Getting emails from Ivy League schools asking her to apply…means nothing. My nephew kept getting emails from Yale asking him to apply. He finally gave in and applied…interviewed locally…and was rejected. Those emails are not uncommon.
Congrats on the acceptances…now let’s hope for some merit!
Congratulations on your D’s acceptances! It would be useful to provide merit award amounts, if you don’t mind sharing.
How is Princeton going to be affordable? Just curious.
One more thing…
I caution you not to think she has a great chance of being accepted to MIT …or to any school with less than a 10% acceptance rate. Yes, your daughter has great stats. Yes…maybe she will get in to a highly selective school. But…these schools are reaches for everybody (or at least almost everybody).
What’s important here is that your daughter has affordable choices where she will thrive and be happy, and that you are ok with these options.
I agree…how will Princeton be more affordable than MIT or Cornell…without the other sibling enrolled in college?
@KevinFromOC please understand also, outside scholarships in the very vast majority of cases will reduce any need based aid awards your daughter gets. Outside scholarships reduce your financial need, and therefore need based awards. The policies vary by school…with most reducing self help first like loans and work study. You need to check this.
Congratulations on the acceptances. She’s going to college ??. Can you start to narrow down the acceptances and which are affordable at this point. It will make it much easier. Like Rose Hulman might be around $30.000 after merit as an example. If you can’t do that then scratch it off your list. Also check to make sure it’s NOT just for the first year and what the GPA requirement is to keep the merit coming. Anything from 3.0 and up can be very difficult in some engineering fields BTW.
Kevin how will Princeton be affordable? Will your older daughter be in college?
I would hate for you to be going down a slippery slope.
I’m not Kevin but when my DS16 got into HYPM and a few others, P was by far the most generous with need-based aid. So maybe that’s coming through with the EFC now?
Reach : Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, MIT, Cal Tech, Stanford. None of these schools offer merit aid, so if she gets into any of these schools the chances of us being able to afford them are very small and we will likely have to turn them down. But you never know.
Initially, I only applied to schools that were matches for DS. One of his teaches saw the list and questioned why he was not applying to any Ivy’s. Well I didn’t think I could afford to send him to them. I was not aware of the different scholarships or the fact that he was a NMF. Well she told him that she was not going to write his reference unless he applied to some reaches. I myself was a little salty about it because our EFC was at the point where we made too much but not enough. Well he was accepted at all schools except waitlisted at Harvard. He ended up attending Princeton and I must say that they made it very affordable. It was income based not according to the EFC. They broke up our payments into 12 monthly payments, fronted us the $ in a very low interest 2% parents loan and we paid back every years loan monthly for 10 - 12 months. It is possible. DS has since graduated and is debt free and working in NYC.
@Sarrip That teacher who told your son she would not write a reference unless he applied to some reaches was totally out of line.
@sevmom , I felt the same way at the time, after all she wasn’t paying for those extra applications and I had some attitude about it. I have since realized that perhaps she was trying to teach a lesson on limiting yourself and reaching for the stars. Likely she probably would have still written the recommendation. Ultimately, he would not have ended up where he did and my DD20 will benefit from the lesson learned.
As has been discussed several times on this thread before, Princeton seems to be the most generous as far as financial aid is concerned. If there’s one elite no-merit aid school that has a chance of maybe being within the realm of possibility of being affordable, it seems like it would be Princeton. So why not? Who knows, she might not even get in.
My understanding is that by going for merit aid, we are chucking need based aid out the window - there will be none, since merit aid and need based aid mix like oil and water. So if at a $60K school she gets $35K need based aid and $40K merit based aid, our bill will be $20K and there will be no need based aid at all.
I am under the impression that merit aid and outside scholarships can be stacked, so if she gets two $5K outside scholarships, our bill in the above example would be further reduced to $10K. Please do correct me if I’m wrong!
Thanks!
I was going to wait until merit aid awards were mostly all in as opposed to doing it piecemeal. I’d like for this thread to be as helpful as possible for future college applicants who are in a similar situation!
I don’t think your understanding about outside scholarships being stackable is commonly true. That would be a school by school policy so I would assume non-stacking unless explicitly told otherwise by each individual school.
Some acceptances will have merit though, so far, what do these awards look like?
Maybe. You need to check the policies of the colleges regarding stacking of awards.
You stated clearly in another much earlier post that Princeton would only be affordable according to the NPC IF your second child was in college.
This is what you wrote @KevinFromOC
So…Princeton would be bout $19,000 net cost IF your second daughter was enrolled in college. If not…the net cost would be in the $40,000 a year range. Right? How is that going to be affordable.
And if you have a second in college, what will be the cost for the other daughter to attend school? Is the combined expenses affordable?
Many schools subtract the outside scholarships from need/work study.
Some colleges apply merit against the expected student loan and work first, reducing the net price by up to that amount, before reducing grants from the college.
Have any of these delivered FA/scholarships that result in an affordable net price?