Got an estimated EFC, now what?

Paying for College
1

<p>I used an online EFC calculator to give me a starting point. Came up with an EFC of $13,678. My daughter is a junior. I would say that's a fair amount. We could possibly swing up to $16,000. We plan on looking at WUE schools. What other schools can she consider that may give her financial aid/scholarships? She wants to stay on the West Coast.</p>

<p>I welcome any suggestions at this point. She is our oldest and neither myself nor my husband went to college, so this whole process is new to us.</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

2

<p>We would need some more info on her to comment intelligently - grades, scores, extracurriculars. If she is interested in large state schools she would be best off staying in state where she has the most chance of getting some financial aid. Very few State Us can offer FA to out of state students. If she does very well academically she might be able to get some merit aid from some private schools.</p>

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<p>We plan on looking at WUE schools. What other schools can she consider that may give her financial aid/scholarships? She wants to stay on the West Coast.</p>

<p>What are her stats?</p>

<p>GPA weighted</p>

<p>ACT</p>

<p>SAT (including breakdown).</p>

<p>Very few State Universities can offer FA to out of state students</p>

<p>Yes, only Virginia and North Carolina do. However, some other state universities will offer big merit scholarships for high stats.</p>

<p>What is your child’s likely major or future career?</p>

<p>What kind of schools is your D interested in?</p>

<p>big
small
quiet
rah rah big sports
greek systems as an option
Catholic schools ok?
single sex
co-ed 50/50 split
rural setting
big city setting
collegetown setting
nice dorms
recreation availability
warm weather
cold/snowy weather</p>

4

<p>She hasn’t taken the SAT’s yet, but just got back her PSAT. She got a 196. CR 60, Math 71, and Writing 65.</p>

<p>She’s a full IB student with a rigorous schedule.</p>

<p>Junior year classes:
AP English
Spanish III
Pre-Calc
Honors/IB Bio
Honors/IB Physics
IB Info Tech</p>

<p>Senior year classes:
AP English
IB Spanish
AP Calc
AP Bio
AP Physics
Theory of Knowledge</p>

<p>Her current weighted GPA is a 3.9. Her cumulative is low due to a bad second semester freshman year. It’s 3.6.</p>

<p>By the time she graduates she’ll have to have at least 150 hours of community service as part of the IB diploma. She gets most of that through volunteer work with one charity that she’s worked with since she was in 8th grade and also doing math and science enrichment nights at an elementary school. She’s a math tutor and teacher’s assistant. She’s applying for a summer engineering internship.</p>

<p>She’s in two or three clubs at school, two community-service type clubs as well as the science club. She’s been VP for the last two years in one of them and will be Pres next year.</p>

<p>She’s thinking about engineering as a major.</p>

<p>As far as type of school, she’s hasn’t expressed a strong preference. Anything is on the table right now. She would like to be on the West Coast, probably either California or Oregon, but maybe Colorado.</p>

<p>I figured our best bet for financial aid are privates, so we’ve looked a little into the Claremont schools, University of the Pacific, USC, but I don’t really know what kind of financial aid she would be looking at and there’s no way we could afford those without it. Plus I don’t even know if she would get into those schools.</p>

<p>I think I’m just rambling now. Any help/direction is greatly appreciated!!</p>

5

<p>The UW offers a full scholarship for paper science engineering students. You end up with a chemical engineering degree, focused on papermaking, but once you have a professional chem e license you can work anywhere. It is a small program, but not well known, so you get lots of individual attention, and well paying summer jobs in your major.</p>

6

<p>Okay, dumb question, is UW University of Washington?</p>

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<p>Not a dumb question! UW could be UWash or UWisconsin.</p>

<p>To be the best candidate for FA and merit, strong stats are needed.</p>

<p>If she got a PSAT 196, that’s about a 1960 SAT, which is not quite high enough for top schools, but that’s ok because many score higher on the actual SAT (and ACT).</p>

<p>Have your D take both the SAT and ACT, because schools will use whichever she does the best on. Some girls do better on the ACT. </p>

<p>You’ll need a strategy…</p>

<p>Reaches - Top privates that meet 100% need without loans or with few loans. (Don’t bother with schools that will have gaps or will include big loans in their FA packages.)</p>

<p>Matches and financial Safeties - privates and publics that will give big generous grants/ scholarship offers that combined with your EFC will meet the Cost of Attendance (COA).</p>

<p>Tip…schools that give financial aid will sometimes be more generous to kids with strong stats. Obviously, this isn’t true with schools that meet 100% of need without loans, but does happen at schools that include loans or gaps.</p>

8

<p>I’m hopeful that with some studying her SAT scores will be higher. We just got her the Blue Book, so she’s supposed to start getting busy!</p>

<p>I guess I better get busy too… I’ve got lots of research to do!</p>

9

<p>Fred and Velma - sounds like you’ve got a great kid with tons of potential and opportunities. Congrats - you must have done something right!</p>

<p>I wouldn’t worry about her scores at all. Her math is already great and remember that she has well over a year of additional studies to bring up her CR. The emphasis on writing, analysis, and critical thinking of the IB program should go a long way with that all by itself.</p>

<p>College board has an SAT problem of the day that you can sign up for which makes prepping for the exam a bit more palatable. She’ll be busy enough with the IB curriculum without taking prep classes.</p>

<p>Be careful with volunteering all at one charity for IB - our school limited credit to 15 hours per activity. Ie you can’t get ALL 50 activity hours by skiing . Just double check so she doesn’t get surprised. </p>

<p>mom2collegekids has some great suggestions.
here are a few more starting points</p>

<p>There are a great many search engines out there that can help you begin to narrow down the college choices. We ran a lot of different searches and then began to focus on the schools that appeared on multiple lists. Once again collegeboard.com has a nice search engine that makes individual college research fairly easy. It will also give you a feel of which are reach/match/safety as far as academics are concerned. You can do a search of just CA, OR, CO schools that are 4 yr, co-ed, and have less than 15,000 students (just an example)</p>

<p>you may want to make a few college visits this summer. Doesn’t matter if she has ANY interest in those schools. Just get an idea of big vs small, rural vs urban, etc. … some things you can use to begin to narrow down the search. great list from mom2kids</p>

<p>Google search schools that give IB scholarships. There are alot in Florida but that is clearly NOT West Coast :-). I’m sure you’ll find others. </p>

<p>Also - don’t be afraid to apply to a whole range of schools financially. You are in a strong position if you feel you can actually afford a little more than EFC. BUT - do make sure you include a financial safety. Someplace she can be happy AND that you can pay for if the aid situation is not what you want.</p>

<p>Do scholarship searches. Fastweb.com, *****.com are a few good ones. It is NOT too early for this. Just remember that outside aid often gets used to reduce the college’s contribution NOT your EFC (there’s a long thread on that here as well).</p>

<p>I recommend having a frank conversation with D re what you are prepared to pay, what/if any you expect her to cover, etc. For our family, we let my son apply wherever he felt was a good match - regardless of whether we could “afford” it. He is well aware that admission is not enough - we will need to consider aid packages as well. </p>

<p>Good luck in your search!
I’ve found this site to be very useful - but remember to verify info- it isn’t ALWAys 100% accurate</p>

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<p>Good info above :)</p>

<p>Slight correction…</p>

<p>*I wouldn’t worry about her scores at all. Her math is already great and remember that she has well over a year of additional studies to bring up her CR. *</p>

<p>Actually, many schools that give generous scholarships require that the scores be from Fall senior year at the latest (for scholarship consideration). Some will take later scores for admission consideration, but not for scholarships. Many of the BIG scholarships have application deadlines of Dec 1 or even earlier. So, tests must often be done before that. </p>

<p>If her Math SAT ends up being equal or better than her PSAT, then that will be a very good score. However, she may want to raise her Math score because if she can’t get her CR score up by 100, she’ll need a higher Math score to compensate. Many of the largest merit scholarships go to SATs 1400+ (M+CR) or ACT 32. There are schools that give BIG merit for lower scores, but they will mostly be lower tier schools. </p>

<p>*I recommend having a frank conversation with D re what you are prepared to pay, what/if any you expect her to cover, etc. *</p>

<p>Very good advice!!! and, the sooner the better. :slight_smile: Kids sometimes have some crazy inflated impression about what their parents will pay for, how much they would borrow, whether they will co-sign loans, etc.</p>

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<p>thanks for the correction, bad math on my part, thinking of my sophmore who just got his PSAT Scores. Sorry</p>

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<p>:)</p>

<p>How did your sophomore do on his PSAT?</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>It looks like both UWs offer the course of study in paper science:</p>

<p>[School</a> of Forest Resources :: Academic Programs :: Undergraduate Students :: PSE](<a href=“http://www.cfr.washington.edu/academicPrograms/undergrad/pse/index.shtml]School”>http://www.cfr.washington.edu/academicPrograms/undergrad/pse/index.shtml)</p>

<p>[UWSP</a> College of Natural Resources - Paper Science & Engineering](<a href=“http://www.uwsp.edu/papersci/]UWSP”>Home - Paper Science and Chemical Engineering | UWSP)</p>

<p>My guess would be that merryecho was referring to Washington since, of the two, it’s closest to the west coast. ;)</p>

<p>I just checked the IBO website, and about 90% of the schools that give IB scholarships are in Florida. (What’s with Florida and IB anyway?) While IB isn’t a guaranteed ticket to college, IMO the advantage is simply that it makes them better students and better applicants. They tend to have great grades in rigorous courses, they test well, they write fantastic essays, they’ve involved themselves in community service and extracurriculars, and they often stand out as leaders – all of which shines through on the application. Plus, admissions officers the world over know what “IB Diploma” signifies about a student. </p>

<p>There’s a thread around here about schools that are generous with merit aid which you might want to check out. She might want to apply to a few of those where her stats would put her well inside the top 25% of applicants. She’s going to be a very attractive candidate to alot of schools.</p>

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<p>His school has the sophmores take the PSAT purely for practice. WE were very pleased,
700CR, 670 math. As a math/science kid I’m thinking his math score will go up with another year under his belt. Hoping anyway. He has ADD issues and did Not have extra time but that’s another story.</p>

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<p>OP- yes, I meant the University of Washington. The program I mentioned is funded by companies like Weyerhaeuser and is pretty generous. It might not be exactly what D was thinking of studying, but you can’t beat free.</p>

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<p>Two older threads with good advice on how to find merit scholarship money are:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/148852-what-ive-learned-about-full-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/148852-what-ive-learned-about-full-ride-scholarships.html&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/291483-update-what-i-learned-about-free-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/291483-update-what-i-learned-about-free-ride-scholarships.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Not all of the colleges/universities mentioned will be of interest to your daughter, but you really can’t beat momfromtexas’ research advice.</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

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<p>skier…</p>

<p>If son stays on that upward PSAT path and does well on Writing, he’ll be a NMSF.</p>

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<p>mom2 - thanks for the encouragment. At least I’ll know alot more about the whole process when he starts looking at schools.</p>