<p>I agree wholeheartedly with both posts. One of our neighbors is depressed right now because her son who is a top student at our public school has been deferred from his top choice, the FAFSA shows that he will get little or no aid, and though he has been accepted to a couple of schools, he has not gotten any of the merit scholarships where the notifications have already been sent. So it looks like State U for him. We have an excellent State U with a great Honors program, but the expectations had been a lot higher for this guy as he has excelled at so many things. This is a situation that many families find themselves facing. The reality is that there are not that many merit awards available, and getting one is not something someon should be depending upon. Though a student may be tops in his region, the national pool is overwhelming large and strong. The val from our local highschool was deferred from Cornell, which really was upsetting, but when I checked several top school websites for the number of kids from our states attending these schools, it is very low considering the population. And from the Yale stats, I know a goodly number of those kids go to boarding school or the private day schools. Not very encouraging at all. Very few of our public school kids here got into Yale early, as I saw the total number for our state and can account for about half of those kids in private schools. And I have no idea how many of the rest go to private school as well, so many of these top of their schools kids with high SAT scores are not even awared of the competition n their own state. It is truly daunting to see how many high achieving kids there are.</p>
<p>Calmom - wish<em>it</em>was_april took the words right out of my mouth, er, keyboard. :)</p>
<p>calmom: I could have written that post. I think it is that implicit message that hurts the most.</p>
<p>I am definitely no expert on financial aid, but so far, this is how we've managed. Our oldest son is a freshman at a small lac. We applied for financial aid and ended up putting together a package with funding from various sources. He has two federal loans, a grant from the school (which was totally unexpected )and then a work study job at the school. At first I was concerned that the work would take too much of his time, but it turned out to be an excellent part of his education. He works for his biology teacher in the greenhouse. (s is a bio major) Don't forget, those of you with other children who will be in college at the same time as the older child, as we do, that this will work favorably with financial aid. The results you get now can change from year to year.</p>