<p>I'm recently becoming more and more interested in this school, and I might apply ED II...does anyone know how good/bad it is with aid?</p>
<p>That’s a very broad question. It really depends on the particulars of each applicant’s FAFSA. This year was a rough year for those folks who would describe themselves as “middle class,” both at Tufts and at most schools (excluding unusually wealthy schools, such as the richer Ivies). Tufts also tries to be need blind in admissions, but I believe they said that this year the last 5% of admissions were not need blind, because the AdCom was aware of the school’s limitations in the present economic climate.</p>
<p>I suspect others will chime in on this thread, but there’s also a good thread in the applicants’ Facebook group that deals with this. Worth checking out.</p>
<p>[$$$$$$$$</a> FINANCIAL AID $$$$$$$$ | Facebook](<a href=“Redirecting...”>Redirecting...)</p>
<p>Compared to other schools at Tufts’ level, terrible.
I’m usually a pretty proud Tufts booster, but most of the schools we compete for students with have been need-blind for some time.</p>
<p>I also find it ridiculous that as the son of a farmer, I don’t get a cent in financial aid.</p>
<p>Here’s the perspective from a poverty stricken guy… Tufts is wonderfull… I don’t have to pay a cent…</p>
<p>Question for Dan-
I’ve watched the results on FA applications of numerous people over the years, but I am really uneducated on the finer points of how FA works. Where do the funds come from: the regular endowment, or separate earmarked funds? Do standards for awarding FA differ for US applicants and foreign students, and if so, how?</p>
<p>I’m not a FA officer, so I’ll readily concede that some of the information below could be inaccurate, but I’m reasonably confident I’m getting this right.</p>
<p>Every single student has their financial need calculated at Tufts using basically the same need assessment metrics and tools. Standards for US v Foreign or ED v Regular, for instance, are always the same. Every school, with a few extremely rare exceptions, calculates financial need using a variation of the formula the Federal Government’s formula. </p>
<p>Many schools “gap” - award less FA than the formula says is required. Many schools offer merit money - awards that go beyond “Demonstrated Need” in order to entice particularly sought after students into enrolling. Many schools do both - gapping for some and awarding more than is necessary for others. Tufts does none of those things. </p>
<p>We always award exactly the Demonstrated Need according to the information our office collects so that Tufts becomes an affordable option for every family. The vast majority of the time this award is fair and Tufts becomes a viable option. Sometimes we’re the best financial offer (like for Lightbearer), sometimes a family looks at the award, compares it to a merit award at another institution, and the financial piece leads to enrollment somewhere else. Still, even in these circumstances, the need we calculate is generally similar to the need calculated everywhere else. There are, of course, exceptions to this (where we calculate much higher need and much lower). </p>
<p>A large portion the funds for FA are earmarked as such in the endowment, but not all of funds are. Some come from the government (hence the need to stick close to the federal formula), some come the broader endowment pool, some come from donors who say “Use it this year.”</p>
<p>I’m not saying we’re terrible, full-stop. I’m saying we’re terrible compared to the schools we generally compete for students with. Tufts should be on [this</a> list](<a href=“Need-blind admission - Wikipedia”>Need-blind admission - Wikipedia).</p>
<p>One thing to take into account that it is <em>very</em> difficult to get a merit award (e.g. impossible for most candidates). It is certainly possible (there are a few students that I know who got a merit scholarship along with regular aid), but Tufts does not usually do this. A lot of schools like Dan said use merit aid to attract students (for better or worse), but Tufts has not done this even during stable financial periods.</p>
<p>The students I’ve talked to who claim to get merit aid, upon closer examination, either get regular financial aid and they’d rather call it merit aid for pride reasons, or else their merit aid actually comes from a different organization than Tufts (this is surprisingly common). As far as I know, Tufts does not offer merit aid at all.</p>
<p>Perhaps Dan could clear this up?</p>
<p>Dan-
Thank you for the explanation. Is any distinction made between different states of residence, i.e., since $100,000 for a family of four in NYC or LA doesn’t go nearly as far as the same income for the same size family in certain other regions of the country, wouldn’t it (shouldn’t it) make a difference in calculating an applicant’s need?
Also, given the state of the US economy, and the numbers of families that are struggling to educate their children, I would think that an argument could be made that different considerations should come into play when deciding to award limited FA funds to US vs foreign students. (The old “charity begins at home” theory, especially since you say that some funds come from the government.) Is no consideration given to this problem? I know that Tufts has given full FA awards to some exceptional foreign students (Lightbearer apparently being one of them), which is great, but how does American higher education deal with the unfortunate realities of the “new economy”?</p>
<p>great questions from WCASParent—both about cost of living differences around the US and the philosophy of US v. international aid—would love to get an official response from Tufts on this</p>
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<p>I think this is a question that you should ask a financial aid officer, rather than an admissions officer. Excellent question, but I don’t think it should be directed at Dan.</p>
<p>WCASParent, to be honest, I find your suggestion that U.S. citizens should get special consideration somewhat xenophobic. Why should Americans count for more than other human beings?</p>
<p>I gotta disagree with everyone who said tufts doesnt give good financial aid. For me, Tufts was competitive with Binghamton (I’m in state) and it gave me the most money out of all the colleges I was accepted to (BU, Northeartern, RIT, RPI, Cornell was pretty close though). I was given a huge merit award and was pretty much told it would be the same all 4 years unless something drastic happens to our finances.</p>
<p>So your argument is that n=1 is a totally sufficient sample size?
Also, please go more in-depth on this merit aid.</p>
<p>According to [Tufts</a> itself](<a href=“Tufts University”>Tufts University):
National Merit Scholarship Corporation is a nation-wide prestigious organization that is supported by over 500 colleges. In order to be included with all its peers as a supporter of the program, Tufts does need to give a token amount of merit aid to National Merit Winners. And a token amount they do give: [$500</a> at the maximum](<a href=“http://uss.tufts.edu/finaid/awarding-info/AidTypes.asp]$500”>http://uss.tufts.edu/finaid/awarding-info/AidTypes.asp) for non-need-based merit winners. So people claiming to have gotten “huge” amounts of merit award either didn’t get it from Tufts, are lying, or have a pretty warped idea of what “huge” means, as $500 covers less than 1% of tuition, room and board.
Furthermore, only about 8,000 students total are National Merit Winners each year. I seriously doubt Tufts is ending up with so many that all the students claiming to get merit aid are getting the $500 or less from being Merit Winners.</p>
<p>Having received either “merit aid”, “dean’s scholarships,” or “grants” from every school my D was admitted to, I agree that the language is confusing, as people tend to use these terms interchangebly even though they can represent vastly different kinds of awards. However, at Tufts, we received financial aid based on a combination of our FAFSA and CSS Profile information solely- not merit. If Tufts offered merit awards we might have been awarded more money (as we were at other institutions) but we were offered enough to make it doable.
I also agree that Dan is not the one to ask about how decisions are made in more detail- not his area of expertise- but I have found the FA office to be very helpful when I contacted them on various matters.</p>
<p>Snarf-
“Xenophobic”? No. To give you some context, I was a child of immigrants, raised in a family of immigrants, in a neighborhood filled with immigrants and most of our friends and neighbors were immigrants and their children. I am no xenophobe. I am a first generation American with a deep and abiding appreciation for the greatness of American ideals and the generosity that has often gone with that.
Nor was I advocating a specific position. Rather, I was pointing out a quandary that is becoming of increasingly greater concern and is worthy of some thought in an economic and political environment that has made me acutely aware of certain limitations. I doubt I would have had this concern 10 or 20 years ago, when our economy was riding high. But now we’re in a different place.
Our nation is in a dire recession, unemployment is approaching 10 percent, our infrastructure is crumbling, millions of American citizens lack appropriate health care, housing and education, and we have a crippling national debt. For the first time in recent (and not so recent) history, parents can no longer assume that their children - even with the benefits of good educations - will enjoy a quality of life better than theirs and an American society still on the ascent. So am I worried? You bet I am. I want our nation to recover and to thrive as much as possible, which will require, in part, that we educate our children so that they may compete for good jobs and so that they can help rebuild America.
And I don’t know whether, or to what extent, all these very grave problems should affect financial aid policy in America’s colleges and universities. But I think it’s a question worth considering. I am deeply proud of our nation’s history of helping to develop undeveloped countries, defending the victims of ethnic violence and generally sharing the benefits of our prosperity. I think this has been key to spreading good will and hopefully inspiring other nations and peoples to aspire to develop similar societies and to treat other, less fortunate, people as we have treated them.
But our prosperity isn’t what it used to be. We can’t do what we used to do. So, just as we must consider how to spend X billion dollars on, for example, foreign aid, where we might have previously been able to afford 3X billion dollars, this too should be considered.<br>
I am fortunate in that, while it is burdensome, I can afford to send my children to some of America’s top universities. My best friend (another child of immigrants) is not so lucky. She earns a middle class income in a major U.S. city with which she supports a family of four. She also has a gifted child who was admitted to Tufts and other comparably fine schools but received no financial aid, even though it would be absurd to think that she could afford to send her child (let alone two children in two years) to private universities on her income, at over $50,000 per year per child. If I were wealthy, with money to spare, I would have loved to have been able to help her with the costs of college. But such a gesture was well beyond my resources. Her child will not be attending Tufts. You might ask why I should spend my money sending MY kids to college instead of helping my friend. The answer, of course, is simple: I had to look after my family first; they are rightly my priority. Similarly, if I had a million dollars to donate to establishing a great school, it would be no surprise if I spent it on a school near where I lived, rather than in another state. The students of the other state are “human beings” just as deserving of a good education as those in my community, but the money is limited and I would want to educate the children in my state and community first; they would be the priority to me. Why then, should it be considered “xenophobic” to question whether, in allocating limited financial aid dollars - some of which comes from U.S. taxpayers (plus, keep in mind that universities generally enjoy tax exempt status, so that their whole existence is subsidized by taxpayers) - some preference should be given to talented and deserving, but financially limited, U.S. citizens? By analogy to my more personal example, while deserving students from foreign countries are like my friend’s child, deserving U.S. students are like my immediate family. If American universities have limited financial aid resources, and have to make difficult choices, should no distinctions be made between U.S. and foreign citizens in need of such aid?</p>
<p>My impression is that tufts is relatively generous with FA for international students. For domestic students that doesn’t seem to be quite as true. In my case, every school I got into offered me FA (even if it was minimal) except for Tufts. I think they are really trying to make financial aid a priority though.</p>