Congratulations on a decision! A great decision. USC is a strong flagship school, and you will find that the extra money you will have available to address any issues—crises and opportunities alike, in the next several years will make your family‘a quality of life much better.
Congrats!! She will thrive and accomplish all her goals as a Top Scholar at USC. She’ll graduate with a great education, money in the bank, great memories, and a great job. No looking back. Enjoy the next leg of her journey. Four years goes by quickly.
Good job dad! Take a minute and enjoy. A lot of things had to go right for your daughter to be where she is. Nice parent moment for you for sure.
Congratulations! I’m in Chicago and my oldest DD (now 30) attended USC and my middle DD is finishing her sophomore year. Excellent opportunities at USC! Let me know if you or your DD have any questions.
Congratulations! Thank you for sharing your journey. I have been following and have learned quite a bit. My oldest DD will be applying this fall.
@KevinFromOC Congratulations and thank you for writing your college process with your DD this year for the rest of us parents. I have appreciated your candor on this thread regarding the whole admission process.
Below are the 23 schools my D20 applied to, with final numbers and applicable comments. But first let me explain several important things regarding these numbers.
When I give a school’s COA, I am referring to the costs paid to the school, which are tuition, fees, room, and board. I am NOT including other things that schools will factor into their total COA - things like books, supplies, travel expenses, and miscellaneous.
In addition, for some schools I’m using the 2019-20 COA and for others I’m using the 2020-21 COA.
For financial aid, our EFC was $22K. For both the FAFSA and CSS Profile, I indicated that we would have 2 students in college. As it turns out, we will only have one student in college, so had we pursued schools that offered financial aid the amount awarded would in reality be drastically reduced or eliminated altogether. The only 2 exceptions to this are Johns Hopkins and Princeton, which are the only 2 schools I inquired about financial aid, and I talk about those in the school lists below.
When I give the financial aid amount awarded, I do NOT include loans offered. I personally think its absurd for schools to consider loans as part of financial aid. I do, however, include Work Study offered as a separate item.
For some schools, it wasn’t exactly clear what part of their awards were merit based and what part was financial aid based - in those cases I tried my best to distinguish between the two but I may not be 100% accurate.
All COA, Aid, and Cost to us that I list are per year for all 4 years. Most schools will raise their COA a little each year, and it is unclear if merit and/or financial aid awards would also be raised to cover those costs or not. Miami Ohio, and possibly a few others, freeze their costs for all 4 years so there is no increase.
Costs are rounded to the nearest $1000.
So here is the list, sorted by lowest out of pocket cost to attend to highest out of pocket cost to attend :
(1) University of South Carolina. D20 was invited to the Top Scholars competition. Initially she was awarded a Horseshoe scholarship, which is essentially full tuition, but was named a McNair alternate. Very soon after the initial award she was notified that she was bumped up to a McNair. In addition, she was awarded $6K Provost for NHRP, and an additional $6K departmental scholarship.
McNair Scholarship : $22K + In-State tuition (essentially an additional $23K) = $45K
Provost + Departmental Scholarship = $12K
Out of state COA : $48K
Merit Aid : $57K
Cost to us : -$9K
So, although we haven’t seen it official yet, our understanding is that she will receive a check from UofSC for about $9K every year for her to attend.
(2) Rose Hulman. D20 was awarded a Commitment Scholarship for full tuition, and later won a full room & board scholarship. On top of that, she was awarded a full scholarship for the cost of a laptop, which they require incoming students to buy and costs $2400.
COA : $66K
Merit Aid : $65K (plus a one time $2400 laptop)
Cost to us : $1K
(3) Miami Ohio. D20 was awarded a $41K merit scholarship, and invited to attend the Presidential Fellows scholarship competition, but she did not win a PFP scholarship. They did give all PFP finalists a full tuition award, but with her initial scholarship she already had a better than full tuition award.
COA : $50K
Merit Aid : $41K
Cost to us : $9K
(4) UC Irvine. BIG CAVEAT : this does NOT include room & board - this is the one school she applied to where she would live at home and commute. So the COA and Cost to us numbers here cannot be directly compared to other schools.
In-State COA without Room & Board : $14K
Merit Aid : $5K
Cost to us : $9K
(5) Alabama Honors College.
COA : $45K
Merit Aid : $33K
Cost to us : $12K
(6) Utah Honors College. Given that D20 already had 4 scholarship competition invites, she did not apply for their full ride Eccles Scholarship.
COA : $42K
Merit Aid : $28K
Cost to us : $14K
(7) Arizona State Barrett Honors College
COA : $45K
Merit Aid : $29K
Cost to us : $16K
(8) Michigan State Honors. Like Utah, D20 did not apply for their full ride Alumni Distinguished Scholarship
COA : $50K
Merit Aid : $28K
Financial Aid : $1K
Cost to us : $21K
(9) Johns Hopkins. No merit aid with JHU, but very generous with the financial aid. When I contacted them about the fact that our other (disabled) daughter would not be attending college full time, they stated that they will consider her to have a comparable college career and as long as she is financially dependent on us and progressing towards independence and taking college classes, and as such they would not reduce our financial aid. They were also very eager to find any other reasons to increase our financial aid, and in my opinion really tried to work with us to reduce the cost even more.
COA : $74K
Financial Aid : $50K
Work Study : $3K
Cost to us : $21K
(10) Pittsburgh Honors. D20 applied for their full ride Chancellors Scholarship but was not invited to the competition.
COA : $50K
Merit Aid : $27K
Cost to us : $23K
(11) Clarkson Honors. D20 applied for their Ignite scholarship but did not win.
COA : $69K
Merit Aid : $38K
Financial Aid : $5K
Work Study : $1K
Cost to us : $25K
(12) UCLA. Was not awarded any merit aid at all.
In-State COA : $29K
Merit Aid : $0
Financial Aid : $4K
Cost to us : $25K
(13) UCSD. Like UCLA, not awarded any merit aid at all.
In-State COA : $29K
Merit Aid : $0
Financial Aid : $1K
Work Study : $2K
Cost to us : $26K
(14) RPI
COA : $73K
Merit Aid : $41K
Financial Aid : $5K
Cost to us : $27K
(15) Princeton. Their financial aid offer did not include our other daughter having any college expenses. I contacted them and had a very negative experience - they did not seem interested at all in working with us - the complete opposite experience of JHU
COA : $72K
Financial Aid : $43K
Cost to us : $29K
(16) USC. D20 was invited to their Explore USC event where she could win a half or full tuition scholarship. After attending the event, USC became her #1 favorite school, but unfortunately she only won a half tuition scholarship plus $15K in other USC scholarships. Had she won a full tuition scholarship we probably would have found a way to make it work.
COA : $76K
Merit Aid : $44K
Work Study : $3K
Cost to us : $29K
(17) Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)
COA : $66K
Merit Aid : $19K
Financial Aid : $15K
Work Study : $3K
Cost to us : $29K
(18) Vanderbilt. D20 applied for CV full tuition scholarship but did not win. She was in fact not awarded any merit aid at all.
COA : $73K
Merit Aid : $0
Financial Aid : $38K
Work Study : $2K
Cost to us : $33K
(19) Stevens Institute of Technology
COA : $72K
Merit Aid : $28K
Financial Aid : $7K
Work Study : $2K
Cost to us : $35K
(20) Worcester Poly Institute
COA : $70K
Merit Aid : $31K
Financial Aid : $1K
Cost to us : $38K
(21) Northeastern
COA : $74K
Merit Aid : $33K
Financial Aid : $0
Work Study : $2K
Cost to us : $39K
(22) Colorado School of Mines. D20 was invited to apply for their full tuition Harvey scholarship but after examining the chances she did not.
COA : $56K
Merit Aid : $14K
Financial Aid : $0
Work Study : $2K
Cost to us : $40K
(23) And the only school that she applied to but was waitlisted was Rice.
3 Likes
She did very well.
Congratulations to your DD on a job well done. $9k in the bank will pay for expenses that inevitably arise and a lot of opportunities can be funded too with little to no out of pocket costs. We found that with our kids there were always other expenses that come up in life, not necessarily for the college kid, and keeping those fixed costs low can alleviate a lot of stress.
Congratulations with a great choice! I have a kid who attended our state flagship on a full ride and is doing very well. In the end it is all about the student and what he/she accomplishes during and after the college.
I believe there should be an official number called COA that includes tuition/room/board/books/travel/personal expenses and university can only reimburse up to COA. To go over one would need to receive external scholarships or Pell/State grants. Maybe they can add money for a laptop.
It is still beneficial to have more scholarships than 1st year COA as COA will increase every year.
Kevin - I love reading this. I have read every part of this thread as we too have a S20 - engineering - pretty good stats, (but not quite as high as your daughter) and similar EFC - and 4 kids. He applied too to some of these same schools from this thread; and our numbers are similar to yours in some cases - on a sliding scale downward! Hopefully this can be super helpful to others in the future.
I forget though: was your D a NMF? and how many did you visit?
Oh rip the band-aid off and pour salt on it why don’t ya?!
I’m just kidding, we are over it, but no, she is not a NMF. She had a selection index of 222. I think there are 3 states that had a cutoff index of 223 - Massachusetts being one of them. Every other state (including California) had a cutoff index of 222 or much less (some as low as 212). If her Math and Reading/Writing scores had been reversed, she would have gotten a 223 and made it.
But as it stands she was a National Hispanic Recognition Scholar (my wife is Hispanic), which for many schools gives similar benefits.
Of the schools she applied to, she visited before applying (for hockey purposes) : Northeastern, RIT, and RPI.
For the big scholarship competitions, we visited USC, UofSC, and Miami Ohio. We just missed out on visiting Rose Hulman - they had their competition online instead.
If you are not aware you should be. Tuition aid is non-taxable but room and board aid is taxable. Read the IRS documentation.
Yeah, it is something that I wasn’t aware of 3 months ago, but am now. I’m in the middle of trying to find out exactly what the damage will be…
Great results, and very helpful.
Only two surprises for me. I would have expected more from Princeton on the financial aid front, both in terms of initial amount as well as willingness to work with you more. And I am surprised given your daughter’s profile that she was turned down anywhere, even at Rice RD.
Congrats to both of you on a job well done.
OP, You and DD made a great team in getting through all of this in a crazy admissions year. I think she’ll do great at USCar and they will be able to offer her the intensity in academics and opportunities galore.
I was also surprised about Princeton’s inflexibility and was impressed with Hopkins’ flexibility. I’d have guessed the other way around. Not surprised about Rice. They have a Strong Hispanic base so that would not have had as much Impact as at other schools. They also tend to focus On financial aid packages to very low income/asset families. I wish the other USC had worked out as it was her favorite.
I misspoke about OP’s daughter being turned down at Rice - she was waitlisted.
While it is true that Rice has a strong base of Hispanic applicants to choose from, more than anything else what made OP’s daughter a unicorn in my view was her advanced math work and proficiency. OP’s daughter did BC Calc as a sophomore (and got a 5 on the exam). My kid is Hispanic and has done math competitions for years, so we know the lay of the land so to speak. If there are 25 Latina females in the entire nationwide applicant pool who took BC Calc at 15 years old and got a 5, I’ll eat my copy of Rudin’s Analysis text 
Put any money refunded to you in the bank…that will likely cover any money your daughter owns in IRS and probably state taxes too.
She will, I believe, get the standard deduction. @BelknapPoint
OP should do research about how taxes can be minimized overall in this situation.
Congratulations to your daughter! I hope she is very happy there.
I might have missed it but did she apply for and receive any outside scholarships? If so, I’m curious about how those will be applied and taxes involved.
Also, if for some reason she is not able to move into the dorms this year, how will that affect your package?