<p>DS is a rising senior in NYS with pretty good stats: GPA 4.0 unweighted. ACT: 35. SAT 2270. 3 APS (all 5). 4 more APs next year. Will take SAT IIs in October. NMSF and NHRP. Varsity athlete, student govt, some community service. Likely to have great essays, recs and interviews. Main interest is STEM, with no specific area or career plans.</p>
<p>EFC is too steep for us. I would like to see our total cost to be close to what HYPS would charge. DS and I have discussed finances. I've told him I think he should apply to schools in the following categories, to cover his financial bases:</p>
<p>1) Schools offering guaranteed NMF full scholarships (or full rides.)</p>
<p>2) NYS public schools, especially those that provide some merit aid.</p>
<p>3) Local private schools, where he can get significant merit and where he can commute to save on room and board as necessary.</p>
<p>Sounds good to me. Also there are OOS colleges that may fall into the affordable college as well as some low sticker price schools. With the stats your DS has, he has a good chance of getting some nice awards. What is the max you are willing to pay for college? WHat makes you think that HYPS is going to give you more than the FAFSA EFC? I know that Harvard has its own financial aid award chart which is very generous, but the others may not be that far off the FAFSA EFC numbers.</p>
<p>You don’t state your specific price range, but for an STEM major CALS or HUMEC at Cornell might work because you would be paying in-state rates.</p>
<p>There are more, but these will give you and your son something to start with. In NYS, the only full-ride that I can think of off the top of my head is at [Macaulay</a> Honors College -](<a href=“http://www.macaulay.cuny.edu/]Macaulay”>http://www.macaulay.cuny.edu/) I don’t know how competitive the admissions process is, but the scholarship includes free room and board for the first two years.</p>
<p>You say your EFC is <$20K but your HYP price would be <$10K? </p>
<p>As mom2 said, there are plenty of schools where your son would be able to get a very fine merit award. Check out University of South Carolina…McNair Scholarship. It’s a full ride. U of South Carolina has a fine engineering school.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that CSS Profile schools do consider assets that FAFSA doesn’t. </p>
<p>That said…are you saying that you can afford $10k per year? If so, that means that you’d need AT LEAST a full tuition scholarship (likely more) because room, board, books, fees, etc, can run about $11-15k per year…depending on location.</p>
<p>Yes, I am saying 10K, but remember that given a full scholarship, DS’s loans, school job and/or Summer job could go towards room and board if needed. A full ride from a place like Alabama certainly meets my (financial) needs, but it remains to be seen whether it meets DS’s needs.</p>
<p>DS could probably go to any top school in the country (if admitted) if we were willing to pay EFC + Stafford loans + WS + Summer Contribution. For my family, that could easily become 25K-30K/yr. The point of my OP is to seek strategies for minimizing this cost and providing DS with alternatives.</p>
<p>Yes, I am saying 10K, but remember that given a full scholarship, DS’s loans, school job and/or Summer job could go towards room and board if needed.</p>
<p>Yes, but keep in mind that the money earned from work-study, generally is needed/used for day-to-day expenses and pocket money for the student. College students - especially those who are living aways from home - need pocket money. If most/all of their earnings must go towards basic school expenses, they’re going to feel that they can’t participate in many of the activities that their social circles are involved with. If your child will do some dating, that also costs money. No kid wants to have to stay in his dorm while everyone else is going out to one of the local campus hangouts for pizza and a movie. </p>
<p>I can see that a summer job could go towards books, fees, other misc school costs and, of course, some summer expenses.</p>
<p>Hopefully others will chime in as well, but having 2 college kids, I know that they typically each spend a few thousand a year. We supplement their earnings for things like meaningful spring break trips (For instance: younger, pre-med son went to Nicaragua during last spring break with Doctors Without Borders). </p>
<p>BTW…when figuring a college budget, be sure to include some cushion. There’s always going to be some unanticipated costs associated with being in college. </p>
<p>And, as you probably already know, include some cushion in your own family budget. There was a student who posted a few days ago whose family had to spend their “family contribution” on an unexpected large home expense. This family had no cushion in their budget. No family is going to go all 4 years and not have some major expenses involving home repair/major appliance replacement/car repair/car replacement/health or dental expense/etc.</p>
<p>“4) HYPS, as well as other No-Loan schools (Project on Student Debt: What’s the Bottom Line?)”</p>
<p>So is what you’re hoping with this category that a no-loan school give you that $20K figure and then your son take out a loan and work to lower it closer to $10K? If this is your thinking, you need to realize that:
Any awards that are financial aid, not merit, will already have summer and school time earnings allocated as part of that aid.
In our experience, no loan schools estimated efc a bit higher ($1K-$2K) than schools that meet full need but include loans.
Most no loan schools rely on the College Profile so their estimate for us was higher than FAFSA only schools. </p>
<p>I think your son has a chance at some good merit but I wouldn’t put too many schools in #4 on the list except the most generous (HYPS)-- you may not get the contribution low enough in this category.</p>
<p>I have filled out many FAFSAs and CSS Profiles. I have seen many financial aid awards.</p>
<p>What you will find with HYPS and other no-loan schools, is that you will be expected to come up with as a balance due your EFC (not likely to be less, sorry - maybe more). The student will not be required to take loans.</p>
<p>If your EFC is too steep, you won’t find your balance due to be lower with HYPS.</p>
<p>Back to your question - here are some programs that gave my kids very close to full rides in recent years:</p>
<p>If you haven’t run the institutional methodology calculators, do so. Harvard works differently on how they give out aid, but I’ve known families surprised at the balance schools like MIT, Stanford, Princeton expect them to pay. Yes, they fully fund the need without loans, but they rest is straight business. </p>
<p>Look at any number of schools that offer merit money and where those stats are up there. Throw in some selective schools like Vanderbilt, Emory, GW as well because your son does have very good stats and stands a chance of getting some good merit awards even at the top schools. He is definitely in the running.</p>
<p>But I always feel the first step is the most difficult which is finding a sure thing that will definitely affordable. As you said, UAlabama could be a great deal for all of you financially and he certainly would be accepted, but it may not the the school that he wants. The true challenge in a college school is to find a school that does not have the name recognition factor that a kid can meet his goals. Anyone can cherry pick the top names off the list. You gotta dig to find the hidden gems.</p>
<p>I think the OP’s strategy of applying to some schools from each of those various groups is a good idea. Since getting accepted to HYPS is always questionable, no one can count on that. Plus, it’s unknown what those schools will determine Family Contribution to be since they use CSS Profile.</p>
<p>Over the next year, assume that your child is already in college to help determine how much you really can afford to pay. It’s not unusual for a family to think that they can afford to pay X…but then realize that paying X is not do-able. </p>
<p>I would encourage my son to stay very open-minded to mid-tier schools that will give large scholarships. Those schools have lots of high stats students on scholarship - largely in STEM majors - so classmates will also have high stats. Some of those schools also have excellent honors colleges.</p>
<p>A common misconception people have about mid-tiers that give many large scholarships is that their children won’t have other smart classmates. These scholarship kids are largely found in about 6-10 majors (engineering, math, bio, chem, physics, and a few others). These kids are not equally distributed across all majors. They are concentrated within a few.</p>
<p>My kids who had high stats like your son accepted large scholarships, and so far, they have not suffered in any way. Older son graduated in May, and will begin his PhD at at Top 20 school in August with a full tuition and very large stipend Assistantship. He was accepted to every PhD program that he applied to. Younger son will be applying to med schools next year. Med school will cost us some serious money - but that’s ok since their undergrad and DS1’s PhD will have cost us very little.</p>
<p>My friend who has a son at Yale and a son at Harvard, does get great financial aid, but no where near what the EFC would say. Actually H is very generous, Y, less so. They are still paying more than they can comfortably afford, though doing it happily and borrowing to get their kids through college. They, too, assumed and were even told that their kids would get close to full rides at such schools.</p>
<p>They were also accepted to a lot of other schools, but since they did not deliberately target schools for merit aid, they did not get a lot of merit options and even the best financial aid fell short of what they considered great packages with 2 in college.</p>