Right now I am trying to decide between these four schools: University of Idaho, Hamilton College, University of Rochester, and SUNY Binghamton. I am hoping to major in chemistry or biochemistry and minor in psychology or neuroscience. I want to go pre-med and would like to have research opportunities as I plan on applying to M.D./Ph.D. programs.
I am a National Merit Finalist, so I have a full ride (tuition, room and board, and fees) at the University of Idaho. I am also an automatic admit to their honors college. The main attraction here is that I would be going for free and could save some $$ for med school (or, if plans change, graduate school).
At Binghamton, I was admitted to the Scholars Program and the First-Year Research Immersion program. The research program would guarantee I start to research my freshman year, which will be a huge help. The Scholars Program gives me a 3.5k one-time award for research, internship, or study abroad. I was given a medium out-of-state scholarship and it would be about 32k/year.
Hamilton is around 45k right now, but I am hoping if I email financial aid they will match Binghamton’s offer. This is the only school I’ve visited and know “feels” right. I mainly like the open curriculum and research funding.
I received a 10k scholarship to Rochester and am still waiting on need-based aid. Rochester offers the proximity of the medical school and facilities for shadowing/internships/research. They also have a unique cluster system, which is close to a fully open curriculum.
Realistically my family can afford maybe 20k/year, and even then I would be in some debt. I have two older siblings already in college. (The FAFSA says we can afford 42k/year -my mom makes a lot of money, but we have a lot of debt).
Glad you have a fantastic option with Idaho. Stick to your budget and see where everything falls. You already know you’ll be paying through the nose for Med School. Don’t add to it.
If your family can afford up to $20k per year, then that is your max budget. Right now it seems only U Idaho meets that budget, while you await Rochester’s offer, correct?
Did you run the net price calculators (NPC) of these schools prior to applying? If so, and their FA offers don’t match the NPC, that is definitely something to have a chat with an FA staffer about.
It is highly unlikely Hamilton will match Bing’s offer…matching typically only happens among peer schools, and even then it’s not very common.
By all means ask for additional financial aid, but be prepared that is unlikely to happen.
However, as stated by @Mwfan1921, it would not represent Hamilton’s common practice to match the cost of attendance of other schools from which you have received offers. An appeal of your award, therefore, might depend exclusively on your family’s financial profile.
no college will admit to negotiating on financial aid, but it happens (as long as you don’t call it a negotiation – they are sensitive about that). The way you typically negotiate is to show an offer from a peer school and ask them to review their FA package to see if they might have missed something the other school noticed. None of the schools you list is a peer that Hamilton competes with. No harm in trying, but don’t pin your hopes on it either.
Based on the above, only Idaho is affordable. Even the $12k gap for SUNY Binghamton would be a stretch to cover with federal direct loans ($5.5k) plus work earnings (that may be hard to come by these days, and that you may not have time for around pre-med extracurriculars).