<p>I visited with my daughter yesterday and we were really impressed. (The tour guides were great!) I was wondering what people's experience was with f.a. at Tufts. How does it compare to other schools?
Thanks!</p>
<p>My son is a freshman at Tufts. We used the Tuft’s calulator on their website to get an idea of how much the total costs would be. We found that their package was within $1000 or so of that number. It wasn’t a pretty number, but at least it wasn’t a total shock. Keep in mind that the way they go to the number was by using grant money, a Tufts loan, a federal loan, and work study. So keep in mind that you actually are paying more than the number that you get from the calculator (work-study money you pay up front and obviously you/student will have to repay the loans). This was a good lesson for my next child who will be applying next year. </p>
<p>Did anyone else find this correlation?</p>
<p>I was very happy with my FA from Tufts - it’s still a lot for my family to pay (my parents are divorced and unfortunately they look at my father’s income, even though he probably won’t pay a cent towards my education) so I’ll probably still be taking out a lot in loans, but my offer was still very generous. Tufts gave me around $5500 more than Brandeis and BU, and about $16k more than Northeastern (both BU & Northeastern included merit awards). From what I’ve seen, though, not all are as satisfied with the Tufts FA - my guess is it probably depends upon their income bracket and the fact that Tufts, as far as I know, does not offer merit scholarships.</p>
<p>Tufts gives only “need-based” financial aid, no merit money. They alone define “need,” and as far as I know they guard that definition like a trade secret. The cynic in me likes to think the definition correlates to the endowment’s market performance in the preceding year. </p>
<p>Like the poster above, the aid package my child got was virtually what the calculator projected it would be. “Not pretty” is a tactful way of putting it (that darn cynic in me just piped in with “parsimonious”).</p>
<p>They do give a small National Merit scholarship to students indicating Tufts is their first choice and who qualify for the college end of that award. It’s $500 a year for four years, as I recall. But that obviously is neither a lot of money nor available to most applicants.</p>
<p>Thanks. I will try the Tufts calculator. It’s good to know that it’s pretty accurate.</p>
<p>Don: Tufts is not need blind, but meets all demonstrated need. So if there is less money, they will admit more full pay students, not cheap out on the awards to kids whom are already admitted.</p>
<p>From what I have heard, kids from poor and working class households get outstanding aid. But some people come from families that earn too much to get much aid, and too little to pay full freight.</p>