<p>I want to thank all the parents that have shared information here - I had a steep learning curve on college admissions this year and you've really helped. D received her first award letter today and it took my breath away! After reading the post about preferential packaging from the Muhlenberg website yesterday - I was convinced that my D had made good choices regarding where she has applied and it is all going to work out for her. The school that posted the award letter is a well regarded LAC, CTCL list, meets almost all need - 90% plus. D received top merit scholarship plus a leadership award, total $20,000 with her acceptance. Lots of communication from admissions and coach. We both thought the school really wanted her to attend. COA is $50,000. Package includes $7600 in loans -Perkins, sub and unsub, $2400 in work/study, $2000 Pell grant and $3000 grant from the school. I feel like it doesn't matter if you are a top applicant at a school and are awarded great merit aid. All this does is replace the need based aid the student would have been given. Clearly, this college is not affordable for us. Back to sleepless nights for me!</p>
<p>Financial aid is tricky. Back when I attended college, I was awarded merit aid and loans. When I refused the loans, the college made up the difference with need-based grants. Not so sure that happens anymore.</p>
<p>I learned that merit aid replaces need-based aid in the same week that I learned that some federal scholarship was cancelled. The upshot was that in one week I learned that $14,000 (total) I was expecting for my son wasn’t going to come. It was a hard week.</p>
<p>I think the biggest lesson I learned way back in 2006 with S1 was that there is “merit” that are dollars award based solely on the student’s academic accomplishments that is additive to financial aid and then there is merit which is really need based albeit the same name and that generally all those things don’t stack on top of each other. I also thought any scholarships my son brought to college with him diminished our EFC. Ah the dirty little secrets of paying for college. Good luck to you OP, pretty soon you’ll be a veteran.</p>
<p>There are SOME (note…some…not all) schools that allow stacking of financial aid awards (merit and need based) up to the cost of attendance…but these are not the majority of schools. At most schools, if you receive a merit award, it reduces your need by at least some of that amount.</p>
<p>To the OP…it will all work out…I’m hoping you have a financial safety school on your daughter’s application list. If so, you know the cost will be affordable someplace.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>this is all really hard, and the OP’s findings as well as the above quote are truely the “dirty little secrets” of financial aid. The worst part is that not all schools play by the same rules. So you have to re-educate yourself for each school. And hope you can keep it straight!</p>
<p>Very unfortunate, especially when you try to do everything right.</p>
<p>The key lesson for everyone is that misunderstood phrase “meets need”. The devil is in the details. Each word has a connotation.</p>
<p>What does the word “meet” mean? or rather how does the school meet needs? 90% through grants? 90% through loans? They type of they way that the need is met could make a big difference.</p>
<p>What is the word “need” mean? FAFSA schools usually are restricted in how they define need. Profile schools can and do define need differently. So the wisest strategy is apply to several places, always have a financial safety (which could a community college or directional state U) and never make decisions unless you see the actual package.</p>
<p>90% plus need met is not 90% for each student. Some students may have 100% of need met, others 70%.</p>
<p>My oldest attended a 100% need met school. our need was $15,000- the rest up to $50,000 was met with small subsidized Stafford & grants.
However, if we couldn’t have afforded our EFC, it wouldn’t have made any difference how generous the grant was.</p>
<p>Schools are not going to award merit that covers EFC except in very rare cases. I agree that $3,000 is not much merit from a private school with high COA. My daughter got that much from a small public school!</p>
<p>Need can be met with a combination of loans,grants & work study. PROFILE may define need differently than FAFSA.</p>
<p>The other “dirty little secret” about merit aid is that it is usually most beneficial to full-pays, i.e., to the very people the college deems to have no need because they have ample financial resources at their disposal. For most students with high need (at most colleges), merit aid just substitutes for need-based aid dollar-for-dollar; EFC stays the same. For full-pays, merit aid goes dollar-for-dollar toward reducing net COA and thus out-of-pocket expenditures.</p>
<p>We “lucked out” when D went through the application process, because with our oldest I had no clue about financial aid or the admission process. Hadn’t discovered CC yet!</p>
<p>For S, our starting list of schools to consider was selected based on “could he afford to attend if he got in” - thankfully there were several schools on the list he liked. Even better, he was admitted ED to a school that meets full need with no loans AND allows outside scholarships to reduce need, up to COA.</p>
<p>Do you mind sharing the school, college_query? I still have one more to go.</p>
<p>“Schools are not going to award merit that covers EFC except in very rare cases.”</p>
<p>Reducing EFC takes strategy…</p>
<p>1) attend a school that costs less than EFC.</p>
<p>2) accept a merit scholarship that is so big that not only does it cover “need,” but it then “cuts into” EFC. </p>
<p>3) If you have “no need,” then any merit you receive will reduce what you pay to some degree.</p>
<p>Most schools will not stack merit with aid and have it exceed “need.” Often schools award merit FIRST, and then see if there’s any remaining “need” …if there is, student loans, grants, and/or work-study might take care of the balance.</p>
<p>@Saintfan - Bowdoin College.</p>
<p>Thanks. I had kind of hoped D would apply to Bowdoin, but she didn’t. One of her best friends did, so I’ll be interested to see how that turns out. She went really high reach with a Stanford app, then dropped down past the Bowdoin “tier” in to more safe LACs. Grinnell is our closest to that in terms of FA where they split the attribution of outside scholarships and cap loans. We won’t here on that until March 24th, though.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, bclintonk, thank you! I’ve been advising everyone I know to not apply for FA, so that they too can take advantage of merit aid reducing COA dollar-for-dollar. It’s time we exposed the dirty little tricks of those scoundrels! Now that we finally have some sunshine, everyone can benefit.</p>
<p>U.S. News annually publishes a list of schools that claim to meet 100% of financial need:</p>
<p>[Colleges</a> That Claim to Meet Full Financial Need - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2012/02/16/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need]Colleges”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2012/02/16/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need)</p>
<p>However, some schools on this list include loans in meeting need, while others don’t. But it’s a good list to start your research from, if such a policy is advantageous to your individual situation.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Absolutely true, safe and except that it is neither a secret nor dirty. I would be surprised that the explanation about the total of demonstrated need and EFC not being able to exceed the COA has not be posted thousands of times on College Confidential. It is really one of the MOST basic tenets of financial aid, and College Financial Aid 101. </p>
<p>If there is a secret, it might be that schools with limited financial aid love to offer their best scholarships to students they know will have substantial need. The effect on the school’s “books” is the same, and the parents can crow about scholarships and merit aid at the cocktail hour. So, everyone wins! Of course, a cynic might note that since everyone knows that a full paying family will benefit for merit aid at a increased cost to the school, it is “easier” to offer it to a needy student. In so many words, merit aid is harder to obtain for a specific group of students. And not necessarily what the logic might dictate!</p>
<p>I have to say that I’ve learned an awful lot on this forum, but this tidbit was the most surprising - and disconcerting.</p>
<p>Yes - xiggi exposed a truly dirty secret. Even when merit means true merit, it still doesn’t truly mean true merit.</p>
<p>Ugly.</p>
<p>This is a random excerpt from a website:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This was culled from [Types</a> of Financial Aid](<a href=“Financial Aid and Scholarships | California State University Long Beach”>Financial Aid and Scholarships | California State University Long Beach) but the same language should be found at any school in the country.</p>