Honors college
Ah, HC - honors college. Hard to decipher acronyms without the needed morning cuppa joe.
Agree that a lot of these misconceptions about the college search and FA process were addressed in this (and many other) threads on CC.
@cshell2
Not going to hijack Kevin’s thread (you can start your own if you have additional questions)
Start with the basic premise of need based financial aid:
Cost of attendance - EFC= Demonstrated need
The school determines your demonstrated need. Yes, there is a big disconnect between what the school thinks the family can afford to pay and what the school believes the family can afford to pay.
There are approximately 60 schools that meet 100% demonstrated need
UVA, UNC-CH and Michigan are probably the only 3 public universities that meet 100% demonstrated in for in and OOS students.
The only thing the FAFSA really does is determine your eligibility for federal aid (in some cases state aid, some schools (CUNY) will use your FAFSA EFC to determine if you will have to pay an enrollment deposit). University of Chicago is one of the few schools that will meet 100% demonstrated need based on your FAFSA EFC (they also state on their financial aid website that they may ask you for additional information in determining your financial need). Many schools will ask you to submit the CSS profile or their own financial aid forms to assess your families need when it comes to distributing their own institutional aid.
If 100% of your need is not met, you have a gap. It is up to you/your family to fill the gap the best way you can.
Some schools will allow you to fill the gap (unmet need) with outside scholarships. Remember, just because the school determines your EFC to be way more that you were expecting to pay, it does not mean that you have a gap.
As others have stated regarding outside scholarships; some schools will allow you to use your outside scholarship for the one time purchase of a computer. Some schools will allow you to use outside scholarship to reduce your student self help aid -federal student loans /work study. After that outside scholarships will be used to reduce your financial need.
My kids have been allowed to stack bc their awards are merit, not need-based aid. (Publics that dont offer any need-based aid.)
@cshell2 in most cases, if your aid gets reduced due to outside scholarships they do start by reducing the self help portions first…work study and student Direct Loans.
After that, they might dip into grants,etc. but your net cost would not increase.
It’s nice to have loans reduced even if it’s only for one year. It might be possible for your student to get a job that is not work study…but right now, the availability of those jobs is iffy.
ETA…some colleges will allow outside scholarships to be used to meet unmet need (this would apply to schools that don’t meet full need…and left you with net cost higher than your calculated family contribution) but that’s not your parent contribution.
Yes, contact your colleges because policies vary.
Actually, after pulling up the financial aid letter I think we’re ok. After all the aid there’s still almost a 4K gap and it says right in the award that outside scholarships can be used to pay it.
“Remaining estimated costs minus gift aid, loans and work-study
Additional funding options include the Federal Direct PLUS Loan for parents (dependent students only), private loans, and outside scholarships.
See z.umn.edu/fundingoptions for more information and how to apply.
Total
$3,920”
We’re sitting at about 3-4K in outside scholarships (still waiting for final dollar amount on one of them), so it shouldn’t effect his other aid any. I’m still going to have DS email the school and ask their policy if there were additional scholarships.
@cshell2
Are these outside scholarships one time offers or are they renewable for 4 years? you need a 4 year plan to pay for college.
What will the plan for years 2,3, &4 be if these are all one time scholarships ?
@sybbie719 - $1500 is one time, another $1500-$2500 is renewable (find out exact amount in May). We have enough 529 savings to cover everything not covered by grants/scholarships but DS is still going to take a work study position to cover his personal expenses.
I think this is the most important takeaway from this list and frankly this thread. Most parents need to plan early in their child’s life about how they are going to pay for their kid’s college education and not to rely upon the whim of colleges to fund most or all of their kid’s college expenses. Save early and often would have given this student many more options and to the OP less angst and stress in the process. With that said, i’m glad it’s all working out in the end. Thanks for sharing your journey.
As a concrete example of reducing financial aid because of additional merit aid :
Initially, my daughter got a half tuition scholarship to USC in the amount of $30K. USC also gave her $5K in financial aid, for $35K total aid.
Then, a couple weeks later, USC awarded her a $15K departmental scholarship. You would think that should give her a total of $50K in aid. But, after USC updated her aid letter, it showed $45K in merit aid and $0 financial aid. The $5K financial aid just vanished!
Wait. What? How is this one not true? I’m really hoping it’s not as my kid spent a lot of time on scholarship apps to get a few local ones that we were assuming would be applied towards the parent/student contribution, not replacing other aid/merit.
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Colleges vary on how scholarships interact with need-based financial aid. A common (but not universal) policy is that scholarships may replace up to the amount of unmet need, student loan, and student work, but then replace the college’s financial aid grants before reducing parent contribution. Here is a clear example (although there is no unmet need or student loan in the base financial aid package): https://financialaid.stanford.edu/aid/outside/index.html
If you are a Maryland resident, note that the state now prohibits its public universities from “scholarship displacement” unless the total amount of scholarships + grants exceeds the cost of attendance. But this is probably unusual.
@KevinFromOC I have a question, which may have been answered already but I don’t recall reading anything about it: What were your and your D’s impressions of the engineering department at USouthCarolina?
I remember some of the “bigger” scholarships my DS14 got sent the money directly to the university and they factored it in. Of course, DS accepted one school, got off a WL very early in May and switched schools, but the $$$ had already been sent to the first school and I had to track it down and get it back!
Did you ask who took your $5,000? Maybe there’s a form to report the theft? ??.
What did USC consider your EFC to be? It could be after they gave your D the departmental scholarship, your demonstrated need (as they calculate it) was met. The $5000 went poof, because they could not overaward you.
That’s exactly my point - the extra merit scholarship caused a reduction in the financial aid offered - they were not stacked.
@KevinFromOC Congratulations on your daughter’s achievements, I cannot wait to hear where she chooses to attend. I know she will do well wherever she goes. I have been reading (and lightly commenting) on this thread since you started it last year.
One issue I still struggle with in your journey is that you had certain ideas you wanted to be true (highly selective schools being willing to stack merit scholarships along with financial aid in order to reduce your EFC being but one of them) that many of us told you these schools don’t do and yet you choose one of those schools to ‘prove’ your point of you ‘losing’ financial aid.
It is like if I said at the beginning of my child’s college application process, “I would like schools to charge the tuition and R&B that they charged when I attended school” (many more years ago than I am going to admit). Yes, that would have made paying for next year’s college bill much easier…but that isn’t the way the process works. And I think most people would have laughed if I had continued to argue that tuition should have been frozen decades ago because it would make my life easier today.
Your daughter has options that allow merit aid stacking over and above the COA, which means she could literally get paid to attend one of the schools she has been accepted to (U of South Carolina). Complaining that U of Southern California does their financial aid differently (meets 100% of need as they define it)…and you ‘lost’ the 5k of need they offered when they awarded your daughter 15k more of merit - without acknowledging her additional merit award already reduced USC’s calculation of your EFC is specious…to put it lightly.
Many of the knowledgeable posters who contributed to your thread had told you accurately how financial aid would work at highly selective colleges before the college application process began. You deciding to ‘roll the dice’ against factual information does not make the process one you lost. It was over in terms of how the money worked before you began. Most people told you Princeton wouldn’t be affordable if your older daughter didn’t have college expenses high enough for Princeton to count in their calculations, that is what Princeton told you as well. You not liking how Princeton delivered the message is very similar to you not liking how posters here delivered the message.
Ultra selective colleges aren’t great options for students of high income parents not willing/able to pay their EFC. That was true before your daughter’ senior year in high school and will most likely be true going forward. It can be a bummer to realize that your personal dreams for your child aren’t going to come true because of decisions you as a family made along the way, and your hard limit of what you are willing to pay for college.
I hope my comments don’t seem unsympathetic to the desire we all have for our children to ‘get the best’. I am sympathetic to that desire and think your daughter has 3 options that many would feel are among the best out there if budget is a large part of your decision making process. She also has 3 options that give her choices of what is most important to her in a college experience (continuing to play her sport at a high level, or going to a top-rated engineering program, or getting paid to go to college). Her choices give her options on what kind of weather she wants to live in for the next few years. She has options, really really great options.
I just wish you could see that you haven’t been misled, you didn’t ‘lose’ financial aid, and your daughter did as well in admissions as she possibly could have with the EFC that your family’s income and assets (along with your family’s budget) allowed. Families reading this thread aren’t helped by grievance against the clearly defined processes schools laid out for families who have the ability to research, and which many people here tried their best to have you understand before your daughter began the admissions process last fall.
Enjoy her accomplishments, congratulations again and I cannot wait to cheer her final selection as she is going to be a rock star wherever she lands. 
What an interesting read! I spent almost an hour catching up on this journey this morning. There is a rich exchange of information here and I clearly see the mix of rational and emotional thought that all parents go through. My 2 cents (might even be 3):
- Don't spend a second looking back at Princeton. As I have shared, I attended an Ivy school 25 years ago and the finances don't pencil out for most. The "connections" and "networking" are largely overstated and limited to particular industries and regions. That Princeton staff came off as cold and unfriendly isn't surprising. Their metrics don't require that they be different. We saw the same from a "hot" college here on the west coast. Didn't give us the time of day, didn't return a nicely worded appeal/question letter and obviously moved on to the next candidate in line.
- A Latina in the STEM field will be very attractive to potential employers in almost any scenario. I was surprised that the upthread poster saying differently. In my work (public sector) we are told unequivocally that bilingual candidates or candidates of color will receive interviews regardless of the size of the applicant pool. Diversifying our workforce is top priority.
- I disagree with beebee3 above and read your comments not as ignoring the advice of experienced posters and then complaining but rather just getting wrapped up in the emotional process we all find ourselves in (and just "knowing" how great our kid is and wanting the best for her/him).
I too did this. I knew that it probably doesn’t work this way but was wrapped up in trying to do the best I could for the person I care about more than anything and so I was irrational. Call me guilty. And when the universities DIDN’T recognize how special my son is… I was disappointed (even though logic and reason told me I should not be).
In the end you have some tremendous options on the table. It isn’t my place (but that doesn’t stop us on CC sometimes 
) but that South Carolina package is too good to pass. Congrats!
For jobs where interaction with the general public or customers who may speak some other language better than English, applicants who know that language certainly may get preference. But race/ethnicity is not by itself a determination of skills in various languages.
@beebee3
I learned early on to let a lot of comments slide here on CC. And I have let several antagonistic ones go without responding. But the statements I cut out above are so blatantly incorrect that I strongly feel the need to address them here.
(1) I was absolutely 100% positively certainly NOT complaining about USC removing the $5K of merit aid. When I posted my top 10 list of things I had wrong 2 years ago (post #1468), my #1 misconception was this :
After you get your financial aid award, you can decrease your cost of attendance even more by getting merit aid and/or outside scholarships. For example, if you apply to a school who’s COA is $70K, you might get $40K in financial aid which brings your cost down to $30K. If you then get a $20K merit aid award from the school, that will bring your cost down to $10K. And then if you get a $6K outside scholarship, you will only be paying $4K to attend that school.
Another poster, cshell2, was surprised by this in post #1473. Several other posters then confirmed to cshell2 in subsequent posts that I am correct and that the vast majority of the time merit aid does not stack with financial aid. Then, right after those posts, I posted my example of USC - how by them adding more merit aid it removed the financial aid - providing a concrete real-life example of how merit aid and financial aid do not stack and that by increasing merit aid it will reduce financial aid. Again, I was most definitely NOT complaining about USC doing this - I knew that’s the way it would work. I would claim that taking that one post out of context without reading the posts immediately proceeding it is specious.
(2) We knew full well when we applied to Princeton that it would not be affordable if our older daughter didn’t have college expenses. But if she did, then there was a chance, however slim, that it might be affordable, which is the reason we applied. We knew it was a longshot.
When it became clear that our older daughter would not be attending college full time, we realized that the chances of Princeton being affordable to us went from 20% down to 2%.
I decided to throw a Hail Mary pass and followed up with JHU and Princeton about their financial aid. JHU blew me away with their positive response. Princeton blew me away with their negative response. I was under the impression that Princeton would act like JHU and try to work with accepted students to try to reduce their cost of attendance. They did not (at least in our case), and that surprised me, especially given their reputation. Had Princeton responded the same way JHU did, we might have tried to make it work.
(3) Nowhere do I feel I was misled. If there is a specific post of mine where I give the impression that I felt misled, please point it out to me. Again, I am not upset at USC at all - I knew that additional merit aid would make the financial aid disappear. And I have no grievance about this at all. I realized and understood the “clearly defined processes” 18 months ago when I started talking with a college financial advisor, who informed me of these things. The comments I got here on CC reinforced all of this, and I took them to heart. This is the reason why, with Princeton being the only exception, she only applied to schools that gave (or appeared to give) merit aid. We did understand the processes before admissions last fall. I don’t understand why you think that I think I was misled or that I hold some sort of grievance.
Sorry for the rant, and I hope this doesn’t derail this thread, but (as you can tell) one thing that really upsets me is when people make false accusations.