<p>I just received an e-mail, luckily I checked my junk mail folder, and I received an e-mail saying I needed to fill out the Monthly Income and Expense Budget for my financial aid application to be complete. Anyone else get the same thing?</p>
<p>No...not yet. But recently sent other forms in for financial aid.</p>
<p>Did you apply for aid as an "independent" student or as a dependent of at least one parent? I've never heard of such a form but I guess I'd better check my D's email!</p>
<p>i'm dependent... I also qualify for Gateway W&M which is probably why I got it.</p>
<p>That's probably what it is. Gateway is a great program. I hope it works for you.</p>
<p>If there is one peeve about W&M I had, it is financial "aid." For most of you, you will be expected to max out on your loans before you can qualify for state grants and other need based aid.</p>
<p>I know that W&M has made great strides toward making college more accessible for the poor (ie-Gateway), and also a merit scholarship program (Murray), we still lag way behind other schools in Virginia in terms of making college affordable for everybody, not just for the poor, or for those who are good enough for the Ivies. </p>
<p>For example, Richmond, our liberal arts university neighbor next door gives a full ride to 1 out of every 10 students, and offers many more merit scholarships to other students in their class. In addition, everyone gets 100% of their financial aid met; never got close to that at W&M unless I maxed out my loans. I guess the rep of W&M is worth it, but still, it's not cool. I don't know what most of you think of U of R academically, which is great, but not at W&M's level yet. Still, they're getting real aggressive in making themselves VA's top school, and they've got the $$$ to do it. At least our $500 million campaign will hopefully make us more affordable to the middle class in state and out of staters. </p>
<p>Another thing I found out about Murray is that it offers close to if not a full ride to Virginians, but if I'm not mistaken, it only gives a tuition waiver to out of staters so they just pay in-state tuition instead of out of state rates. That's a step in the right direction I guess, but if we're truly going to be world class, we need to offer full rides to out of staters too. UVA does that with the Jefferson Scholars, and W&M only recently started realizing that merit scholarships were needed in order to stay in the game.</p>
<p>Don't get me wrong, I still love W&M, but I never thought fin aid was fin aid.... I hope they improve that with avg joes like me.</p>
<p>I'm still waiting for that communication from W&M. I thought they said FA decisions would be out this week? Should I stop holding my breath and just count on paying full fare?</p>
<p>wmalum, I agree with you wrt a lack of merit scholarships at W&M, but they're not unique in that regard; scholarship dollars at most schools are directed to low-income students, athletes, and certain "high-value" students at most, if not all "upper-echelon" schools("high value" students are non-merit, non-athlete students the schools want to enroll to meet some other goal, most commonly "diversity".) There's simply not much merit money, academic or otherwise, for anyone going around these days. If you don't fit into the above categories, the only aid offered are "loans." </p>
<p>There are many "middle-tier" schools offering actual merit aid, which is great -- but I suspect that if these "middle-tier" schools were suddenly to find themselves at the top of some ratings list, that this merit aid pool would suddenly dry up as well. </p>
<p>The middle-class is, as usual, the ones left holding the bag, paying the highest amounts, as a percentage of income, of anyone. I've heard more than one middle-class parent lament that they make too much too to be able to afford to send their kid to a particular school, offered admission, but little or no aid - (who <em>are</em> these people that can pay $40K+ a year?!?) </p>
<p>That's why I'm particularly grateful as a VA resident to have such fine state public colleges in W&M and UVA, and their relatively reasonable in-state tuitions. ("reasonable" as compared to "peer" private institutions, they do tend to be slightly more expensive than other states' colleges, and the OOS tuition tends to be <em>far</em> higher) </p>
<p>I'd like to see the costs come down for <em>everyone</em>, both in-state and out-of-state students, but that would require more money from the state, (and government money isn't the most reliable source), more from alumni, and greater corporate giving. And we all know that if the state sent $10M a year more to W&M, for example, that tuition wouldn't come down a penny, it would (necessarily) go to other priorities.</p>