We are getting a really superb financial aid in current BS. I was wondering if college offer similar packages or aid in college is on much lower scale
What is the experience of other parents who have kids already graduated from BS. Thanks for your input
One difference we are seeing is that most colleges don’t consider sibling private school tuition in your EFC.
With good stats there are schools with merit money (non-needs based aid). Not the top-top schools but many good schools. Do your homework on this so you don’t end up April of senior year with no affordable options for your child. Run NPC (net priced calculators) on a few schools to see how much they may expect you to pay.
Yes I am doing NPC, but problem is the higher ranked school, gives much better aid, kid is doing fine and taking hard course load but she does not have a 4.0 GPA, would state public university will be okay to look these combination
Higher ranked school are crapshoot, being ORM our chances goes down drastically, therefore looking for schools where daughter can get admission and we can afford without too much debt.
For top colleges, it really is tough for ORM kids. Have you considered UK schools? Only 3 years of tuition. You won’t get any aid, but with the sinking pound and rising dollar, it will likely be a lot cheaper than 4 years at a private US school.
No UK schools so far, daughter wants to do computer science or math as a major.
Waterloo in Canada?
FA from colleges is a world apart from BS. The vast majority of funds goes to the lowest-income applicants. I have seen so many of D’s friends at BS who are unable to attend their top choice schools because they were gapped and the families cannot meet the gap. These are middle, upper-middle class income folks. I’m a single parent with a very modest income and we were very strategic when making my kid’s list… merit awards can make all the difference. We were very, very fortunate that she received good merit and FA from her top choice college, and also was awarded 2 outside scholarships.
If you are brave, venture over to the college side of the forum and read some of the financial aid threads. There is a lot of helpful info there, a lot of sad stories and a scary good dose of reality.
I’m so not brave…
Run net price calculators as soon as you can.
Perhaps the biggest difference is that colleges consider loans to be FA. One of D’s friends just received an FA package which sounded great in the first sentence: $35,000 financial aid award! The next paragraph detailed the ahem, " award"… $2,000 grant, $3,000 work-study, and $30,000 in loans. This is not uncommon. The family was stunned.
Does the assumed reliance on loans vary by type of college?
Yes. None of the schools my kids have looked at so far would ask them to take more than $5500 per year (the max for federal loans). Many assume less. And some wealthy and selective colleges do not expect students to take loans at all.
And merit calculations/qualifications also vary a lot with private colleges often much more generous than public so the cost actually may end up close or the same. The NPC wasn’t accurate for DD compared to her actual offers. In some cases, she got more “automatic” merit than the NPC estimated, resulting in a lower net price. In other cases, the net price was thousands more.
BS price calculator was asking us to contribute way more towards attending BS than what actual generous awards were offered by BS
But your avatar…
And that’s why I am still interested in the illusive top colleges
For us Californians it’s called University of California.
@SculptorDad - I haven’t been following UC threads too much, but the 2017 board on the other side is reporting results all
over the place for UCs.
@CaliMex schools will often say if they include loans or not in their package. The top schools (lottery schools) often have great needs based aid, no or little loans included. But you have to be accepted and it is needs only. Other schools have merit $ (by definition grants).
@SculptorDad UC is such a big system. I don’t think your talented daughter will have a problem finding home in one of the best campuses of UC. Even outside the most competitive UCB and UCLA, there are still a few other campuses ranked highly in national rankings. Do you have reason to think your daughter won’t be able to get in at least one of them?
Even the “no loan” promises made by the richest colleges can’t be taken too literally. Depending on your financial and family situations, you may find yourself stuck in the doughnut hole. For low income families, although generous aid is provided, there’s still student contributions and travel expenses etc.
Yes, compared with some top BS, the colleges are a lot stingier.
@MA2012 & @panpacific, I mentioned UC as affordable, not the crap shot example. On the other hand, computer science major is crap shot at top 4 UC campus these years, although I don’t think she is going to major computer science.