<p>Jeez, no reason to get snooty. Keep in mind that a college guaranteeing to meet full need will almost always still expect you to take out several thousand in loans which is sometimes not an option, or not a good option. Your financial aid reward may also not cover unforeseen expenses like flights. Having an EFC of zero doesn’t mean they’ll just shell out for everything is my point. </p>
<p>And you’re 100% right I didn’t realize there were families that made under 20,000 a year! 1200 posts on CC and I’ve never heard of such a thing! My family just has so much darn money that I didn’t think that was possible.</p>
<p>@Pancaked: I am not being snooty, I may sound rude, but I am not trying to be, I just want to express my point, which could very well be wrong. </p>
<p>If what you say is true, then I have been very misinformed about EFC and need based financial aid. </p>
<p>The last note, “Columbia replaces all loans with grants; parents with incomes below $60,000 per year will not have to pay for any aspect of college.”</p>
<p>“But please, don’t act like the universe owes you an Ivy League education on a silver platter. Have a little humility and gratitude.”</p>
<p>Will you stop making these unbacked up and extremely offending statements? Just because a few of my posts are a tad bit veered toward the content of my success and what I will subsequently earn does not mean I have already assumed the position of being pampered by the Ivy League. On top of which, you have not gone through half the amount of financial bankruptcy I have gone through in only a few years of my life, so why do I have to assimilate to the fact that I will NEVER get into college because I can not fork up any means of monetary value just like the rest of you. You do not know a single thing about me, especially my demonstrations and conducts in “gratitude” and “humility.”</p>
<p>“Meeting need” means they will find a way for you to cover all of whatever they determine your need is. Methods for meeting this need can and often include grants, loans, and a federal work-study program. Meeting need does not simply mean they GIVE you all the money, though schools like Columbia and Vanderbilt are rare exceptions.</p>
<p>Really most of the schools you listed have policies for low income students where loans that otherwise would have been included in the financial aid package to meet “need” are removed and replaced by grants. However, this may not always be the case.</p>
<p>Thank you for clarifying, Pancaked. I just do not want to put my family through the burden of somehow paying for my tuition. The work-study program seems like something I would love to participate in once I get into college. </p>
<p>Which schools do you know that do not offer what Columbia or Vanderbilt offers on my list? Of course, I will research that on my own, but better to cross off some schools now then later.</p>
<p>If you apply only to reach schools and do not include a four year school that is both an admissions and a financial safety, you may get no acceptances from your reach schools, or accepted only at some that will want you to take unreasonable amounts of loans, which would leave your fallback as community college (which would not be the end of the world).</p>
<p>If you start your apps early, you can definitely make this list happen. And as someone who needs lots of finaid, the opportunity to compare offers is invaluable. </p>
<p>Still, it may be a more reasonable strategy to apply to at least a couple options EA to (a) consider their finaid offers, and to (b) see where you get accepted. That would ideally allow you to whittle down your options.</p>
<p>Applying only to reach schools gives you this possibility (or the possibility of being accepted only by schools whose financial aid offers are insufficient or have too high a loan burden). Every April, there are students who get “shut out” of all of the four year schools that they apply to because they did not apply to any safeties (or the improperly evaluated their safeties which turned out to be non-safeties for admissions and/or cost).</p>
<p>Yeah I figured that out once everybody bashed me on my safeties. LOL. I’ll just have to do more research and apply to legitimate safeties. When you say “shut out” do you mean that the students did not receive sufficient financial aid, or just simply rejected?</p>
<p>“Shut out” could mean either no acceptances at all, or no acceptances at schools that are affordable after considering financial aid offers. Getting accepted at a school whose financial aid is insufficient for your financial situation (i.e. requires unreasonable amounts of loans to attend) is no better than getting a rejection from the school.</p>
<p>OP, my D went to an IB school. A lot of these kids were academic superstars, even by IB standards. We’re talking about national scholarships, national competitions and awards, original research, data presentations to professional groups and government agencies, international recognitions, etc. </p>
<p>The year she graduated, there were a number of full IB Diplomas who were rejected or wait-listed at every school they applied to, including UCs which they thought were safeties. March and April '09 were dark days for some extremely bright, qualifed students. They didn’t understand just how competitive it is to get into the top schools. </p>
<p>BTW, guess where those kids ended up. That’s right. Community college. Get yourself a couple of true safeties.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus: That would be a very unfortunate situation…</p>
<p>@lasma: Oh, wow. Thank you for bringing that point up, it’s quite convincing. They applied to many schools, and still got rejected? Ouch, hope that did not happen to your D!</p>
<p>You really need to figure out what kind of school you want to go to and pick safeties, matches, and reaches out of that category instead of just picking a whole bunch of super prestigious schools (and then throwing in the UC system for supposed safeties even though you couldn’t afford them). Start by asking yourself some questions. Do you want a small, medium, or large sized school? Do you want a 4 year college or a university that also offers graduate degrees? Are you REALLY big into science/engineering and honestly considering Harvey Mudd/Caltech/MIT?</p>
<p>With questions like that, you should be able to trim this list down to 7 or 8 schools. Then you need to do some research and find a few real safeties, since you have to realize that even with your stats these are all ridiculously selective schools, and the UC system is not going to give the kind of financial aid you’re gonna need if your parents have no substantial income.</p>
<p>One suggestion I would make would be to apply to the U of Wisconsin-Madison. It’s an out of state public school, which you would expect to be expensive, but you would mostlikely qualify for the BANNER program, which will meet 100% of EFC. U of Wisc would probably be a good safety for you, though you shouldn’t have it as your only safety, since the BANNER program isn’t guaranteed.</p>
<p>Actually… as someone who applied to 21 schools, I must give advice slightly different from all those above. I think that applying to more does have its advantages, provided you have the energy to write SO MANY ESSAYS without decreasing in quality. If you really cannot decide, then perhaps applying to more is better than applying to less…? (For your future, NOT for your sanity. You can kiss it goodbye right now.)</p>
<p>It’s fine to apply to a lot of schools. It’s not hard to do. However, it can be tricky to write certain supplement essays well. Applying to a school based on it’s prestige is also perfectly fine, but if you don’t have much to say in a supplement essay about the school, your plan could backfire. Put a lot of effort into the ones you truly care about first. Rank your schools in order of which you’d most like to attend and check the requirements for the applications before you make your final choices. It’s not my business if you want to blow some cash just to chance it, but especially since you’re low income, make sure you actually want to go to the schools you apply to. Also, as far as I can tell, you have reaches and safties with very little in between. Bridge the gap to give yourself a better shot; not that you can’t get in to all of those schools, but it’s a called a reach…because it’s a reach. You might want to add some middle ground schools.</p>
Would I get rejected from all those schools?</p>