<p>wen i went on the johns hopkins financial aid website... there was a way you could find out the estimated family contribution... mine came out to be $5000 per year... which is pretty low.. i was surprised. does that mean that the college will provide the rest of it through need-based scholarship and grants? How good are private schools in general in helping people who really need the grants and scholarships?</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins according to "discounts and deals at top colleges" does meet 100% of need isn't need blind and has few merit scholarships.
need is met by grants and scholarships as well as loans and workstudy.
Private schools can offer great aid, look at Princeton, but a lot depends on the student.</p>
<p>If your family can only pay $5 k a year for college (and do check with your parents to see if they feel they can pay even that), then your large amount of financial need may keep you from getting into some of the many colleges that do not have need-blind admissions.</p>
<p>Only something like 50 colleges in the country make admissions decisions totally need blind. To my knowledge, virtually all of these are among the hardest colleges in the country to get into.</p>
<p>For that reason, you should make very sure that you have some safeties where you know you can get in and where you know that you definitely qualify for excellent merit aid as well as need-based aid. If you have the kind of stellar record that woudl make Johns Hopkins a place that you might get in, probably your flagship state university would work as a great safety, guaranteeing you excellent merit aid. Usually top state universities have wonderful merit aid for their state's top graduates.</p>
<p>If you are in a state, however, like California, where the top state universities are extremely difficult to get into, then do not count on getting in to your state's top university. Do everything, however, to get your applications in early enough that you get into some state university and also get good aid.</p>
<p>Often at rolling admission universities, the students who apply earliest are the ones who not only get admission, but get the best aid packages.</p>
<p>Actually, many colleges are need blind. Virtually all of the non competitive schools that take nearly anyone who applies are need blind. Most of such schools have very little in aid and nearly all of it is from government sources. Any need unmet by those funds which are limited, particularly if you are applying to an expensive private schools, is just gapped. At best you are steered to some loan agencies. When you start getting into the category of schools that have some funds of their own to award along with government money, you start getting into some culling for financial need.</p>
<p>this question may sound stupid but i guess a lot of people get worried about it.
how need-blind are need-blind universities? does anyone have real examples if anyone who requires a lot of financial aid still gets accepted to the university? if i can only pay around $3000 (i'm an international student; my country's currency is at its horrible state), will that hurt my chances of admission at need-blind universities?</p>
<p>If you are an international student, there are not many colleges that are needblind for you. You need to search out which ones can fulfill your needs and then look at the financial aid resources available to internationals. In addition to some truly needblind for international schools, you should include some schools where your profile is outstanding in comparison to their students so that even if the school is not needblind, they may take you and finance you. In general, an international who can only pay $3000 a year is disadvantaged in admissions in the highly selective need blind universities, and though such a student could get into a less selective need blind university, the chances of getting enough money to make up the gap is related to the qualifications of the student in the context of the other kids at the college and the current year's applicant pool.</p>
<p>i don't know. i'm applying to princeton early and A LOT OF people say that no matter how much financial aid i require, they won't consider that for admission decision...</p>
<p>I believe Princeton is need blind for international admissions. Dartmouth, Northwestern, for example are two schools that are not. However, if you do make the pool of kids that,say Dartmouth, decides it wants, then they will provide 100% of your need as calculated by their methodology. So it does depend on the school.</p>