<p>I'm about to finish my junior year in high school, and Smith is at the top of my list. There's a small issue though: I have no money.</p>
<p>My financial situation is a little bit weird. On one side, my mom doesn't make a lot (about as much as a teacher in Texas, to give a general amount of money), has an unemployed husband, and four kids. On the other side, my step mom and dad make roughly $110,000 together, and they only have me and my younger brother. Despite making quite a lot, they're paying off a house, two cars, day care bills and my dad's grad school (that's not including his student loans that he's still paying). Once I'm applying for financial aid, there will be another kid on the way, putting my step mom out of work and meaning more money spent, my step mom will be in grad school, and my parents will have moved out of state and will be paying for <em>another</em> house. On top of all those caveats, my dad got the degree he actually uses for his job at a community college and therefore thinks college is useless and hasn't ever saved any money for me.</p>
<p>My question is, will Smith take this all into consideration? I'm not sure how great their financial aid is to be begin with, but I know that my family appears to have more money than we do. Anything that anyone knows about the financial aid at Smith would really help!</p>
<p>As a general rule, “appears to have more money than we do” means that your school-determined EFC will be larger than what your parents will be willing / able to pay. </p>
<p>Try filling out Smith’s Net Price Calculator twice, once for each set of parents. Add together your expected student contribution from one of them and the expected parent contribution from each of them (so you have three numbers to add up - one for you, one for your mom’s household, and one for your dad’s household). That should give you a ballpark estimate.</p>
<p>Before you come up with your list of colleges to apply to, you need to ask your parents how much money you can expect them each to contribute. If you’re competitive for Smith, there will be schools that will give you good merit aid, and merit aid is a good solution for having a high EFC and a low actual family contribution.</p>
<p>My DD and I attended a very informative, wonderful day at Smith and we’re extremely impressed. One of the talks I went to was devoted to financial aid and presented by their Asst. Dir. Of FA, Polly Gelfman. What I would suggest is to gather all your preliminary info from all parties involved, use the tools on Smith’s website (NPC) and then sit down with your mom and give Polly a shout via email with all of your questions. Seriously, what I took away from this talk was that communication was key and Polly and her staff are there to help. Bottom line: they deal with every conceivable financial situation and you shouldn’t rule out any institution until you exhaust the FA resources available. Good luck!</p>