<p>One thing to be careful about UMASS is the room, board, and fees are quite expensive compared to tuition. 4 years ago high achieving in-state students were offered full tuition merit aid … but that left the more expensive portion of the bill. I’d check to see the current structure of the fees and also of their merit aid.</p>
<p>UMass gives very little merit aid:</p>
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</p>
<p>You need a new plan.</p>
<p>They can probably afford 5-10k a year, 10k is pushing it though.</p>
<p>then it’s very unlikely UMass is going to work out. They don’t give much in merit, and the remaining OOS COA would be too high for you to cover. and, yes, UMass has ridiculously high “fees”. I think their fees are around $10k per year. That’s because of the state’s odd laws about raising tuition, so they keep raising fees.</p>
<p>You can apply there, but don’t expect it to be affordable. Make sure that you include some schools that you know FOR SURE will give you very large merit awards. </p>
<p>Look at it this way, with your parents’ contribution, a federal student loan, and some summer earnings, you can maybe cover room, board and books. You need at least a full tuition scholarship…maybe more. Partial tuition scholarships won’t be enough.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html</a></p>
<p>As for the desire to be able to visit Boston: </p>
<p>Picking a school that’s a couple of hours away from Boston would mean not visiting very often. And, attending that school would require substantial debt (more than fed loans). </p>
<p>So, a better alternative would be to pick a school that costs you much less (less cost, less loans) and take a couple vacation trips to Boston. Seems crazy to run up significant debt over 4 years just to be able to visit another city a few times.</p>
<p>UMass gives out a pretty fair number of scholarships to OOS students, but these mostly just cover some (occasionally all) of the extra cost that OOS students are charged over in-state students.</p>
<p>Beyond that you are not likely to get much extra in the way of merit aid.</p>
<p>An EFC of $25K on $80K of income seems really high unless you have a lot of assets. Are you sure you calculated it right?</p>
<p>
This only really matters for some state-funded in-state scholarships that cover tuition ($1714/yr) but not the fees ($12,000 or so).</p>
<p>Make sure your search extends to the south-east, many of the state schools in those states provide pretty decent merit aid to OOS students.</p>
<p>*Quote:
yes, UMass has ridiculously high “fees”.</p>
<p>========
This only really matters for some state-funded in-state scholarships that cover tuition ($1714/yr) but not the fees ($12,000 or so).*</p>
<p>I disagree. It matters because it’s often an unknown to people not familiar with the UMass fees. A person might look at R&B costs, and OOS tuition costs, but not even realize that the fees are going to add many, many thousands.</p>
<p>It actually takes some work to ferret out that the tuition is so low and the fees are so high. UMass almost always reports them together, as seen here for example:</p>
<p>[UMass</a> Amherst: Financial Aid Services - University Costs](<a href=“Financial Aid : UMass Amherst”>Financial Aid : UMass Amherst)</p>
<p>Where people get tripped up is when they win the Adams scholarship, which provides free tuition, only to find out tuition doesn’t include the “curriculum fee” and is only 15% of the “tuition and fees” pile. But this is only in-state.</p>
<p>I don’t recall ever seeing an OOS student report that they got “free tuition”, the scholarships are always reported as a dollar amount.</p>
<p>If you are female, have you considered Wellesley?</p>
<p>I guess I can cross UMass off my list then.</p>
<p>No, I haven’t considered Wellesley. Not sure that I’d wanna go to a women-only school.</p>
<p>dilina is looking for a research university offering merit aid. It’s not clear to me how Wellesley, a LAC that does not give merit aid, is a good match.</p>
<p>dilina – I have researched UMass Amherst quite a bit for my OOS D who is a rising sr. from CA. We are also looking for merit aid because we won’t qualify for need-based aid but can’t afford to pay full freight. For highly-qualified OOS students, UMass offers merit scholarships in the $8k - 12k /year range. Check out the class of 2017 admissions thread for examples. My D has a 4.45 GPAw, 2080 SAT, SAT II Bio 720, USHist 750, Lit 790, and is ranked 3 of 325. With her stats, I’m looking for $12k from UMass. That would just about wipe out the difference between IS and OOS and would bring down the annual COA to about $25k (tuition, room, board), which is about halfway between the cost of a CSU and a UC, making it pretty reasonable IMO. My D would also like to be in/near Boston, but there are very few schools in that area that offer a lot of merit. One school that does is Clark in Worcester. Good luck.</p>
<p>^ I have 2 family members who were accepted to UMass-A with $12,000 each ( they chose not to attend). My daughter has a friend who was accepted with $8,000 in merit aid ( he also chose not to attend).</p>
<p>My 2 family members chose SUNY Binghamton instead, and my daughters friend chose one of the DC schools.</p>
<p>Bringing the cost down to $25k per year with a $12k scholarship woud not be enough for THIS student. </p>
<p>She can borrow $5500 for frosh year. With her parents contribution and the loan, she only has $10k to $15k to put towards college. </p>
<p>Student thinks her parents can only pay $5k+ per year. Even $10k would be pushing it (which suggests to me that her parents’ income is already dedicated to current expenses, so even coming up with $500 a month to put towards college costs would be difficult. </p>
<p>Dilina, ask your parents how much they realistically can pay each year towards college.</p>
<p>There is a list on this forum of research public universities with low sticker prices, and when one throws in merit possibilities at those schools, the possibilities are there to go to such schools for very little.</p>
<p>Dilina: Private universities will almost always provide better financial aid. Run the NET COST calculator, entering your family’s resources.
If by “research” you mean that you want to work on research yourself, don’t eliminate LACs since they’re well-known for providing outstanding research opportunities.
If your concern is having professors whose #1 concern is publishing so that you can use their name for a reference it’s different.
If you’re not interested in Wellesley, why not Mount Holyoke in the 5 college consortium (including UMass-Amherst)? Financial aid is sure to be more generous from a women’s college than from a public out of state school and being part of a consortium would provide you with more social opportunities. Then again Wellesley has an agreement with MIT that’s hard to beat. At these schools, you’re likely to be considered for financial need up to $200,000, i.e., your family would be considered for needs-based aid and since you’re quite below 200, you’d likely get a lot.</p>
<p>*Dilina: Private universities will almost always provide better financial aid. Run the
*</p>
<p>The family has already determined that because of hefty assets, they don’t qualify for enough need based aid. They have an EFC of about $25k, but can only pay $5k+ </p>
<p>In cases like this, the goal is to find huge merit to bring the remaining costs down to what the family can pay (family funds, student loan, summer income)</p>