Northeastern University Financial Aid/Scholarships??

Colleges and Universities A-Z Northeastern University
1

I got accepted to Northeastern early action and my EFC as calculated was around $15,000. I’m expected to pay around $23,000 for attendance which is reasonable. However, I also got accepted to Tulane where they gave me 32K in merit and then more in need-based. Do you think Northeastern would consider repealing my financial aid decision to get it down to around $15,000 a year or maybe increase my merit scholarship? I got the Dean’s Scholarship @ Northeastern for 10K a year but I heard the highest given is 25K a year. I have a 32 ACT, 3.93 UW, Ranked in the top 1% of my class. Also, are there any additional NEU scholarships that I can apply for to increase my aid? I know about the Torch Scholars but anything else??

Please let me know if it’s even worth it to try repealing. Thanks!

2

I don’t think it can hurt, but I would be sure that NEU would surely be your choice if they increased their package. If you’re waiting on other schools, I would wait. It also is possible they may be more generous as the deadline approaches in May.

I’m not aware of any additional scholarships, and that would replace financial aid, so it would not help to find one outside of NEU either, unfortunately.

Good luck!

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You would not be eligible for the Torch scholarship.

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@TomSrOfBoston why not? I was nominated

5

Never hurts to try. Congrats on Tulane. Amazing how packages can differ so much right? That is why you need to apply to see what you can get. Seems to defy rhyme or reason sometimes.

NEU is a great school with a great co-op program. You gain so much valuable work experience while in school that you are almost virtually ensured a great job when you leave. Many places bump up your pay because of this experience. You are not a recent college grad with no experience. You will have over a year under your belt already. So those positions that say 1-5 years experience required are covered. You are set!

Good luck.

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@jpls23 You didn’t state that in your original post.

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@jpls23 I’m interested in whether you ever tried asking NU to reconsider your financial aid package?

We are in the same situation. Our son was accepted into Northeastern and chosen for the Honors Program. While the financial aid award, along with a merit scholarship (through the program), was generous, it still left us responsible for twice what our EFC for him is. Our EFC for each of our two children is $7884, so between the two we were expecting to pay close to $16,000, with the expectation that it could be a little more. Currently we are expected to pay close to that for him alone.

Our daughter is a junior at UNC Chapel Hill. While they met 100% of our financial need for 2017-18 with only $4,400 in loans (and $7,884 out of pocket) - Northeastern did not meet 100%, leaving us with $15,001 out of pocket (and $7,500 in loans), rather than the $7,884 we were counting on. One of the many reasons my son favored Northeastern was the “Northeastern Promise” of meeting 100% of demonstrated financial need. The fact that Carolina makes that same guarantee has worked out very well for us over the last 3 years with our daughter, and that same guarantee played a significant part in his selection process.

In addition, FAFSA using 2015 over again didn’t help us. My husband lost his job toward the end of 2015 and worked two part time jobs making significantly less for most of 2016. While it will come into play next year, it doesn’t help our depleted savings at this time.

We sent an email to my son’s financial aid counselor Friday morning, asking what we needed to do to have his award reevaluated, but have not yet received a response. I am very interested to know if you made that request, and what the results were.

Good luck to you!

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AVL Mom, this is the answer I got. “You can log back into the FAFSA and list yourself as a dislocated worker. While completing the CSS Profile, there will be a section to list special circumstances that we will review and take under consideration and possibly ask for further documentation if we think further aid may possibly be awarded.”

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I would like to share my experience asking for more aid. I got only a $27k honors scholarship. I submitted a change in circumstance form (my family made a decent amount less than we did in 2015) back in December. Today I found out I was offered no additional aid. Unfortunately now I can’t go to my dream school. Oh well.

10

Sorry to hear that, @Floridaball :frowning:

The unfortunate fact is that even if they’d re-evaluated and given you need-based aid, it would not have stacked with your merit award, so it would have helped only if you’d gotten more than $27K in need-based aid. This is why students from the middle 60% income-range (i.e. neither top 20% nor bottom 20%, but in the middle three quintiles) make up only 31% of the student population at NU. It’s a hard school to make work for the economic majority in the “donut hole.”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/northeastern-university

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@Floridaball

Sorry to hear that :confused:

Is UF still your best bet currently?

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@Floridaball Not sure if you how much of a gap you are trying to fill but let me share my older child’s experience going to NEU in case it helps. When he got in, he did not want to take out loans. We, like you, submitted a change in circumstances and the only change was to be offered subsidized instead of unsubsidized loans. We had enough, with his scholarships to cover 1.5 years. I spoke with the FA director and he advised me to spend what we had to pay cash as far as we could and then reapply for aid if we needed it. As things turned out, we didn’t. Some of the college savings waiting for the first half of year two was in stock and stocks went up some and that helped. Year 2 child got good paying co-op. Went to school summers and got some of that covered. Bottom line- no new money from parents but still managed to graduate debt-free.

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@PengsPhils Yeah, UF is my best bet. I’m still happy to go there, just not as happy as I would be if I could go to Northeastern.

@Husky1,2 Thanks for the advice, though to be honest I don’t think my parents have that much saved up. My dad told me we have about $14,000 from my Florida prepaid account, which is really helpful if I stay in state, but doesn’t really help as much when I have $40k per year to pay to Northeastern. Obviously I’m fine with taking it some loans, but not that much.

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@Husky1,2 thank you very much for your advise. We were told that since he is no longer a dislocated worker because even though they are using our tax returned from 2015, when they ask you about whether you are a dislocated worker, they are asking about right now. My son even had state medical coverage and free lunch at school - they won’t take that into consideration because we don’t have it now.

I did contact his financial aid adviser and requested reconsideration of his financial aid award. We submitted our 2016 W-2s and tax return - which showed that we made $27,000 less in 2016 than in 2015. My husband was working 3 jobs until last month, when he lost one of them because he was unable to juggle all of the schedules (it was for extra income to make up for the year he was out of work). That income was included on our 2016 tax return and they are aware that he no longer has that job.

We were offered an additional $3,000 grant money, bringing our NU EFC from $17,999 down to $13,999. He has a $20,000 Honors Scholarship, a $25,900 university grant, $3,500 sub loan, $2000 unsub loan, $2,000 perkins loan and $2,200 in Federal Work Study. Because he’s in Honors, he is supposed to live in the Honors LLC in East Village, which costs over $300 more a year than the other dorms. Because of that, we were looking at lowering his meal plan to 10 meals a week from the 15 they suggest, which saves $890 a year - so all said, we would be able to lower costs by about $500. We could probably afford $11,000 our of pocket, but only because D’s FA is so good. We aren’t having to pay any out of pocket for her because she is off campus and UNC’s FA is excellent.

It would cost us $6,600 for S to go to UNC Chapel Hill 2017-18, but it would go up once our daughter graduates in 2018 - with us then having only one child in school.

Two questions - Huskey1,2 - We honestly feel that our son would be more successful in his studies at NU than anywhere else. He has ADHD and learns by doing and we really feel, as does he, that NU’s type of learning environment is made for him, and that the Honors programs would give him an edge with the smaller classes, support, etc. You said that your son graduated debt free. It would be worth it to us to get S in there and stretch the budget for two years, with the hopes that once he starts his co-ops, that he too will be able to pay down some of his loans. How often do you hear of this happening? He would be a Chemistry major at NU, would be a Pharmacy major at Carolina. Should he be able to get a decent paying co-op as a Chemistry major? He plans on being a Medicinal Chemist, or going to medical school to be a neurologist. If he does, great, but I know that the majority of pre-med students change their mind. I believe that NU would be the place that would help him determine what he really wants to do.

2nd Question - Does anyone what any experience with the “Northeastern Promise.” Does your EFC, scholarship money and grant money stay pretty much the same each year of attendance? I don’t want to have him commit, have D graduate and then find out that NU has decided that our EFC needs to double.

He still hasn’t committed and we are running out of time. So afraid to commit to something that I can’t back up all 4-5 years.

Thank you all!