son has been accepted to a few OOS public colleges. Has not received information regarding any financial aid/ merit awards.
Is this the norm?
That was our experience, especially for schools that notify early.
Acceptance first, scholarships and honors college later.
The wait time was highly variable. Some schools notified the following week, others the following month.
Schools that released decisions in the spring gave all at once.
Also some schools will sometimes throw some extra money in April if you are still undecided as others who were offered acceptances turn them down and the money pool opens up. At least this happened with one school. Almost made us change our mind.
It depends on the school. With most, you may get a merit offer with the decision. Some you just get a decision, and wait for everything else. I haven’t ran into a situation yet where everything was presented at once.
@Blacknblu Northeastern and Boston Universities give the admission decision, need and merit awards at the same time…if all information was submitted by the posted deadline.
It varies by college.
@TomSrOfBoston very good point. I think Vanderbilt does the same.
Depends. At U of SC, S19’s acceptance package included a letter that said he was “likely eligible” for 2 school merit scholarships based on test scores/grades to date. They sent a confirmation letter as soon as senior year mid-year grades were submitted.
He got a similar letter from 2 other colleges, and no such letter from the final 2 that accepted him.
All the schools DS was accepted to said financial aid packages would be sent out in February.
Agree with posters above that financial aid can go into the spring. Note however that many public schools tend to not offer much merit or need-based aid to OOS students. Have you run the NPCs at each of these schools? Sometimes the NPCs include merit, sometimes not. If you share the names of the schools, posters will be able to give you more specific information.
If you’d be willing to share what schools you’re referring to, folks here can probably let you know when those schools historically award aid, if at all. Like the last poster said, many public schools don’t offer a lot of aid to OOS kids - but many definitely do!
My kids received acceptance letters in September, merit information in December and FA award letter in February/March.
Did your kid apply early decision anywhere? Those financial aid awards typical come out either with or very shortly thereafter because the student has a very short window of time to accept the admission offer…or not.
For early action, or rolling admissions, it’s very common to receive the financial aid award even as late as March…because those acceptances have the same deadline as students accepted who apply later.
Getting any financial aid for an out of state public university is hit and miss. I have seen it happen, but I would not expect it unless the NPC predicts it.
My kids had some schools send financial aid offers (merit based) with the acceptance letter, some schools send financial aid offers later, and some schools never offer any financial aid. It seems like any combination is possible. For us all aid offers did show up well before we had to make a decision.
Thanks for the input.
Here are some public colleges we have questions about:
Ohio State
University of Delaware
University of Maryland
Clemson
University of Illinois
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Rutgers University
Texas A&M
University of Florida
Purdue
University of South Carolina
North Carolina State
or do some schools wait for months after acceptance to let you know
I can give you information (albeit dated) on Ohio State and Purdue. Ohio State (4 years ago) gave our daughter her acceptance (EA) in December and her merit scholarship award not too long afterwards. The final financial aid package that included everything came in March. Purdue (7 years ago) gave the acceptance in November (this was when Purdue was strictly a rolling admissions school), her Honors college and merit scholarship in February and her final FA package in late March. Purdue offer merit to less than 10% of it’s applicants just to set your expectations. Today Purdue is an Early Action school and acceptances come out later. Good luck.
Purdue now does EA notifications in mid January and honors/merit a few weeks later in February, and need based aid in March. They are historically getting stingier and stingier with merit aid, especially for OOS applicants. My D is there in honors college and saw $0 of merit.
UMD released EA decisions two cycles ago at the end of January and we found out about honors/merit within the week. Not sure about need based aid. D did get a small merit award there.
I assume by now (multiple threads) you realize that most OOS public don’t give out FA. What are your kids stats, home state and safety schools? Is he or she NMSF?