<p>How good is financial aid at Mudd?</p>
<p>The FAFSA calculated EFC is much higher than anything my family could actually pay.</p>
<p>So, for anyone in the 120-180k bracket, did you receive much useful aid? I need it.</p>
<p>Also:
Do Mudd merit scholarships reduce your loans?
I would get a National Merit award (no chance at the 10k scholarship, low SATII score).</p>
<p>The National Merit reduces your federal loans, at least. I don’t know about anything else.</p>
<p>The financial aid is overall pretty good compared to other universities, but it will still be on the expensive side. I dont know exactly where I was on the family income bracket, but HMC offered me about 11k of grants, compared to 1200 for Cornell and 300 for U Chicago. Loans were of course offered all around from the other places.</p>
<p>Mudd’s financial aid is very generous, and from what I can tell, they are extremely sensitive to other large family financial commitments (supporting other college students being a big one). I thought the National Merit came out of grants, not loans, as well.
Finally, the FAFSA’s EFC is not at all intended to correlate directly to a dollar amount - it’s simply a largely-arbitrary number.</p>
<p>Reviving this thread.</p>
<p>I’m not seeing where Harvey Mudd is that generous. I know the Presidential Scholarship is full tuition if one is fortunate enough to get it but that still leaves a huge amount for room and board.</p>
<p>Can anyone give me some concrete #s? For our income (78K for a family of 5 with maybe 75K equity in home but no savings), is there a way to tell what we might be expected to pay?</p>
<p>sbjdorlo, I agree.</p>
<p>Check out the Net Price section of the College Navigator page to see average costs for different income brackets. Loans are included in the listed net price (so HMC’s calculation of the family contribution is less than the number listed). [College</a> Navigator - Harvey Mudd College](<a href=“College Navigator - Harvey Mudd College”>College Navigator - Harvey Mudd College)</p>
<p>Maybe23,</p>
<p>I’ve never looked at College Navigator before so I’m not sure I’m interpreting the data correctly. Am I understanding that the net price per year is 20k out of pocket for someone in our income bracket, assuming one doesn’t get the Presidential Scholarship? We don’t want to take loans and we don’t want our son to take much in loans, either.</p>
<p>How do outside scholarships affect aid at Mudd? Man, just when I thought maybe we could really support our son in applying here, I see that it just might not be financially doable.</p>
<p>Disclaimer - I did not look at College Navigator. </p>
<p>Our official EFC is 20 - 30K. Mudd, Caltech, & Rice all were within a few thousand dollars of each other for the COA we were expected to pay after need-based grants. I’m counting loans and workstudy in as “what we’re expected to pay”, and doing the calculations before NMF money. </p>
<p>All three of those schools “meet need”, but what the EFC/CSS/schools think you can pay is not usually the same as what YOU think you can pay. Mudd truly does meet need, according to the official definition of need and not the family’s definition of need. Most schools don’t “meet need” and would look even worse. A very few schools (some Ivies and MIT and and a few others) are exceptionally generous to people in the “middle” income brackets and give well beyond EFC/CSS “need” and would trounce Mudd and the like.</p>
<p>Mudd has a page on the treatment of outside money, which seems to be about the same as most of the better schools’ treatment of it. [Outside</a> Awards & Financial Aid Awards](<a href=“http://www.hmc.edu/admission1/costsandaid1/typesofaid1/scholarshipsandgrants1/outsideandprivateawards1/outsideawardsfinancialaidawards.html]Outside”>http://www.hmc.edu/admission1/costsandaid1/typesofaid1/scholarshipsandgrants1/outsideandprivateawards1/outsideawardsfinancialaidawards.html)</p>
<p>If you can get into Mudd, you can likely get substantial merit-based money at slightly lesser schools who want to attract more top-caliber students.</p>
<p>GeekMom,</p>
<p>Our EFC seems to come out around 9-10K. That’s still more than we can do. We are thinking we could proably come up with 4-5K a year and our son could probably come up with 2-3K a year.</p>
<p>You’re right-the Ivies calculate our EFC at 1/2 of what IM says we can pay. It’s discouraging but maybe our son will have to go for the tippy top schools and a couple of NMS schools and take schools like Mudd off the list…dunno.</p>
<p>You are very wise to be thinking now about how much you can afford, rather than waiting to see what schools think you can afford.
I would strongly suggest checking out those NMS schools - many are very good schools that are merely less popular in the common view.
Make sure to consider Olin too.</p>
<p>My son isn’t interested in engineering, unfortunately. He would be a math or physics major with a possible music minor. I’ve only found one NMS school that seems to be a good fit but I’ll keep looking. I really don’t want to rule Mudd out. My son’s applied for one outside scholarship through UPS and we’re going on the hunt this summer for other scholarships. He’ll be doing some physics research at the local state univ. this summer and maybe he can use that to enter some science scholarship competition. We’ll keep at it. Sure is different than when I went to the local state u. at about 1K a semester!</p>
<p>Anyone knows if there are chances for international students to get financial aid or scholarship after enrolled?
I didn’t apply for financial aid. My family can afford it. But it is really a hugh pressure on my family and makes me feel shame. I wonder if I do really well in HMC in the future, whether there will be scholarship? Or whether international students can find paid jobs around campus?</p>
<p>Phenix if your family can afford it and they want you to attend HMC you should go for it. Yes, there are many opportunities on campus. There are several jobs and a great system of reporting openings and opportunities. In addition you can try to get a summer job in the department that you have an interest. My D is a freshman and was just notified that she got a summer research job on campus. She also knows of upper class students that have secured summer jobs at companies such as Microsoft. In addition the financial aid department notified my D of scholarships that she would qualify for and she has applied to all of them. So the opportunities are there …you just have to go for it!</p>
<p>Thank you lizardrock for your detailed answer!
Just hope these opportunities are equal for international students. I applied FA to several LACs, but only Bryn Mawr let me in. One told me directly that it is because of limited budget for international students.</p>
<p>
No additional grant aid/scholarships after enrollment (for internationals). It’s easy to find on-campus jobs. I worked a ton last year on campus but I only made 4k, which is not a lot.</p>
<p>I do think Mudd’s worth it, though. Many of my friends have gotten well-paying internships at software companies.</p>
<p>Hey maybe23, I just received my financial aid today. It was very good, relative to other schools. All need-based, but I got a 15K scholarship and offered loans up to 17K (so 32K total). The only other school that gave me comparable aid was RPI, who gave me a lot in merit aid. This compares with Boston University, who said I didn’t qualify (!) and they only gave me a 10K merit based scholarship. </p>
<p>I’m sure it varies by the individual but I’m very happy.</p>
<p>How does the Harvey S Mudd Merit Award work?</p>
<p>I was not granted an award with a 2370 SAT (800CR/800M/770W) and an average of 790 on 4 SAT Subject tests. My school doesn’t rank (as it is a competitive boarding school) but I was about top 5%. </p>
<p>Any ideas how it is awarded these days (obviously it is much more vague than in the past when there were set qualifications).</p>
<p>I think HM does OK on financial aide … as mentioned earlier [College</a> Navigator - Harvey Mudd College](<a href=“College Navigator - Search Results”>College Navigator - Harvey Mudd College) shows about 85% of studs receive college aide. we are in the same bracket as the poster and my S received ~ the same amount of financial aid (~15k). </p>
<p>It is unfortunate that HM had to send out a retraction letter on their initial financial aid letter for such a prestigious school. I also found, compared to other school award letters, the HM award letter and financial aid booklet to be confusing and overwhelming when other school’s financial aid award letters are much easier to understand and navigate through … Lastly on the three occasions I was able to get through to the financial aid office it took a bit of work to get to a “meeting of the minds” in terms of what everything meant and what was needed on my part to make everything work.</p>
<p>@anthroponomist – did you go to the ASP for Harvey Mudd? have you decided if you are leaning toward one particular school yet?</p>
<p>@originalthought: No one knows how they choose the merit award winners any more. The most information that can be found is the simple description from their site: “the award will be offered to the top students in the admitted pool who demonstrate superior academic achievement and ability to contribute to the college community”.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re using it as a recruitment tool for minorities these days. Not an entirely bad objective since Mudd is rather lacking in diversity (still a million times better than my hometown though!), but you have much better scores than I do, so it’s kind of sad that I have the scholarship and you won’t.</p>