Can someone direct me to the list of schools that are known for giving lots of merit and talent/school based aid? I know there is a thread somewhere…seems like I asked before and didn’t print off the list. I know it’s not guaranteed but it’s helpful in compiling our list and considering schools that maybe are really expensive but might end up being ok with generous aid…
Thanks !! @EmsDad you are on top of things for sure!
For those who may be eligible for need-based aid, keep in mind the most generous schools can be radically different than those who offer merit aid.
And at state schools the aid for in-state students can differ dramatically from what is available to OOS.
@EmsDad Thanks - You are a wealth of knowledge! Picked up your Piano Trax tip on another thread! Still learning every day. Thank for sharing your knowledge & research!!
I have a question perhaps someone can answer that has been through the aid process before…my D has one or 2 schools on her list that are pricey (rider is one ) . I have estimated after our contribution , this school , for example, would still cost $ 30,000 ish to attend. Now I know some private schools give great merit and talent aid and sometimes you can stack those but really, without a significant aid pkg from them it would just be too much of a gap to cover without loans. (We don’t really qualify for need based aid by the way). I guess then I shouldn’t even let her apply at those tippy top pricey schools then since it would be pointless…anyone else have this problem? I told her that these schools have so many applicants that them meeting large gaps just isn’t going to happen…
Looking back at my notes from last year, Rider was actually one of the more generous programs as far as academic scholarships. I think they have a tool on their website that you can plug in the GPA/SAT/ACT scores and you get a pretty good idea of what academic money you can get right off the bat. Point Park and Pace have similar tools, and Baldwin Wallace listed their academic scholarship criteria and amounts on their website as well. Unfortunately, unless its a state school and you’re getting in-state tuition, there aren’t too many BFA programs (at least that I have heard of) that will cost less than $30k per year. Of the 16 schools D applied to, only Texas State and Webster came in under $30k per year AFTER academic scholarships. She didn’t get in artistically to either one so I can’t speak to talent scholarships there.
All of these schools came in at under $30,000 with merit and talent scholarships for my d (some are public with OOS tuition, some are private):
$10,000 or less:
South Dakota
$20,000 or less:
Florida State
Wright State
Viterbo
Webster
Ball State
Under $30,000:
Tampa
Northern Colorado
Illinois Wesleyan
Western Michigan
OCU
Our target was $30k or less, so D scratched all but one program from her list that cost more than $50k. However, none of those schools were a top choice for her, so it was not a big deal. For others, it may well be worth the effort and expense in hopes of an acceptance with a very large scholarship.
Do what’s right for your family’s situation. We allowed S to apply to expensive schools, but with a very clear understanding of what we were willing to pay after all the financial information was on the table. He knew if he got into an expensive school w/o sufficient scholarships - not loans - he wouldn’t be going. That turned out to be the case at one of the schools he go into. Even with their “generous” merit aid, the OOS mark-up was way out of our reach. He is actually thrilled to be on the road to graduating debt-free, and we are in a position to help him get on his feet when the professional “starving artist” part begins.
Yes, @mom4bwayboy that is my thinking. I really don’t want us or D to have some enormous debt payment afterward. That is really important to us. We have communicated this to our D, so she knows we have limitations but it is really sometimes beyond her understanding about the college financial process. I know I just tell her if the money doesn’t add up she wont be able to go but all the factors that are involved she doesn’t really get. I really wish there were some class in school where they go over financial college stuff with the kids. Even just touching on student loans and the implications of them, the kids do not get it. At least most don’t. There are kids at my D’s school that are applying to really expensive schools w/ no guidance from parents as to what is affordable or not. Not sure what the parents are thinking! The money doesnt just fall from the sky ! And i know some of these families are not financially well off enough to pay full sticker or even half. Anyway… @EmsDad that is a helpful little list you posted, thanks! We do have several choices on the list that will be less expensive and I have contacted f aid depts at some of the schools to get further info, etc. I know it all depends on her SAT & GPA so now we re just estimating. Hoping when PSAT comes back then we can get a better idea of how she will fare on the SAT. Right now with the exception of some Academic common market schools, the private schools seem the most promising money wise.
A couple of schools gave us ideas on merit aid before we even applied and one school gave us an early read after we applied. Of course they say the numbers are just an idea but Tampa came in exactly at what they said, actually a thousand more than their idea number… They cannot give an idea on talent aid but for most schools that number is not significant enough to matter anyway. At least the ones we are looking at.
My D is financially conscious, so, although she knew that all schools would have to be financially feasible (including zero or very low loans), she did include some financial reaches (most over $50K). She attends one now–at a price that I still can’t believe (just a tiny fraction of the listed price). I say to build a realistic list, but to also include financial reaches if your D feels strongly about them and they seem to have given good aid before. I guess I’d only do that, though, if your D will be able to handle letting a school go if she gets accepted and the finances don’t line up. I knew that my D might have been disappointed initially, but that this was an area that was so important to her that it would factor into her own decision; therefore, we both felt comfortable including those financial reaches on her list.
Our D chose an expensive school, and while I was initially shocked by what FAFSA said we could contribute (100% EFC until we had 2 kids in college) in the end we actually could afford to make our EFC, without loans and honestly without undue suffering. We stopped eating out, paying to see movies/TV/books (libraries rock), dropped gym memberships and recreational travelling, etc, during what I now call the tuition-amassing years.
Our deal was that after graduation the kids should not assume we will help them financially, which I think may actually have helped our D be prepaired to really beat the streets to find auditions and keep herself in paychecks. It is very hard work for actors to put themselves out there for 5-10 auditions per week (most of which lead to rejections and callbacks often require major prep work) and in my experience few things motivate like looming rent bills. Whatever the longterm outcome, for the past couple of years D has really demonstrated a willingness to consistently go out the door and do the hard work of building a performing career. I am amazed at how rarely some would-be actors actually audition, and at how working actors often put in many hours a week auditioning only to be rejected again and again during the days even while performing 8 shows a week, on the hunt for their next contract.
That was our experience, but it sounds like many families don’t feel the FAFSA EFC is possible. Are there others like us who initially thought they couldn’t afford their EFC, yet in the end found they really could? Or is the problem that some schools don’t really offer “aid” (grants) to cover the difference between EFC and tuition?
We would have loved to pay our EFC, but ended up owing between twice and three times it, after scholarships and Federal loans.
@jkellynh17 - So some schools actually have families pay much more than their EFC? Our experience at our kids’ school was that they offered loans to meet the EFC but virtually everything beyond that was covered by grants and work study. I don’t really think they should count loans as “aid”.
@momcares, if your daughter was not doing as well as she is, would you really be able to stick to this philosophy or would you revisit it? You don’t have to answer because you are not in the situation yet nor hopefully ever but I was just discussing this yesterday with a friend of mine whose kids, like mine are also MT seniors and on the cusp of the end of their academic journey for now anyway. We are both trying to understand how firm the line will be at least initially.
Over the last 4 years, my own daughter also put herself out there as you described above in summers. We did not make any additional training, or vacation trips available to her in the summer months - she was expected to work and did full-time plus every summer. This included theatre summer theatre gigs that gave her great experience but paid pretty poorly as well as cobbling together the classic restaurant jobs and other part-time jobs to help with the spending money. She found that her ability to work during the school year was limited (though she did it sometimes when she could) because of the lack of time to fit it all in between school, rehearsals, crew assignments etc. The net result is that she will be graduating with less money in her savings account than she started out with because she was always responsible for her own non essential expenses like entertainment. She didn’t live lavishly but wasn’t exactly a hermit either so what’s left now will barely cover one month of her living expenses and no more.
Like momcares, I’ve sent the same message to my daughter about the party being over post-graduation and I meant it when I said it but the reality of what that means in a practical sense is coming home to roost now. If we want them to gain experience while they are studying this crazy field, that often means they have few opportunities to boost their savings account while doing it. Would it have been better for my daughter if she had skipped those opportunities and the contacts, EMC points etc. she gained from them and instead worked for $17+/hour as a lifeguard like her brother did? He is rolling in the dough in comparison to her and sure he worked hard for it too and lived at home while building his nest egg. Or was the smart (non)money for her on gaining the theatre experience which hopefully will lead to the next big thing? How could anyone know in advance what the right answer to that question is?
I think it is important for those of us who in that situation to be honest about it in this in this forum. I’ve read stories from people that have gone before me that say they sent their kids the same, party is over message and that they have stuck to it. It sounds good and I so want to believe it and live by it too but in most cases if you really look under the hood to see what people mean by financial support being over you often discover pretty quickly that it’s not the scorched earth it sounds like. Many parents continue to pay for health insurance, cell phone bills, flights home if required/desired, subway passes and other means of transportation, student loan payments, and yes, some go even further and provide rent assistance, possibly a food allowance and the list goes on.
I suggest people make their college decisions with their eyes wide open. The party may not entirely be as over as you think when you reach the end of the road so it’s smart to plan for it. Or you decide it is over but there are consequences with that thinking and you need to be prepared for them. I don’t believe that the theatre majors have a lock on this either by the way. Launching is hard and it’s tough out there. As the song goes: “You’ve got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em.” Both decisions are a gamble.
Oh, yes, we were entirely free to take on private loans for the remainder. But yes, all of the offers we got were substantially over EFC. Our EFC was about $9000 a year. Our best offer would have cost $23,000/year. (Fortunately, EFC undercounts savings to a large degree, and we had some saved for this, so we are not bankrupt yet.) So yeah,to your question, we were free to borrow $100K plus if we wanted. Northwestern is a full-need school, which is a whole different thing. Most schools laugh at your EFC, at least in my experience.
I will be helping my daughter post graduation in any way I can….not ashamed to admit it publicly 
I want her to be able to hit the pavement running without financial worries right off the bat. Finding a good paying job will be her job post graduation so if I can help remove the added stress and time constraints that working a menial job entails then that is my plan. I, fortunately, have a kid that is beyond motivated and a hard worker. Every free moment of her time is spent in the theatre learning, working, training. I don’t mind investing my dollars in her future. It will come back to me triple fold.
We are going to make a big push to reduce the S’s loans down to a manageable level (20K is the goal) either before or shortly after graduation, and obviously we’ll be there if he really needs it. We only have one kid, after all. He’s been pretty self-sufficient so far, though, aside from tuition and rent (and he could make his rent if he was working instead of going to school all the time). BTW, if your kid lives in a Medicaid expansion state (i.e. not the south), health insurance should be free or inexpensive for the first few years.