@Penn95 Thank you for the insight, especially on the similarities between the colleges. I really wish I could visit the campuses to see for myself but unfortunately I don’t think that will be possible because flying my family to the east coast from Hawaii is something that would strain us financially as well as schedule wise. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for my applications though, because I’m well aware most of them are highly selective haha
@AroundHere Oh gosh, I think I’ll have to meet with my college counselor a bit more to discuss all this. I don’t get much guidance from my school on college applications because two counselors are in charge of 750+ students. I think the CSS profile allows us to get more financial aid than FAFSA does though
The main reason you might be getting more money on the CSS is if you do not own a house or business. CSS counts home equity on your main residence, which the FAFSA does not. Therefore, homeowners tend to have a higher CSS EFC than their FAFSA EFC.
The best way to understand your costs at your schools is to run all of the net price calculators. There is also a College Board EFC estimator here:
When you file the CSS Profile, they do not report your EFC back to you like the FAFSA does, so it is a bit more of a black box kind of thing. Each school can also tweak what the college board does to the numbers, which is why the individual net price calculators may be better.
Your high school counselor will not be the greatest for college financial aid issues, unfortunately. They usually do not have time to really look at the parents’ finances. Run the net price calculators with your parents and discuss with them what is affordable for you.
Your counselor can give you pointers to finding scholarships to apply for, but like I said, you just can’t count on that to get through four years of college.
From the Stanford Daily in December 2015:
“On Friday, Dec. 11, Stanford accepted 745 high school students for early admission to the Class of 2020, amounting to an acceptance rate of 9.5 percent. 7,822 students applied to Stanford’s restrictive early action program, Stanford’s largest ever early applicant pool. 701 applicants were deferred to the regular admissions program.
This year’s early acceptance rate was lower than last year’s, which was 10.2 percent. For the Class of 2019, Stanford accepted 743 and deferred 562 students out of a pool of 7,297 early applicants.”
Stanford’s admissions office declined to release numbers for the class of 2021, so it is unknown how many SCEA applicants were deferred to RD in this cycle:
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2016/12/10/in-break-from-past-stanford-declines-to-release-early-admissions-data/