Based on our family income and the FAFSA Expected Family Contribution (EFC), our daughter will not qualify for any need-based financial aid. In other words, our FAFSA EFC is higher than the $80K+ total cost of attendance. However, we don’t want to spend over $80K per year on college, even if we could make it work.
Wellesley’s website says,“financial aid offers are based only on financial need. We do not offer academic, athletic or other scholarships.”
Is it true that Wellesley does not offer any financial aid, scholarships, or discounts of any sort that are not based on demonstrated need (FAFSA EFC below total cost of attendance)?
Maybe they offer “tuition discounts” as opposed to merit aid? Or maybe they truly only offer need-based aid.
We submitted the FAFSA, but not the required CSS profile. We don’t want to bother submitting the CSS profile if getting any aid is hopeless.
If anyone has some real world experience with Wellesley’s Student Financial Services on this matter, we would greatly appreciate any advice.
Wellesley uses their aid resources for need based aid. They don’t offer merit scholarships or offer tuition discounts because those are typically used as marketing at schools looking to increase their yield and Wellesley can get the students they want without doing that.
In my opinion, if affordable, the education there is worth every penny.
This is true of Wellesley College, and is also true for several of the other excellent “liberal arts colleges” in the northeast of the US.
This is one of the reasons that we had a daughter attend university in eastern Canada, where the small “primarily undergraduate” universities are very good and much more affordable. They are however not well known in the US.
Each family needs to make up its own mind whether to spend $80,000 per year for an undergraduate education. This will of course depend upon your personal situation.
The cost of education will also have some impact on the makeup of the student body at each college and university. Again, what is a good fit for your child can take some effort to figure out.
I have noticed that for the cost of education at Wellesley, Bowdoin, or Amherst College (I ran the NPC for all three), we could have sent her to university where she went, bought her a car, and bought her a house. She pointed out that it would have been a relatively small house.
Generally speaking, the nation’s most selective schools only give aid to those with greatest financial need. I often wonder if they are populated by a strange mix of students from the extremes of the income spectrum and no one in the middle.
Schools one tier down offer some merit aid to top students. A tier below that offers more. We have found that the lower the school is ranked on US News & World Report, the more non-need-based merit aid is offered.
You kind of answered your own question. This is typical of the nation’s top schools and some even a rung below - like a Franklin & Marshall or Reed.
Then you have other schools (both public and private, that while still offering merit, are transitioning more money to need based vs. merit.
If you’re open to it and you tell us what your daughter is looking for - I’ll guess, small LAC and female, we can throw out ideas. Your best merit depending on state (so share your GPA (weighted and unweighted), ACT/SAT, ,ECs, etc. etc.) will be large publics but plenty of LACs give merit, even female only ones.
Many of us were in the same boat, albeit with different needs - ie we are merit hunters or value seekers and believe it or not, it’s not too late at certain, less prestigious schools.
No, Wellesley does not offer merit aid or athletic scholarships - it only offers need based financial aid. Many top ranked schools (Ivies etc) only offer need-based aid. You need to look a tier or two down if you are hoping for merit.
Duke and Vanderbilt are the highest ranked schools that offer full ride or full tuition merit scholarships. Both are ranked in the same level as some Ivies. But getting one of those scholarships can be more difficult than getting into any higher ranked college.
When a college says they only offer need based aid, take them at their word. There are some tippy top colleges, such as Duke, WUSTL, Vandy and a few others that offer a few incredible scholarships for the most stellar applicants, but they are incredibly difficult to get.
Others have given good advice. If you need merit based aid, you pretty much need to aim for less selective colleges.
My daughter is a first year at Wellesley and is loving it! Our FAFSA form said we should be able to pay $64K a year. Wellesley and most of the women’s and Ivy League colleges ask supplemental questions in addition to the FAFSA. As I recall some where about owning second homes and if we were paying tuition for other non college students. Fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t have a beach house and pay private school tuition & high medical expenses for a younger sibling w autism. After we provided the additional information, we were very pleased with the financial aid offer. Wellesley ended up costing us less than our in-state universities. The included a small loan for our student, $2000 a year, and work study, but the grants were over $50k a year. I expect to get the same this year. We panicked after FAFSA and she applied to Agnes Scott & Hollings for the merit aid, but was able to attend Wellesley. She has been working 8-12 hours a week at an on campus job and is really happy to be at Wellesley. She did apply early decision amd is an under-represented minority - native Pacific Islander, so that might have contributed. She is not an athlete if 1st gen student. We don’t know what she would have gotten from others as she withdrew because of early decision. Good luck, Bruce!!
I have to say, at Wellesley it does seem like most students are posited on either extreme of the financial spectrum. I’m not sure what exactly the numbers are, but certainly the most vocal group on campus in talks about finaid (and a large population at that) are those on full or almost full aid. Those that are most quiet tend to be paying full-tuition (although it’s easy to tell them from others by their attire, upbringing, etc.). And those that are on partial aid generally don’t talk about their financial situations.
They were the least generous of all the highly selective schools that offered our kid need-based financial aid this year. By a lot ($15k/year). And that was despite having one of the largest endowments per student in the bunch. Very disappointing.
Every college has their own formula for determining need - one example between Swarthmore and Bowdoin showed a $40K difference. Personally I find that much hard to believe but there are differences in methodology. On a percentage of kids basis, Wellesley delivers more than many others.