<p>I guess I stupidly assumed we would get an EFC of maybe $25,000 so we would get a little aid from both sides (merit and need). Guess I should have done my homework better before she started applying and steered her away from no merit aid schools. I did one of those “quick estimator” FAFSA calculators a year or so ago, but guess I didn’t get all the numbers entered. It does seem, to me at least, that two parents working who have tried to save for their retirement and put a little money away fall into a hole where we really can’t pay for private school without borrowing a bunch of money. It’s not like I can suddenly go get a job and now we have two incomes (since I’ve been working all along). It will work out how it’s supposed to work out.</p>
<p>Of her list, Your D will likely receive merit money at GW ($20k) & American (dunno about Smith). UR offers merit scholarships, but it takes really high test scores, and awesome ECs to be in the running – essentially, Ivy level types.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>My head tells me not to go into massive debt to send my daughter to college and my heart tells me if that is where she wants to go I should try to reward her hard work and try to swing it.</p>
<p>I know that your D has “worked hard”. Many, many, many kids have “worked hard”. That’s not a reason to go into big debt. And, hopefully, she has the maturity to understand that. </p>
<p>Your D will survive not going to a college that you can’t afford. Believe me. And, there’s always grad school? What is her career goal?</p>
<p>* Hopefully she’ll get accepted by several of the other schools and can get excited about one that has a smaller price tag.* </p>
<p>Fingers crossed! :)</p>
<p>As for NMF…did your D fill out a National Merit Semi Finalist package in the fall? Did she send her SAT scores to NMCorporation?</p>
<p>If so, then she’s a NMSF and will likely be named a NMFinalist next month. </p>
<p>What was her PSAT score?</p>
<p>You need to find out about this, because this could mean big merit at some schools (not the elite ones, though).</p>
<p>BTW…don’t blame yourself too much over the misunderstanding about merit at various schools. That really was your D’s job. It was really her job to determine whether her schools give merit or not. She was the applicant.</p>
<p>VirginiaMama, I’d recommend immediately looking at the National Merit, American and GWU forums here for information about how they award merit aid to NMFs. Look at the school websites, as well. Though American and GWU do not offer guaranteed NMF awards, they do seem highly inclined to give NMFs significant merit money. The tricky part is the deadline for submitting your “first choice school” postcard that is submitted to the NM folks. I believe that while GWU has a late deadline (allowing you to wait until you know if you’ve been accepted), American’s deadline may be quite early. You’ll want to check into all of this quickly so that you and your daughter can come up with a strategy to maximize her chances for NMF money at one of these schools. If you’ve already submitted the “first choice” postcard, you can change the name of the school.</p>
<p>You’ll also want to consider the admission odds. Clearly, if your daughter is in at Georgetown she has the stats for American and GWU. Yet GWU sometimes denies high-stat applicants if the admissions people suspect that an applicant will go elsewhere. Again, talk with your daughter, and ask questions in the GWU/American/NMSF forums. </p>
<p>I’m relieved to hear she applied to other DC schools which may end up being affordable.</p>
<p>Do we know whether her D was a NMSF?</p>
<p>The mom seems rather uncertain. That may mean that the D got the earlier info, but didn’t get the NMSF package to fill out last fall. But, maybe she did.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>mom 2: You don’t know that. Yes, the student is the applicant, but there are alot of tasks involved in applying for college, and families divide up those tasks in different ways. Telling the OP to dump the responsibility onto her D is a tad harsh IMO. </p>
<p>OP: You are correct in this:
</p>
<p>Your D obviously has alot on the ball, and she will land on her feet, no matter what. Good luck to you!</p>
<p>FWIW, my sister had 2 kids in college & 1 in law school but they only qualified for work study & loans. We didn’t bother filling out FAid forms because when I ran the estimater calculator, it put our estimated contribution at about 50% or more of our net income! We told S that he needed to have a financial safety school that we could afford and where he’d be happy to go. I tried to encourage him to go to one of the Us that offered full-rides to NMFs (which he was), but he chose one of the two Us that provided >50% tuition, which was a huge help. He declined the Us that offered no merit aid.</p>
<p>Our S’s validictorian was shocked & very upset that she got into just about all the Us she applied to but because both parents are working, their EFC was so high (& she plans to go to med school) that she went to in-state flagship U where she got a full-ride+ and can save the money for med school (which rarely gives any merit aid). Her younger sister learned from the experience & made sure to apply to schools known for giving generous merit awards to students like her.</p>
<p>Most kids work very, very hard in HS so that they will have good options and a good background for their future. This is not a good reason for them OR YOU to incur more debt that you are comfortable with, especially if they are planning to attend grad school (which many kids do expect).</p>
<p>Another option that may sound less palatable is to do what my D did, attend CC (or in-state flagship) to get general ed requirements out of the way fairly inexpensively & then transfer to dream U, where you can get a degree with only two or so years of tuition.</p>
<p>*I have never “found” money at our house by having kids in college & not eating here.
Fall Breaks, Thanksgiving, Christmas Break, Spring Break, they are just in & out all the time! *</p>
<p>I dont know how many kids come home for a couple days @ Thanksgiving unless they are less than 200 miles away/
Once they have gotten the first year down, summer projects, college town jobs & classes keep them too busy to be in my icebox.
At least that is my experience.
:)</p>
<p>You have a lot of company here. Before we even started looking at schools we did a FAFSA estimator and knew that we would probably be full-pay anywhere. That meant he could apply to a couple of Ivies if he liked that have more generous FA for people in our income bracket, but the rest had to take into account the cost and had to be either reasonable (there are a few) or had to give Merit Aid.</p>
<p>I understand your issue and your feelings. I have a real issue with schools that offer athletic scholarships but not merit aid-and the Catholic colleges we couldn’t even look at because they offer little or no merit aid was particularly sad for us since my S started in our parish as an altar server in 4th grade, is now a lector, has taught there and is very involved as are we-but we can’t afford to send him to the top Catholic schools because we can’t afford it. </p>
<p>I know he feels the system doesn’t reward the people he feels it should (like him ;)) but as I told him what we have no control over we accept and move on. He has been blessed in so many ways that I prefer to focus on that.</p>
<p>Kids like yours and mine are going to do very well in life no matter where they go to college. Do I wish my S could have applied to Georgetown-sure I do-but it wasn’t an option.</p>
<p>I have said this before on other threads and I will repeat it-just because a form tells me I can afford something does not make it so. They have every right to tell me what I have to pay and I need to accept it and so does he. Just because they say it though doesn’t make it accurate.</p>
<p>One lesson he is learning in this process is that we all have dreams and want to realize them-but we also have to make choices. He is coming around on this and realizes it’s important to get a good college education but it’s also important to get out of school without being an indentured servant. That’s what he would be if we went the loan route-and we are not going to do it-even though my heart wants to give him everything my head tells me I can’t.</p>
<p>You are fortunate that you live in a state with some excellent public options. I would love if my S had those choices-Georgetown is wonderful but so are those schools.</p>
<p>I’d be more inclined to get the best college education you can afford NOW,without to much thought into potential/possible/probable grad degree…I don’t know one person who actually paid for their grad/MBA entirely,as their employers paid the costs,and most I know paid ZERO</p>
<p>*Quote:
That really was your D’s job. It was really her job to determine whether her schools give merit or not. </p>
<p>mom2: You don’t know that. Yes, the student is the applicant, but there are alot of tasks involved in applying for college, and families divide up those tasks in different ways. Telling the OP to dump the responsibility onto her D is a tad harsh IMO. </p>
<p>*</p>
<p>:rolleyes:</p>
<p>I was trying to lighten up the guilt the mom was feeling.</p>
<p>Smith gives almost no merit aid (there are a handful of merit awards), so try not to let her get excited about that (it would probably cost as much if not more than Georgetown). Our EFC was about $10-15k less than yours --can’t recall exact figure, low 40s I think…anyway, I thought we’d get some kind of grant from Smith but we were offered a nice package of loans only :-)</p>
<p>So–that did not work. I suspected that would be the case but thankfully had realized that outcome was likely before D even applied, and discussed how unlikely affording it would be. I still let her apply, in case of miracle scholarship/winning the lottery…but then she focused her attention on other schools that offered merit to a broader group. Yes, that means ‘less prestige’–but her education at an out-of-state flagship where she got a nice merit award/honor college is working out great. She is super happy. </p>
<p>My advice is to accept now that few schools on your list will be likely to offer merit, and hope for UVA, W&M acceptance. (Both EXCELLENT schools!) American and GWU may both offer good merit, so those might work out. Don’t know about Johns Hopkins and merit…the rest of your list seems to be no-merit schools from what I recall.</p>
<p>Focus on the positive–she’s a great student and you can afford to send her to college. Maybe not ANY college, but you can afford a great school. I bet she’ll be accepted at UVA and W&M…it will work out!</p>
<p>And, I agree that it is not exclusively the student’s responsibility to sift through schools that offer merit vs those that don’t. It’s pretty complex–not easy to figure out which schools give merit–or how likely it is to receive it. And often the message from GC is “shoot for the stars, there’s lots of financial aid out there, don’t worry about the cost!”</p>
<p>In a perfect world, the GC would tell parents in Freshman/Soph year to examine their finances and determine a realistic amount they can pay for college. The parents and students would sit down together early Junior year and talk about the financial aspect. The college search would have been easier if we’d have figured out earlier that 25/30 k a year is doable for us w/out loans, but 40/55k is not.</p>
<p>Georgetown was also high on my daughter’s list. She was accepted and I was looking around trying to figure out how we could do it. It seemed as though Georgetown was pretty generous with AP credits and I thought DD might be able to finish in three years and save us one year of expense. However, most bright, curious kids aren’t all that interested in finishing early because they want to take so many different classes.</p>
<p>It’s worth a look. Would it make a difference if she could graduate in three years?</p>
<p>In the end, my daughter bypassed the higher ranked, big-name schools and followed the scholarship money. She seems pretty happy with her diecision now two years later.</p>
<p>OP, Amherst doesn’t sponsor NMF and doesn’t offer merit scholarship. They do cover full need without loans and their calculator estimate was very close to what they offered us last year. From your list looks like GW and American will give the best aid if your daughter is indeed NMF.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids, based on post #19 it looks like the D is likely to be an NMF. That’s why it’s very important for the family to quickly get educated about where that will give them the most financial leverage. </p>
<p>And VirginiaMama, did your D visit and/or interview with GWU and American? Is it possible to do so now? Both schools love being shown love.</p>
<p>American? We were just on a thread with two ED kids at American & neither one of them could do it! The ED kids were showing American their love & still got gapped big time.</p>
<p>Some schools are not a good bet for merit aid during ED. I know that GWU is one of those. D1 interviewed there last fall and loved the school. She asked the interviewers (who were adcoms) about how often they awarded significant merit money to NMFs. The two adcoms advised her that she should apply RD, not ED, if she wanted merit money. Since she was accepted somewhere else ED it’s now a moot question. She liked GWU enough that she might have submitted an ED II app there if her ED school denied her, but the merit money issue meant she would apply there RD.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that American and GWU don’t offer merit money during ED and ED II, just that they may not offer as much. SLUMOM, that is a pity about the two EDers at American.</p>
<p>I know of someone with great grades, scores, etc. who got around $35K of merit money at American. Fairfield University in Connecticut gives merit aid of $20K to the top 7 or 8% of their entering students.</p>
<p>Slumom-the difference on those other discussions is that those were looking for need based financial aid, while this poster does not qualify for need based and FA and is looking at this point for merit scholarships. AU has the Frederick Douglass Distinguished Scholars program which requires a 3.8 (in addition to some other criteria) and offers full tuition and room and board. At least one of the other poster had a GPA no where near that. This requires a separate app and is due Jan 15!!
American also has Presidential, Deans, Leadership as well as NMS scholarship. They do not post specific cut offs that I could find but seem to grant them to the top percentages of the incoming class which has been rising steadily. My daughter rec’d the Dean’s scholarship which was approx half tuition. She knows some classmates who rec’d the Presidential which was full tuition.</p>