financial aid at Oberlin.</p>
<p>Thanks so much!</p>
<p>laxmom07</p>
<p>My son was accepted this year and received both merit and need based aid. The package was in the ballpark of what we expected. Do you have a specific question?</p>
<p>Well, I guess I'd like to know how you determined ahead of time what to expect, as well as how much you or he had to take out in loans. (I have already done the FAFSA calculation). This is one of the top schools on my daughter's list, but, because of athletics, they want her to apply ED -- so I'm pretty worried about the money... </p>
<p>I'd also appreciate hearing about the merit aid -- was it a lot, and what kind of stats does your son have?</p>
<p>Thanks SO much!</p>
<p>Laxmom07</p>
<p>I believe that when you apply ED, you don't have to fully commit until you know what your aid package will be. I also think the school is eager to recruit athletes, so that may factor into the equation.</p>
<p>Thanks. You said that your package was pretty much what you expected. Can you tell me what you used to reach your estimate?</p>
<p>Thanks again!</p>
<p>LM7</p>
<p>My son's aid package was what we expected because we are on our third kid! After going through it twice already, we pretty much knew what to expect. (I should add that this is the first kid to apply to Oberlin, but #2 applied to quite a few LACs and the aid packages were fairly similar.) </p>
<p>Overall, Oberlin was within a few thousand of our EFC I believe. My son's stats were SAT - 2140, ACT 34 with a writing score of 34. No SAT IIs because they accepted the ACT with writing in lieu of those. GPA was 4.0, school doesn't weight. He was one of 12 students in his class of 500 with a perfect 4.0. He attended a large well respected urban public high school. The school does not offer a lot of APs but has a good number of advanced classes, most of which he took. He completed AP Calc. BC, 4 years of English for Talented and Gifted (TAG), Adv. Chem, Adv. Physics and Adv.Bio. Also French through AP French 5 and required history classes.</p>
<p>His ECs are all music and drama related and he was a NM finalist. I should also add that he applied to the college, not the conservatory.</p>
<p>He was awarded a $15000/year merit scholarship, $2000 / year for National Merit, a subsidized Stafford loan, work study and enough grant money to come within about $2000 of our EFC. We currently have one other in college. When he graduates in 2 years, we will lose the grant and loan money, but keep both the merit scholarships. </p>
<p>I believe that applying ED if you have financial issues is not a good strategy. Our youngest got waitlisted at his top choice. My feeling is that he would have gotten in if applied ED but with 2 in college, we were not in a position to do that. If they want your daughter for the sport that she participates in, it is likely they will still want her in March.</p>
<p>thanks so much!</p>
<p>i didn't get merit aid, but i did get a very huge grant and one of the top financial aid packages out of all the colleges i applied to which surprised me. i basically let my parents deal with all the financial info, so i think that they met my efc.</p>
<p>Thanks so much!</p>
<p>merit aid at oberlin tends to be based exclusively on your SAT scores: according to a friend of mine who worked for financial aid, there is a direct formula between SAT and merit aid.
Financial aid is based on how poor the FAFSA says you are: the fafsa spits out an amount that says "this family can afford $X in college tuition." oberlin supplies $(the cost of oberlin tuition) minus $X, and you and your family supply $X.
Housing can mess with this -- if you get cheaper housing then you can pay less, because oberlin sort of pretends that if you're poor enough you'll live in the cheapest room possible the whole time you're a student, so if you live in a more expensive room, such as your own single, or an apartment-style college-owned housing, then you pay extra for it.
on the other hand, if you get to live off-campus (as a senior) then it's usually cheaper than any dorm, so then you save money.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for the informative response! Do you go to Oberlin? My daughter is coming out to visit in a few weeks... any thoughts?</p>
<p>Also, the question about financial aid is how much of the aid is in loans vs grants -- do you know anything about that?</p>
<p>Thanks again!</p>
<p>LM</p>
<p>My son's freshman year FA package contained merit aid, grant money and the subsidized stafford loan, which for freshmen is around 2500 or so. The Stafford increases over time. However, that was the only loan money that he needs to take out. If he takes the full Stafford every year he will end up about $18000 in debt after 4 years.</p>
<p>I got $25,000 in merit aid per year and I had 2300 on my SATs and mostly A's with a few B's on lots of AP or college level courses.</p>