Due to difficult times and very limited finances, merit aid seems the only way to afford college for my daughter. Her non-weighted GPA is 3.94 and she is a National Merit Scholar with potential offers from schools that try to attract NMS’s, but they are not the highly selective ones she imagined attending. She has not yet completed all of her applications. She submitted only one application early action (Fordham as a safety) and received an offer for full tuition for 4 years. Her peers are applying to the usual highly selective schools - one is already accepted early decision and many are getting their early decision applications deferred. She is not that interested in Fordham but we decided that it was a good bet to get some merit aid and we were right. I think my D has a chance at being accepted at a highly selective school but it would be impossible for her to attend since it would be next to impossible for any of those schools to offer anything but need based aid. Is it worth applying (spending the fees and more importantly the time and energy on supplemental essays etc.) when it is very unlikely we can afford to send her there. We may qualify for need based aid for her first year but we will likely improve our situation enough to lose it for subsequent years. We have another child who will be attending college and overlap with her for her last two years - so I know that will affect our expected contribution and our “need.” Merit aid seems the only reasonable choice. Advice? Thoughts?
I think you will get more responses if this is put in the financial aid forum area.
Will the NM schools she has applied to be affordable for your family?
There are a number of schools that are highly selective and that offer very, very competitive merit scholarships, but the deadlines have likely passed. (I’m not completely sure, though. Check, for example, Vanderbilt and Duke. Boston College as well.)
Have you run the Net Price Calculators at any of the highly selective schools that your D is interested in? Some are incredibly generous.
You can look at the links in this thread. Just make sure you check each college for the current 2016 information. The thread info hasn’t been updated in a while.
Some of the more generous merit scholarships required applications by December 1, or December 15…and those dates have passed.
I’m confused.
You can or cannot afford Fordham based on the award she got? And if your finances are very limited, why is merit aid the only way to go? What GPA is required to keep the Fordham award?
What are your instate public options, are there any colleges commutable from your home, what do the NPC’s say about your need-based awards from some of the schools you are asking about???
Has she only applied to Fordham where she could get free tuition for NMF?
What is her ACT score, class rank? What state do you live in? What is she interested in majoring in?
Where others are going is not important, she is on her own path to her future now.
Washington University in St. Louis has some merit aid but the deadline is coming FAST
Thank god she’s in at Fordham, because you are really late in the game to be doing this. If it were me, I’d take Fordham and be done with it unless there’s something really wrong with it for your kid. Most of the good merit scholarships are gone by now, (I know UA and UMD are done).
What other affordable (with NM awards) colleges did she apply to??
It’s not clear to me from your post whether or not Fordham is affordable for your family.
The full tuition scholarship at Fordham does not include fees (at least it didn’t last year). It is tuition only. If you add up fees, travel expenses, books, and NYC-priced room & board, can you afford it?
You can fool around with the NPCs and add a second child in school, estimate a potential increase in income, etc. to give yourself an idea of what Years 1-4 might look like for your family.
When we looked at the NPC carefully for a meets full need school, and estimated a likely future increase in income, plus took our oldest out of college, only the first year looked possible. Years 2-4 were going to financially ruin us. Believe me, there were people who were trying to convince us it was worth it.
Our bright kid who had visions of an elite prestigious private school, was forced by her parents to take a full tuition plus room & board stipend scholarship at an OOS public flagship.
As long as she keeps up her GPA, the scholarship is locked in, no matter how many/few kids we have in college or whatever our income does over the next 3 years. It is a HUGE RELIEF.
During application season and acceptance season last year, it seemed like the end of the world to her. She reports now, over Xmas break, that the school is slowly growing on her. The quality of her work/papers has been noticed by one professor during her first semester, and it looks like a door is already swinging open for her.
Bloom where you are planted! There are many paths!
Thank you to everyone for these responses. For various complicated reasons, as someone pointed out, we are very late in the game. We will figure it out. Love that attitude “Bloom where you are planted!”
If your daughter wants more options and it’s too late to apply for merit, then consider her taking a gap year. It sounds like Fordham doesn’t have the prestige she is looking for. I can understand that, as she’s probably extremely bright. Would she have any interest in USC? I heard they have 1/2 off tuition for finalists. I think that school has more prestige than Fordham. Nothing wrong with taking a gap year and figuring things out. She’s still very young.
I can’t imagine taking a gap year just because Fordham at half tuition isn’t prestigious enough. If the family can afford Fordham’s offer-- and finances are so complicated that the family won’t get any need based aid (not sure this is the case, maybe we can help on this) it’s hard to see how chipping away at lesser merit awards is going to yield a better result.
OP- let us know what exactly you are looking for in terms of aid and the environment your d is looking for academically so we can help you with this.
I have posted this before but it is a great article. It happens to be about Fordham but could really be about any “safety school” http://www.thecollegiateblog.org/2013/07/24/student-stories/
What are her test scores?
How much CAN you pay each year?
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have another child who will be attending college and overlap with her for her last two years - so I know that will affect our expected contribution and our "need.
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That just means that you’ll likely have to pay MORE during those years.
Taking a gap year is a bad idea for a NMF. Those big awards will disappear after this year.
Your DD will find out that many classmates with big plans will have to change their plans once their parents realize that they’ll have to pay more than they thought.
We went thru this with our older son. He wanted a pricey private, but we don’t qualify for any aid, even with 2 in school at the same time. He, too, thought that his fellow top classmates would all go to top schools. In the end, only one did because the others parents wouldn’t pay full freight either.
I hope all works out well for your DD. I love the Jesuit schools and believe if she excels Fordham can take her wherever she wants to go.
Fordham has an impressive list of successful alumni.
It’s hard for young people who want those tippy top brands. I believe it’s what you do in college that counts and the most important name on the diploma is yours.
The chairman of our 40,000 employee company graduated with a BA from a directional state university. He is brilliant. Lots of Ivy lawyers and MBAs report to him. Every one of the Ancient 8 is well represented in our company.
I’d be thrilled with free tuition at Fordham versus full pay at an Ivy. As a student I endured a lot of Ivy debt.
Good luck to you and your daughter and congratulations on the full tuition award!
USC’s deadline has passed (December 1).
http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com/
^check into some of these she might be interested in, and see if deadlines have passed.
Is it too late for OU (Oklahoma)?
Temple’s merit deadline is Feb 1 I think, but full tuition would not be automatic.
Check into Michigan State, UCF, WVU, UAH.
Bryn Mawr? Mount Holyoke? I have no idea what the deadlines are, but they offered big merit aid to my NMSF daughter.