<p>I've been looking hard over public schools that offer good financial aid for OOS students. I have always admired UVA and I have considered it one of my favorite schools because it is so personable to its students. But I worry that I will not get enough aid here.</p>
<p>I researched berkeley and that was definitely the case. As was University of Michigan. I live 45 minutes from Ann arbor but still live in Ohio so by default I did apply to Michigan, will be applying to Ohio State (will give me the most money, probably honors program) and I would like to make UVA my preferred public school to attend if I am admitted. I heard that UVA is able to meet 100% of your need..something that most schools can't do. Do you think they will pay my costs significantly or am I edged out my in staters?</p>
<p>to clarify I am talking strictly about need based money. I think I will qualify for some merit aid but I would like to talk need first. My current situation is that if I were to attend Princeton for example, they would cover all my costs. i meet that threshold. But those are schools with super high endowments.</p>
<p>UVA had a super high endowment .... before the economic crisis. (Well, it still does.) I don't know if that will impact financial aid -- probably not, but you never know. </p>
<p>I'm an OOS student receiving financial aid and actually counting loans they've covered need-based aid past the EFC so my family's contribution will probably be around 2500-3500 for this year (my FAFSA EFC was 5068). With the loan cap, I am hoping that aid might even be a bit more generous.</p>
<p>Counting work-study, I believe I even get negative EFC, but I've been a bit too busy (i.e. I've been waking up too late to go to Newcomb Catering Office to press them to assign me to for more working hours) to actualise that. (I'm trying!) However, work-study rates for first-years aren't that lucrative -- average rate is 7.25 to 8 dollars an hour I believe -- compared to the non-work-study catering rate of 9.75/hr + free gourmet food (way better than dining hall stuff). I believe you can have non-work-study income of up to 3000+ / yr before it starts affecting your EFC. (Should you exceed this quota, half your income above that amount is added to your EFC.)</p>
<p>Yes, they will cover OOS need. I wonder if grants would have covered all my need had I been in-state, but as an OOS student, my grants are around 26500 / yr + 6000 in loans + 2500 work study. Have you filed your FAFSA yet? If you get lower EFC than me, then your aid should be even more generous. </p>
<p>If you too get some handy local scholarships -- especially those that pay annually -- you can reduce the EFC to a manageable amount, although I need to investigate this further. (I myself don't receive my first scholarship payout until the end of the first semester when I send my first semester transcript back to my hometown.) Generally I believe scholarship money will work towards reducing loans. I believe that's something you want to do -- to reduce the principal (and hence future interest) on your loans early, at the tradeoff of keeping your EFC the same, but I am not sure if you have a choice. (I plan to stop by at Carruthers sometime before final exams to ask. Possibly even this week, since I need to get some whipped cream from Barracks.)</p>
<p>The dining hall plan is quite a ripoff for first-years (1795 / semester), but it's factored into the cost of attendance, so you can reduce costs further by scaling down and opting to cook. My plan is since the dining halls are buffet style, all you really need is one dining hall meal a day (or 3 of them every 2 days) where you consume 4-5 plates of food + dessert in a single meal (don't worry you'd do this even if you didn't have any financial constraints -- at least for O-Hill food) and then you can quite contentfully eat frugally the rest of the day via cooked meals in your dorm. After you hit second year where you can scale down your dining plan of course. </p>
<p>I live in the IRC, and we get our own kitchen, so it's quite convenient to cook. It possibly is also the best financial choice I ever made -- it's possibly beaten by Brown residential college except Brown has like a 5% acceptance rate or something. Two free meals weekly + shared multicultural food + other food events. (Shared alcohol, if you're into that.) I rarely have to touch my pocket money. (It means I can use leftover pocket money to pay EFC!)</p>
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My current situation is that if I were to attend Princeton for example, they would cover all my costs. i meet that threshold.
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If Princeton covers all your costs with grants, then Princeton would beat UVA FA-wise. I rather suspect that they do. But should they meet some of your need with loans, you will want to make a deeper comparison beyond how much need is met -- you will want to know how it is met.</p>
<p>Anyway, as an OOS student, my financial concerns so far are becoming less and less over cost of attendance and more of things like whether it's worth it to buy air tickets to fly back for Thanksgiving. [My conclusion -- especially with a low-income background where the home environment really isn't all that great: No, not worth it at all.] Your family shouldn't have any significant hardship sending you to UVA. In fact, to minimise transport costs, I plan to stay around Charlottesville these 4 years, attend summer school (with summer FA) and take jobs here, etc, and my inbox is always flooded with mailing list emails with requests and offers to carpool to DC / New York or whatever. So you shouldn't be worried about affording UVA. But of course you also want to consider debt burden after graduation, desired lifestyle during college, etc.</p>
<p>As far as FA goes, I think UVA is extremely generous. My dad made like 30k last year and he only had to pay like <$1000 total for me to attend UVA OSS.</p>