Of course, students from higher money families typically have more starting advantages and fewer barriers when it comes to attaining most measures of merit used in a college admissions or scholarship context.
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Perhaps a discussion about the “merits” of merit aid should have its own thread? @Super_Moderators
All this seems off topic for this thread.
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Absolutely. Husband was a former AO at a private school that is mentioned here on CC all the time. “Merit” is a feel good term created by marketing folks, which simply means a tuition discount. That merit scholarship is discounting the tuition enough which attracts the most students. Does it skew full pay? Absolutely. Is your income taken into account? Absolutely. Are your high stats taken into account for admission and given a holistic review? Absolutely. Are your high stats given a holistic review based on your merit scholarship? Most likely not. You will probably get the same merit scholarship as anyone else that falls in a wide range. Problem is for one student $25,000 is great but for another student $25,000 isn’t. This is for a private university that is fairly well ranked. Problem is all the all the high stats kids are applying to the highest ranked school they can find that offers merit. Do your research if your kid has high stats apply to schools where the high stats will knock it out of the park and pay attention to COA. The are smart students at every school regardless of rank and prestige.
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Please get back to the original topic. If posters want to continue the discussion about merit awards, please start a new thread. Future comments will be deleted. Thank you.
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Sorry. Feel free to delete my comment.
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Just so mod note. Deleted
Here is a new thread for that subject.
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I think it may be misleading to say 25% percent of Tulane students are not making progress on their debt. The percentage of Tulane students who have federal loans is 26%. The percentage of those students not making loan progress is 25%. So the percentage of former Tulane students not making progress on their loans seems to be about 6.5%, correct?
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You mean to tell me that those that borrowed from the bank of mom & dad can’t default? I am shocked…
I’m sorry to hear it came out so high. The child support sounds like special circumstances to me, but I’m not an FA expert.
Thanks!
Yes- I think the FAFSA should include an end date for child support payments and then not count it as possible money to pay for college the next year if it is ending before college begins. It seems crazy to ask for the amount for junior/senior calendar year and then assume it will keep coming once the child is 18 and no longer living at home for college freshman year. With an individual private school, I could try to negotiate about it, but it would be a lot easier if FAFSA just considered an end date question into the calculations. It would substantially lower our EFC. I think it is pretty typical for support to end to the other parent when the child enters college.
However, this is off topic for the thread, so I will leave it there!
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maybe my knowledge is outdated but doesn’t non-custodial parent income count on the FAFSA and/or CSS anyway, regardless of whether they are paying child support or not? I am genuinely interested. This is why I personally couldn’t get any financial aid when I was looking at colleges. Had to forgo acceptances to JHU and Duke to attend a mediocre local college that offered me merit. I hope students are not still in this position, but I thought they were?
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FAFSA requires only the custodial parent information, although the definition of custodial parent will be changing from the one the student lives with most to the one providing the most financial support.
Colleges using the CSS Profile or their own forms may choose to require or not require the non-custodial parent information. Most of the most selective private schools do require the non-custodial parent information. Chicago and (usually) Vanderbilt are exceptions. Princeton is an exception if the custodial parent has remarried.
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Please feel free to start another thread about FASFA but we are straying from the OP. Thank you.
assumption that EA is just because these kids want a backup for high stats is not always true. For some schools EA is a the only way to qualify for merit aid.
For my high stats kid, ED is out of question because he is near full pay based on CSS profile but fafsa is less than half that.
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And I believe this is why so many students apply to so many schools- between trying to find the best financial picture with schools that will accept you, it can be very difficult to know what will work out. So far my daughter was accepted to 5 Target/Safeties and deferred at 1 that should have been a safety/target and deferred at 1 reach.
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Yes. We are full pay and had to apply to several schools by the EA date to qualify for any merit. Just because they say we can pay, doesn’t mean it’s realistic or financially smart for us to do that. Mine applied to 6 schools, has gotten in to the one we expected he would, will find out about 2 in February and the other 3 in March. As involved as the applications are, I don’t think he could have applied to many more.
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My twins23 applied to a total of 4 EA and 1 ED schools (and 14 RD). So far we have an ED Deferral and 2 EA Acceptances, 1 with merit. We are willing to be full pay at a few elite schools but below that, nope. EA is the only path to merit at many schools. It’s not just a fall back plan for high stats students-- it’s possibly the only realistic path to affording college.
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Just curious - what does one get at an ‘elite’ school that besides name, is markedly different than the ones that give you merit?
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I don’t think anyone can tell someone else how to value individual schools on their college list. And that is, imo, what much of these discussions come down to - what does each family/student value and how much are they willing to pay for it? As far as I am concerned, each family gets to make that decision for themselves with whatever criteria they deem essential.
That same reasoning is a big reason why I also give short shrift to the idea that EA is backfiring for High Stats Kids. Schools get to make those same determinations of what they value and what they are willing to pay for.
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