@bjkmom if you don’t mind sharing, what are some of the private schools with the institutional grants (outside HYPS) that will get a student “very close to the state universities”?
Do you mean the state universities COA with, or without, their own merit aid (whether automatic or competitive)?
Thank you.
@ohiovalley16
Sure, but first a few disclaimers:
Here are some of the economically feasible ones (translation: they land us mostly in the 20’s including room and board) we’ve found once we consider all that. One or two land us in the low 30’s.
Holy Family University
Cabrini
D’Youville
Daemen
Duquesne
Keystone
Neumann
Newbury
Post University
Albertus Magnus
Mount St. Mary (NY)
Richard Stockton (NJ)
St. Francis University (PA)
St. Thomas Aquinas
St. Vincent (PA)
York PA
Cazenovia
Also, the state schools in both MA and PA are relatively affordable, even for out of state students.
Very helpful @bjkmom , thank you. I’ll go play at collegenavigator sometime soon.
My D is in a different place academically than your S (I’m not up on a high horse about it or anything). Some state U’s within 4-6 hours of us are offering automatic full tuition, others zero, and everywhere in between. Duke was the OOS private showing the most aid in their NPC - nearly 20K based on stats alone - but that still left their NP in the high 40’s.
Go to each school’s web site and use the net price calculator to get a financial aid estimate. What you will see may not necessary be what someone else sees.
Yeah, numbers in the 40’s simply are not possible for us. We’re both teachers–in Catholic schools no less-- and my son is the oldest of 3.
We can’t even look at schools in that ballpark; it simply will not happen.
One of these days, when I’m not in the mood to do schoolwork or housework, I’m going to sit down with last year’s tax return and to the NPC for each of the schools on our list.
But in the meantime, I figure I’m getting at least a ballpark idea of whether the school is even open for discussion.
My son’s school requires all apps to the GC and teachers required to ro recs 3 weeks in advance…check their rules too! Nov 1 may mean Oct 1!
I’ll echo the
advice…it certainly worked for us.
@ohiovalley16 - Both my D and S were high achievers and several private (though not as selective) schools offered merit that brought the cost below many of the publics they were accepted to (UC’s), though a few publics did give enough aid to make them cheaper. The more selective private schools were not necessarily as generous. However, depending on your EFC, since many of those schools meet need it could bring it down to below a public. That’s what the NPC are for.
Our recs for the class of 2016 were due in before school ended in June.
@ClaremontMom we appear to be pretty screwed in terms of EFC - thanks in part to doing some of the “right things” over the years, as we understood them to be!
That’s according to the Big Future calculator on CollegeBoard.org, though some individual privates came out with an EFC that was up to 8K higher. In your experience is BigFuture a pretty accurate proxy, since we’ve yet to complete a FAFSA?
@ohiovalley16 - I found it to be pretty accurate (give or take). But people on here warn that some situations (such as owning a business) makes it less accurate. Our situation was pretty straight forward.
^Yes, so’s ours, so that’s good to know.
We have a large whiteboard that lays out all the schools and all the key dates and anything needed for the application so we know what is needed when for every school at a glance. Some of the information we listed included needed recommendations/dates, application due dates, scholarship application dates(some use admission form and some have separate), automatic scholarships, college codes, application fees, and cost of attendance.
It seems like every school varies in some way so tracking all this information down took a solid mornings work. Laying out the schools that require essays and the schools that require questions (some 300-400 essay in reality) is helpful as well since DS is trying to get these done over the summer.
Since each school is different, I learned how important it is to carefully review. For instance, one school said applications are due by February 1 but on a separate part of the website it noted that for any scholarship consideration the scholarship application must be in by December 15 and the application must be in by November 1st. Its also important to understand what implications the application has on items other than EA. For instance, one school uses the date you apply to allow you to register for housing.
It can be overwhelming for the entire family so start early if you can. Entirely different from when my husband and I applied to college. Best wishes!