My son and I are still flabbergasted that the guidance counselor at his school likes to brag (at awards ceremonies, graduation, discovery night… it’s not a one time mistake…) about the “full rides” that the last two valedictorians got to Cornell and Yale when neither school offers merit aid. Full rides do exist but it’s stories like our GC that cause people to think them more common than they are.
True story. I didn’t know she was wrong until I joined CC.
@carachel2 posted: “He actually laid out what the monthly payment would be for parents who took out a bunch of PLUS loans.”
Would anyone know of a reliable online calculator that does this? I would love to share it with someone.
@mintyicedtea, do you mean something like this?
You can try this. https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/pay-for-college/loans/parent-loan-repayment The other thing is, unless you defer (bad enough sticker shock,) the loan amounts start due the spring after they’re disbursed. so while $X for 1st year seems doable next spring, the following year it’s 2X, etc.
@delilahxc I hear you! We are guilty of reading articles about local kids who got “full rides” to HYP, etc. and so heck when our kid would ask about colleges when she was younger we were all in! YES! You too could get a full ride. We had no idea a.)there are a million other snowflakes out there and b.) those “full rides” we were reading about were need based.
Even right now as I type this I can tell you without a doubt there are juniors AND their parents right now who still at this point think a “full ride” to HYP is waiting for their kid. These are great kids who have worked their tails off but Mom and Dad make too much and have probably not saved $60K x 4 years.
For many schools there is a merit component to need based grants and scholarships. I suppose “full ride” while being a misnomer can happen in some situations. They aren’t saying “full ride merit scholarship” and the full explanation can get rather wordy. It is misleading especially to the upper middle class parent who is not schooled in the finer points of financing college. The guidance counselor in post 200 should know better though. That really does mislead people.
Some true full rides do exist. But they’re typically at schools where you get automatic merit for your stats, and/or at schools where you have an insane hook compared to the rest of the student population (famous child actors and NYU. Idk.)
I think that may be a little strong. There are some competitive, full ride, merit scholarships out there that do not require a student to be “hooked” in the way described. But they are few and far between and very, very hard to come by.
Again full ride equals tuition plus fees plus room plus board covered without any loans. These are extremely rare.
Yes, rare. But they are out there. And very competitive.
“I think that may be a little strong. There are some competitive, full ride, merit scholarships out there that do not require a student to be “hooked” in the way described”
Hence “or”. No one said that HAS to be how it happens. Just that it does occasionally happen that way. Especially at specialized schools, and/or schools that aren’t known to be very generous.
There seem to be a fair number (10+) of full ride opportunities automatically based on stats. And yes, I know what full ride means. I am not referring to full tuition awards. Though there are even more of those.
What students and families don’t seem willing to do is go to a lesser-ranked school to claim these awards.
There are a “range” of full rides.
You have those schools which offer full rides to NMF or top scores.
There are super competitive full rides like GA Tech’s presidential, NCSU’s Park, UNC’s Morehead, or UVA’s Jefferson.
Then there are schools that allow stacking of scholarships so a student might be awarded a full tuition scholarship and then stack dept, honors, etc on top of the full tuition.
I am sure there are other combos out there as well which are academic oriented.
I know CSULB has a full ride scholarship — tuition, room & board, book stipend…To qualify one has to be valedictorian of their class or NMF.
@lvvcsf , to me your post sounds like you are propogating the myth that colleges give their best need based aid to students with the highest stats. Just not true… for the most part, need based aid is based on calculations based on your income and assets. It is that “colleges find aid for the students they want” myth that was discussed earlier in this thread. It is a recipe for disappointment to expect this to happen. Merit aid is merit aid, and need based aid is based on your finances.
At my daughter’s school, there is one full ride given each year. One. There is talk of making it TWO!
There are many students who do not pay anything because of a combination of merit, need, state grants, other grants from the school, and private scholarships. The big benefit of winning the ONE full ride is you don’t have to put together all the other awards to get everything covered.
Of course at any D1 school there are many athletic full rides (or now ‘full ride plus’ as the player gets a stipend too) for the 6 headcount sports. Those definitely require a ‘hook’ but no financial need.
@menloparkmom I agree that’s true of UC - but I had mistakenly assumed other big state school systems were the same when apparently it’s not
@intparent As general rule I agree with you. Need based aid is need based aid. I know from experience however, that there are universities that have merit scholarships with a need based component. My D is the beneficiary of such a scholarship. Initially her freshman year the scholarship was used to fill the gap between her need and what she received from a merit scholarship. She did not receive it until her financial aid package came out unlike the merit scholarship which had come out in January. It was stated that it was tied to her merit scholarship and would be renewed or replaced so long as she kept her merit based scholarship. She is now a junior and the initial scholarships have been replaced with named scholarships, again tied to need. I don’t believe she received this because the university “wanted” her. I am sure it is much less arbitrary than that. On the other hand it is not mentioned in this school’s website as either a merit based scholarship or as an option for grants. I know of at least one other university that specifically stated that there is a scholarship available based on merit and need. I can’t imagine that we have happened upon the two universities in the country that have such offerings.
I apologize if I have misled anyone.
Reply to #153.
I believe your advice to live simply and save for college is mistaken. We have lived simply and driven old(very) cars
etc. for 30 years. We are now told we do not qualify for any “need-based” aid and so should pay full cost of attendance. Others living in big McMansions with big mortgages, borrowing for new cars every few years, with all the electronic gadgets, and luxury travel, receive “need-based” aid packages where their full cost of attendance is
20 - 30 K., whereas ours is full price. Living frugally, paying down personal and business debt, and saving/investing
has been a big mistake, at least in regard to paying for college.