Wait a second. I wasn’t the one citing a New York Times article. Everything I said about Barnard’s campus and its lack of similarity to any other LAC I can think of, is easily verifiable by walking by it right now, assuming you don’t walk past it completely.
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I’m not a professional college advisor, but when I read your post I thought you would be a great fit for St. Olaf if going to school with a lot of students from MN is not a problem. It has a politically active student body that’s mostly progressive but embraces a diversity of thought, very strong math and religion departments, good poly-sci/econ/international study as well as a robust international student population. It’s an extremely supportive community with plenty of challenge. You would also be an excellent candidate for merit.
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Spending time looking at schools if you don’t know whether your family can afford them is an exercise in futility, and may end in disappointment if in fact your family can’t afford a school that you have your heart set on attending.
Although I understand what you are saying.
True. But if a student tells us, “My family can afford to full pay, and we just need to discuss value/ROI and determine our price point,” I think we need to take them at their word, and offer suggestions at a variety of cost levels so that they can do the cost benefit analysis for themselves.
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There is also the situation I was in that I thought we couldn’t afford a lot of schools and was ready to write them off the list but then found that some schools had more money that I didn’t know about. For D#2, I looked at the school she ended up going to and said “No way, it is just too expensive” (at about $55k). Well, then I found out about the merit money, the state resident grant, Bright Futures, a small (very very small) grant from an organization her grandfather belonged to, etc etc. When we added them all up, she could go.
And my daughter knew the whole time that if the money didn’t materialize she couldn’t go there, but I gave it a chance and it worked out. The NPC wasn’t very good at this school (it was 2013) and really didn’t take into account all the small state grants.
So I say don’t write off all the schools just because of the NPC, but see if there are other funds available too. It might work out. This daughter wasn’t eligible for need based aid from the school because she was getting an athletic scholarship (which we were taking into account too, and that wasn’t on the NPC), but getting to $55k was a long road. I think she had 9 different grants and scholarships that first year. and even more the second year as she took the loan. The school even had merit awards for eagle scouts, girl scout gold award, robotics teams, siblings attending the same school, knowing an alum, etc. Again, lots of little ones that added up.
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