I am stressed out always reading that applying for financial aid is a big negative. We applied for financial aid for all of the schools I applied to. Can people share their experiences with financial aid? Do you believe it was the reason you were not accepted at a school? Can’t a school just offer you admission and offer little or no financial aid and let the family decide if they will take a loan to pay for the school if they want to go there bad enough?
Take a breath. Yes, it can be a negative, but if you need aid it is worth applying. Some schools will offer admission with no aid, some will waitlist or reject (for FA reasons, though it can be hard to know for certain). Some of it depends on how much aid the school thinks you need. DS1 applied to 6 schools - 4 boarding, 2 day. He was accepted to 3 schools with FA (1 boarding, 2 day) and one without and waitlisted at the other 2. Schools do have money for FA and students are accepted with FA. At this point you have to wait and see what happens M10.
Yes it can be a negative but don’t be overly stressed about it. When I was a rookie parent my DS applied to 3 schools and was waitlisted 3 times. I was very concerned that our FA application negatively impacted his application. In the end it might have had an impact but the next year we tried again and one of the schools that waitlisted him admitted him with aid. IMO some schools are hesitant to offer admission to someone who clearly needs aid without offering them aid, that puts a ton of stress on a family. There is nothing you can do now other than try and relax and wait for M10. Good luck!!
I have a child in BS and we receive FA (as you can probably tell by my user name). We applied for FA everywhere our child applied for admission, and of course we worried about that being a negative. And while I can’t be 100% certain I really don’t think that had much to do with the decisions received.
My thought is this - schools don’t HAVE to give out FA. I don’t know of any that do this but I suppose a school could say “Cost of attendance is $XX,XXX. We do not offer any financial aid so if you can’t pay that amount please don’t apply.” I understand that schools would love to have nothing but full pay families from a business perspective but that’s probably just not possible (or at least likely). So they have FA built into their budgets, and they know that there are going to be candidates for admission that need FA.
So I understand the worry because I’ve been there. But if it helps, my child got into a great school, absolutely loves it, and we got the FA we needed to make it possible. So try to do the impossible and not worry. It will probably all work out. Good luck!
Schools don’t offer FA because they can’t find enough FP families. There are more than enough FP families to fill the seats. They offer FA because they don’t want the cost of attendance to interfere with the type of classes they are trying to build.
@Rathgar: The “negative” of applying for FA is that, at most schools, FA budgets have limits and there are fewer FA seats. Most of these schools maintain a rough balance of 70/30 FP/FA, so FA applicants are chasing limited dollars and fewer available seats.
does this apply even more for schools that are not on the top 20 list? are smaller schools even less inclined to consider a FA applicant? most of my applications are at smaller, lesser mentioned schools
Smaller schools might have less fa fund. But they do have fund and competition for the fund might be less as well. Usually each school has that info on its website.
Rathgar, it also depends on how much aid you need. My kid attends a small school and an AO told me that in last year’s cycle, they received 40 freshman apps for full aid and were only able to fund four of those. Full FA, or close to it, is very hard to get, and there is a great deal of competition for those FA dollars at every school. Some schools have FA waitlists, so if a kid turns down an FA offer, the money can be awarded to another applicant.
Obviously, the larger the endowment the better the aid prospects. The math can be really wonky on admissions re FA. For example, an underrepresented minority candidate with a 3.5 and an 85 SSAT may have a better chance for admittance with full aid at Andover than at a smaller school with more limited FA. It is and should be a very very strategic decision on the part of applicants and their families. Conversely, someone who won’t qualify for much is crazy to apply or FA because it will dramatically reduce your odds of acceptance.
While every situation is different, schools with smaller endowments seem to be tighter with the funds.
Five years ago I tried to bring up the issue at Fefekid1’s interview at a small school with a small endowment. The director of admissions, who is also the director of financial aid, waved my question off. I waited ten minutes and tried to bring it up again. This person again refused to even hear my concerns, and replied: “I make the final decisions on financial aid, and I can assure you that your child will be funded.”
Well, my child was indeed funded–at half of what we needed, initially. To make a long story short, I had to humiliate both them and myself to finally get a figure we could work with. What a nightmare.
On the other hand, some schools are delightfully open and direct. At an open house, the director of financial aid at another school said to assembled parents: “Your child’s chances of being admitted here are directly related to your ability to pay.” And there you have it.
By the way, “the issue” (see above) I tried to bring up was whether they would even consider funding my child at 100%. I never so much as got the question out. We ended up getting 89%. I’ll call it a pyrrhic victory.
DonFefe: You also illustrate a little understood piece of information. FA is not fixed. There are no rules except one important one: If you qualify you qualify-- for something. If you dont you dont. So if you qualify you can ask for more. You may get more… if you are a great tennis player or math whiz or whatever and you may not. But If you dont qualify you dont get anything. So while true that many schools are need-blind what you need and what they will offer may not align. We know two families who both applied last year and got in but didnt get enough aid. Couldnt go. Trying again this year. Strictly money. These schools are woefully lacking in middle class students as a result. Often smaller schools get more affluent minorities and the big schools often get the true socioeconomic diversity but its mostly wealthy and lower/middle class families. Most true middle class families cant afford to borrow for BS and then again for college.
“Many schools are need-blind”? Actually, only one says it is, and none truly are.
I am definitely not full financial aid - the way we calculate it we are in need of 1/3 help. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
But some schools will call those folks and ask them if they’d like to accept an offer at full pay, so there’s another dilemma.
@Rathgar I think there are two important ratios to consider:
Your 1/3 calculation vs. SSS/NAIS calculated EFC
Your SSATs compared vs schools average admitted SSAT.
The greater the difference between your 1/3 and the EFC the greater the changes that your FA application will impact your admission chances without resulting in FA. This is particularly true at schools with smaller endowments.
Admission in general is more competitive when applying for FA. I would also compare your stats to the published stats for the school. If you are already on lower end of the admitted stats and only expect limited aid that can be a tough combo. If you are above the admitted averages and need FA apply for it.
I’ve never had a child attend Exeter but DS1 went through the application process their twice. Once with an FA application and once without. What was explained to be my their FA director is that during the admission process Exeter does not consider how much aid you need, but it does consider that you are applying for FA. This would imply that if you need $1 or if you need Full FA the impact on your application is the same at Exeter. If the EFC is more than your 1/3 calculation I would not apply for aid.
Andover does claim to be need blind. My personal experience would agree with this assertion. DS1 went through the process at Andover twice, both times applying for FA. Waitlist year one, admit with aid year two. If you are applying to Andover I would encourage you to apply for aid regardless of the comparison of your EFC to your 1/3 calculation.
I would have a conversation with the FA office at every school. Your mileage will very. My family experienced what @ChoatieMom described, last year when DD was going through the process were contacted by a school and asked if we would consider Full Pay.
hmm. well it’s a bit late to contact any schools about aid. I am an 11th grade entry so this is the one and only chance for me.
I asked the question before that @ChoatieMom mentioned - would they throw my application out just because of FA or would they at least make an offer of acceptance and tell us it’s without aid - and let us figure it out?
@Rathgar, they may ask you to consider FP before the final decision. But when they do reach the decision, it’s most likely that they will either admit you with FA or not admit you for lack of FA fund. They don’t want to cause difficult family situation resulting from parent being unable to pay when a child is admitted and wants to attend.
And it’s not late to contact them about aid.
Apologies, for some reason I convinced myself this was about a future admit cycle rather than current one. Not sure how I reached that conclusion - must mean I need more coffee.
I think that would depend on the details of the schools process. If the FA office does an early review of your FA app and determines that you are not eligible for FA the Admissions office may treat you as a Full Pay applicant. I think this is what happened to DD last year. We were contact by one school in late February and asked if we would consider Full Pay. I think they did this because they did not want to admit her without FA unless they knew in advance we would consider it.
One school accepted DS with no aid, but they did not contact us prior to M10. Just sent an acceptance email and letter saying no FA.