<p>I thought this might be a helpful thread for others. When making your matriculation decisions, did your kids and your family do the following...and for which schools.</p>
<p>School?</p>
<p>Financial aid- Merit? And what are the terms of renewal?</p>
<p>Financial aid- Need based? What are school policies regarding renewal (FAFSA and Profile? or just one?)? Loans included in package? Any siblings leaving college or enrolling? Any concerns if you currently have a sibling IN college who will be graduating...and subsequent EFC calculations? OR any concerns if you will have another child attending college while this current one is enrolled?</p>
<p>Give us a little insight into how your family discussed this...might be good food for thought for others.</p>
<p>And congratulations to all.</p>
<p>Is the question how we decided?</p>
<p>I made a list of each school, direct cost of that school (meaning that I did not count pocket money, or books). I did keep in the back of my mind travel costs as well, and if we were going to be forced to take out a major med policy at that school (our son is covered under our major medical policy). I deducted the grants from the direct costs to figure out the bottom line. I did not include loans because we won’t load our kid up with loans other than subsidized Staffords. W/S was a bonus but not a deciding factor because we don’t know if he actually will be able to earn what was awarded. We let our son choose from the schools that we (parents) felt we could afford. We also kept track of GPA to keep merit awards, but most are at the 2.5 or 2.0 mark because that was an important factor in choosing schools to begin with. We did not want many schools on the list where the GPA is 3.0 to keep a merit aid. My son was able to pick from 7 schools. He was accepted to more, but we took them off the table because of cost. This child had more options than our older child because our EFC is currently lower and he was willing to attend a school further from home.</p>
<p>When we were looking at colleges for our older child, both of our kids had expressed interest in pursuing careers that would require professional school afterwards (law and med). So, we felt that we needed to minimize out-of-pocket undergrad costs and have no loans, so that we could help them later to minimize their debt for professional school. Our EFC is too high to get any aid, so we knew that to reduce cost, they needed big merit.</p>
<p>They “casted a wide net” when applying. But, they included several that would likely or assuredly give them big merit (always apply to a few schools that will give big assured merit if possible). The results were very favorable. One has nearly a full-ride scholarship, and the other has a full tuition scholarship plus $4500/yr. Our out-of-pocket expenses for both kids is probably about $8 per year - at most (about $2k for one and about $6k for the other.) We will be able to help both with their later education costs because we’ve had to pay so little for their undergrad. </p>
<p>A word of advice to a family that will have 2 or more at the same time (and a high EFC). If your older child is more likely to garner great merit, while the younger one won’t, you may want to steer the older child to the high merit schools. You will likely have to pay full-freight for the younger one because the type of schools that he/she would get accepted will likely give poor/no aid even though your EFC will get split.</p>
<p>Also…if merit money is desired, carefully monitor school GPA. I’ve seen kids blow their GPAs by over-doing their schedules.</p>
<p>@mom2collegekids, </p>
<p>how do you find out which colleges give “big assured merit”? Are those LACs, publics, or private unis?</p>
<p>1) The choices you end up with are shaped by the schools that you applied to. Good research starting in the sophomore or early junior year is essential.</p>
<p>2) D liked all of the schools she applied to and didn’t have her heart set on any one in particular. Falling in love with a school can easily cloud financial judgment. </p>
<p>With D we had the advantage of having gone through the process two years ago. Fortunately S1 ended up at a school with great fin aid and we expect he can graduate without any debt. This is only because he had a modest 529 account. Seeing his situation we looked for similar schools for D. She ended up with 3 schools that she can likely graduate from without debt, again because of a 529. We basically left the decision up to her. She didn’t choose the school with the best offer, but she should be able to graduate without debt with reasonable work-study and summer earnings.</p>
<p>In addition, S1 will graduate in 3 years so that will help somewhat. We hope S2 will be able to have some good options as well in a few years.</p>
<p>For our kids (youngest is ENDING her college years…yay!!)…we first discussed as a family what we would be able to contribute financially to her schooling. </p>
<p>For DS, decision was not complicated…he went to a good choice, with good merit aid, and we knew the provisions of his aid renewal. His school did NOT meet full need so when little sis was a freshman (his senior year) that did NOT translate into increased aid. BUT we knew that going in.</p>
<p>For DD, again…three final choices. There were two peer privates. One VERY clearly stated that when DS graduated (after DD’s freshman year) that she would NOT be eligible for the need based aid as they would not count her brother being in school even if he was in grad or professional school at our expense. That school fell right off the radar screen…she needed a place where her modest aid would continue. The second school was going to be so inexpensive that it didn’t matter if they counted or didn’t count big bro in the mix. BUT ultimately she chose school three. She received need based aid, BUT it was an institutional grant that was guaranteed renewal based on GPA (and in fact INCREASED each year by the %age that the COA increased). They counted big Bro as a grad student on her finaid for the years he was in grad school. Because of this, she received WS and a subsidized loan…this would not have been the case at other schools where her EFC would have doubled while big Bro was in grad school…and it DID make a difference in our overall cash flow and payments.</p>