This is our second trip through the college search process . I wish I had found this site when we were searching for colleges for our older daughter. I have searched and read hundreds of posts concerning financial aid for colleges and have found many good suggestions. I’m looking for suggestions for colleges/universities that will give maximum aid both need based and merit. Based off of our FAFSA we have a $0 EFC. Basically we are poor. In my searches it is very difficult to actually determine what amount of aid a school will give above and beyond the NPC.
A few stats about my daughter. She fits the “average excellent” category to a tee. Well rounded, but nothing extraordinary.
Class rank 1 or 2 out of 150 (very average public high school)
Unweighted gpa 99.9%, not sure what that translates to on 4.0 model
SAT probably be 1500-1520, she most likely will just miss the cut off for NMSF
Plays sports(not recruit worthy) , class officer, musician, etc
Will have 1000 hrs in one volunteer activity (dairy princess, promotes nutrition)
Works on our dairy farm, has goat breeding business (we are heavily invested in agriculture)
At the present moment is looking at physical therapy or nutrition. Both have graduate requirements so I’m trying to get her through undergrad with no debt. She doesn’t have a current preference to large or small type school and have yet to determine if a 3+3 dpt program is in her future. As a Pennsylvania resident, Penn State is not necessarily affordable. My older daughter is at Pitt, which will most likely be her safety. They have been very generous with financial aid and my daughter has a full cost of attendance scholarship for her 3 yrs as an undergraduate. In doing general research on Pitt’s website you would never know this option even existed. Can anyone direct me to other schools that might offer comparable financial aid? From my experience with the older daughter, we found most private colleges would offer enough aid to get the cost down to around $15000 (basically room and board). We really need more than this if at all possible.
If you can get full tuition, she could use her Pell grant and $5500 loan for room and board.
Have you looked at the Penn smaller publics, like West Chester and Slippery Rock? There was a parent on CC a few years ago whose son had a lot of the smaller state grants that added with merit and FA from the schools, plus Pell and SEOG, made it to full COA. The benefit to staying instate was less travel costs.
Have you considered the catholic schools like Scranton, Dayton, Xavier? They are often quite generous with FA, both merit and need based. Wheeling Jesuit has a lot of the pre-med/health care options like nursing, pharmacy and PT. If she wants to continue to play a sport, it is a Div2 school and can (and does) give scholarships. My daughter played at a Div 2 schools and we were able to balance her merit, athletic, and need based scholarships to almost cover full COA (she did take the subsidized portion of the loans, but graduated with half of that still in her bank account).
What’s commutable? Start there.
Scranton is on the list. The others I have not heard of. We will consider the smaller Pa state schools. She is not good enough to continue to play soccer in college (the travel soccer club experience is very expensive and VERY time consuming). Thanks for the suggestions
Penn State Altoona, which is where most kids around us go. Truthfully, I would prefer her to live away from home. There are some very distinct skills learned when not living with Mom and Dad. This kid needs to spread her wings away from us.
This is well above average.
Schools with this description will be hard to find. Wealthier schools with huge endowments tend to be the more prestigious schools. They typically offer the best need-based aid, but little or no merit aid - they don’t have to, because they are already attracting the most highly qualified students. Plus, at many schools, merit aid is not stackable on top of need-based aid; merit aid will just replace need-based aid on a dollar-for-dollar basis, under the theory that more merit dollars received equals less need.
If your daughter is interested in majors other than engineering, computer science, or nursing, I would suggest looking at liberal arts colleges that meet full or close to full need. She could also apply to elite universities as long as she realizes how highly-rejective they are. However, most of those schools require the CSS (Profile), which may not give as favorable results as the FAFSA to farming/small business families. If she wants to apply to some CSS schools, some colleges will compute a financial pre-read. Pitt sounds like a great option. Hopefully, your daughter will get into Honors and get merit and need-based aid there. Pitt attracts many very strong students, so she would certainly have academic peers. Other possibilities are some of the southern and mid-west flagships, but probably the best you can do with those if she isn’t a National Merit Semifinalist is full tuition.
Edited to add: i missed the statement that your daughter is interested in physical therapy or nutrition. For health-related majors, it will be hard to beat the opportunities at Pitt.
She can get pretty close to a full ride, if she is willing to go to the South or Midwest and attend a state directional school there, for example Troy University in Alabama. With her GPA many of those schools will give her full tuition and some schools will throw in full housing for high test scores.
Saint Michaels College outside of Burlington VT stacks merit and need-based aid. She would be above average, but I believe they have an honors program. Very generous FA, very active and dedicated alumni network.
Questbridge should be your first option - look there.
Then colleges that meet full need - but you sound like a great candidate for questbridge - you an still get to your health professions from these schools.
Here’s Every College That Offers 100% Financial Aid (prepscholar.com)
Undergraduate Scholarships | Troy University suggests probable “tuition, full housing and meal plan” there.
More potential full rides:
Try Wake Forest. They seem to be on the more generous side. The more prestigious the school, the more generous the financial aid tends to be. There’s Vanderbilt as well. University of Chicago is another.
There’s lots of schools that meet need - but with an EFC of $0, you need to look at all the schools that meet need. I provided a list. There’s no reason to pick and choose - it can be a school like F&M in PA, U of Miami , Dennison, Occidental or Harvard.
But assuming income is $65K or less, Questbridge is ultimately the first place to start.
I have looked into questbridge. While we didn’t go so far as to have daughter apply, it looks like we would not qualify. From what I understand, they would count the value of our farm as an asset or value without considering the total amount of loans borrowed against that equity. If someone knows this to be an incorrect assumption on my part I would be glad to be corrected. Even filling out a CSS form gets complicated when you have a farm.
Can you suggest a list of schools to look at. I’m looking for places that would be a good fit. We aren’t attached to any name or prestige at all. Just a good fit that she will be able to grow and excel at.
Pitt will likely be her safety. She will apply in August to Pitt. While my older daughter has had a very positive freshman year there, there are things I’m not 100% impressed with. Basically, there is zero to very little advising for students. My daughter that is there now is struggling to find research opportunities in her field. However that might be because she needs to be more aggressive (but hey, what do I know). I also am not sure it will be good for sisters to be at the same place. This could work for some siblings but not sure it will be good for these 2. Younger sister needs to grow and mature without relying on her older sister.
My challenge is that there is no way to find out in advance that a school like Pitt even gives that large amount of financial aid to Pell grant recipients. In our case, older daughter didn’t even apply to Pitt until end of February because we thought it would never be affordable. We learned about the Pell match on this website. Missed all options to get any other aid or honors program. Pitt came back this year and gave her additional scholarships and cancelled/payed back the Stafford loans. There must be other schools like that out there. I just need to find them.
So your EFC may be $0 but any school that requires a CSS it likely will not be. So what can you pay for year?
I would look at the list of schools I sent that meet need- and run a few of the net price calculators. You’ll get an idea - for example, if you picked an Ivy (Harvard, etc.), a high tier like Wesleyan, a large school like U of Miami and a “lesser” from the list although very good - like a Franklin and Marshall - just to see.
As far as best deals - it’s your typical with your #s - Alabama, UAH for smaller, Mississippi State, U of Arizona, Louisiana Lafayette, Murray State, Troy, and many more. Wyoming is cheap on its own but you have to get there, etc. Some of these schools will estimate your scholarship while others have tables - you just match your gpa and at some SAT/ACT and they give you a figure. So you’d be $3K tuition at Alabama for example.
Some of the PA schools like Indiana, E Stroudsburg, etc. are reasonable. Western Carolina, Southern Illinois are two more to look at. Also, for private price out Bradley and Hofstra on their NPCs.
Anyway, this is a start from a merit POV.
But i would check those net price calculators. Just google the school + net price calculator to see how each school looks at your assets.
Good luck.
Note that NPCs may not be accurate for farm owners…unless the NPC specifically asks for farm/business/land info, it’s unlikely to be accurate. There are CSS schools that will expect families to sell a portion of the land to finance college in some instances, no joke…and I think OP has a sense of that from the experience with the first D.
I encourage OP to ultimately call FA at schools that make the final list to talk about the financial impact of the farm.
I get it - when I talked with Cornell, they gave me a $$ and said if you have this much in assets, you will be full pay anywhere - and i was like - that’s not a lot of dough and it could wreck someone’s retirement.
And they were like - college is an investment and we expect you to invest in your child.
So whether or not the assets are liquid, they are assets and can be monetized - whether that’s right or wrong or something one wants to do is up to them - but i thought at least looking at an NPC might give a guide?
Otherwise you have to look at FAFSA schools - I believe UVA is the only one to meet need for OOS. UNC as well. But they might not see your need as zero.
PS - many NPCs - are also taking academics into account - which is why I listed Bradley and Hofstra - both get aggressive for stop students - although not aggressive maybe to the level needed.