<p>Probably a typical thread--after acceptance.</p>
<p>Pitt Villanova or Penn State would all be free, including room and board. Northwestern will cost $60,000 per year. Daughter likes Northwestern.</p>
<p>Thus the triple argh.</p>
<p>Who has had luck negotiating a discount? I'm just above the top edge of income so I qualify for no financial aid. First of 3 kids-- therefore all disposable income for the next 12 years will go to this if I'm not careful.</p>
<p>Argh.</p>
<p>@ ArghArghArgh - First of all, a huge congrats to your daughter for being accepted to NU. As I’ve posted elsewhere today, I’ve been blown away by the quality of the appliants that were rejected by NU yesterday, so your daughter’s achievement is tremendous. She should take a bow.</p>
<p>Now to the hard part - paying for it. I have no knowledge about whether NU would negotiate a “discount” with you, but my gut tells me no (if you say you earn too much for financial aid). The only hope you have in the years ahead is that if you have more than one kid at college at the same time, meeting the threshold for getting aid in future years becomes easier. </p>
<p>I would pose a different question to you. No doubt NU is a more highly-regarded university than Pitt, Villanova or Penn State (I’m assuming you live in PA). However, as you say you would get the other three for free, is it $240,000 better than those colleges? IMHO, the answer is no. That is a huge up front cost to have to fund, especially with two more children to send to college in the near future. It would take many many years of potentially higher earnings from an NU degree to justify that cost difference today. </p>
<p>As a compromise solution, given your daughter’s obvious ability, has she thought about the Honors Program @ Penn State. It is academically very highly regarded at a faction of the cost.</p>
<p>Good luck with this most difficult decision!</p>
<p>The fact that you had to ask means the cost is an issue for you. When that’s the case, it’s a no-brainer to take the full-ride from a decent school over any top school (including Harvard) at full-cost.</p>
<p>You may make some deals with her like saving the money for her graduate school later or giving her a new car, etc. so she doesn’t feel like she got a raw deal for being the first-born and sacrificing too much for the younger siblings.</p>
<p>My friend (similar situation as yours) negotiated with Tufts and got 22% discount. They had none to begin with. This was ED to Tufts this year. So, you never know. There are always variables that cannot be quantified and do not reflect in FAFSA or CSS.</p>
<p>Northwestern calculates financial aid based only on need, but they will meet 100% of that need in the aid package. Northwestern’s general aid process is taking your FAFSA and CSS, calculating an EFC from that, and subtracting it from expected cost of attendance. The balance is your aid package, made up of grants, scholarships, loans, and sometimes work-study. The lack of true merit scholarships is aggravating(there are additional scholarships endowed by alumni and other groups for students that meet certain esoteric criteria, e.g. of Armenian descent or children of Methodist preachers), and I’ve never heard of anybody having success in negotiating more money. I was able to get several loans in my aid package replaced with additional scholarship, effectively giving me more money, but not increasing my net amount of aid.</p>
<p>I’m the oldest child, so making the NU decision was definitely tough. They gave me more aid than all but two of my other options, but it was still costing ~25K to go. The nice thing about EFC is that it plummets with multiple kids in school. Now that my sister’s in college, my quarterly tuition bill is around $500. Also, assuming your child wants to eventually live off campus, living off-campus is significantly cheaper and could save several grand a year off dorm living, easy. Off-campus living also possibly wouldn’t be covered under the full rides your child has at other schools. I say all this merely to suggest that the financial disadvantage of attending Northwestern over other schools narrows slightly over time, although whether it’s enough to be relevant is questionable.</p>
<p>I would also take a look at NU’s financial aid site here: [Eligibility</a> & Policies: Undergraduate Financial Aid - Northwestern University](<a href=“http://undergradaid.northwestern.edu/eligibility-and-policies/index.html]Eligibility”>http://undergradaid.northwestern.edu/eligibility-and-policies/index.html)
They say aid decisions will start coming out on 4/1, so at a minimum wait to see what the package looks like before making a final decision. I don’t know if my $.02 helps or hurts, but that’s been my experience.</p>
<p>Source: NU Senior, no hard facts, just a whole lot of observational and anecdotal evidence</p>