<p>HEplayer, don’t assume your professor friend knows anything about financial aid. My husband is a long-time professor, department chair and (in his field) a well-known academic. He knows absolutely nothing about the rules governing financial aid. Nothing. </p>
<p>Check out the permanent threads about merit scholarships at the top of the Parents forum and the Financial Aid forum. If the rest of your record is consistent with your science accomplishments, you might be a candidate for a merit award at a school that you like.</p>
<p>And, as kelsmom said above, some of the well-known private schools that are not HYP can be pretty generous with need-based aid, so cast a wide net.</p>
<p>Ahh, thank you all for your wonderful advice! This is very informative and is helping me out a bunch. </p>
<p>So I guess spending some time applying to a couple of large scholarships wouldn’t be too bad of an idea? Just in case? I mean, if the school I end up going to gives me full need/merit-base, then that is great! But if it doesn’t, the outside scholarships could come in handy? Guess I have to apply and actually win some scholarships before I think about that ehh? =P Still got 3 weeks of summer. Better start cracking though.</p>
<p>Thank you all again. If anyone has any more to add/comment, please feeel freee!!!</p>
<p>you’ve gotten a number of insightful answers here that have opened up a lot of scenarios. The answer in a nutshell, is “nope, it is not necessarily that easy”. However, it can be. My friend who has three kids who is in a similar income range as your family found things pretty danged simple. Her kids were all great students with terrific profiles and they did get into school that met 100% of need which was close to what she felt she could afford to pay. It came to about what their state flagship would have cost. If her expectations had been otherwise, she could have been in shock, but they were not, and things worked out well, as her kids all had a couple of state schools including a local one where commuting was possible as financial safeties. They could have gone to that school pretty much for free with merit money they were offered. </p>
<p>Still the cost of college was a steep one for them. Now with their last one at school, it is a tough go. It’s not as though the financial aid was generous. The whole thing was done through savings, scrimping, working, borrowing both on the part of the parents and kids, before, during and after college years. This was what they had anticipated, so it was not a big shock for them.</p>
<p>Hep, we found it was helpful to have outside scholarships at the schools my D was accepted to. None were 100% need met, except for our instate public which does not guarantee to meet need, and all said they would first apply the extra scholarships to the gap between our EFC and their FA package, then to self-help aid. The instate public (which she will attend) has applied them to her Stafford unsubsidized loans first, then Stafford subsidized, then work study. They did not adjust for the small (under $1,000) local “awards” that she was given by the HS although they did adjust for a small Red Cross scholarhsip that was sent directly to the college. Had she chosen a different school, especially one OOS, the outside scholarships would have been more necessary to avoid taking more than planned out of her college fund.</p>
<p>My D stopped applying for scholarships once she made her college choice and knew she did not have significant need for them. She never spent alot of time doing it anyway, choosing to focus more on keeping her GPA high and tracking her applications to be sure she met all the deadlines (especially financial ones!). Many of the scholarships have similar essay/short response questions and, with a bit of editing and a resume of EC’s and awards, she was able to complete most of the scholarship apps fairly quickly.</p>
<p>My advice would be to find out, via a quick call to the FA office of your prospective school(s), what their policy is for applying outside aid and go from there. Good luck!</p>
<p>The problem with this whole system is that you don’t know what you will be getting offered at the onset. Maybe all will work out well with your getting acceptance at your top choices with acceptable financial aid packages. Maybe not. </p>
<p>If your family has a limit on what goes towards your college education, you need to have some financial safeties on your list that pretty much guarantee that cost for you. They can be local schools wherer you commute, state schools, schools where the chances are very good that merit money would come your way. Along with those schools, you would add those schools where the on line calculators indicate that your need is likely to be met by them. You can always put a few schools where there are risks that the need will not be met and hope that something pans out, but do leave yourself some safeties.</p>
<p>My son’s best friend was accepted to nearly all of his choices, but financial aid was abysmal. The need was defined at levels the family had expected, so merit awards and state programs became important factors. With sticker prices well in the mid $50K range for many private schools, and with so many students needing financial aid, most applicants find that the offerings are not generous.</p>