Thanks for pointing out my blind spots!
It’s not true. At some colleges, international students cannot apply for need based aid in subsequent years if they don’t apply as incoming freshmen, but they can’t do the FAFSA at all anyway.
There are a small handful of colleges who put restrictions on applying for their own institutional aid…but there are NO restrictions about applying for federally funded aid in subsequent years.
But…federally funded aid is limited to the Pell Grant and SEOG which are both for lower income families. And the Direct Loans which anyone can apply for.
If you don’t apply for aid by completing these forms, the school will expect you to pay the full cost of attendance.
This is absolutely not true. Just about every public university in this country is need blind for admissions. The admissions folks have no connection to or have any idea what your financial aid forms indicate…at all.
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Need based aid is awarded usually by the financial aid department.
Merit aid is awarded by admissions…unless there is also a need component.
Admissions won’t know your financial need. Merit aid is awarded based on the strength of rhe application, not your financials.
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If your kid applies to a college that costs nearly $90,000 a year…and you can only pay $30,000…you really should be applying for aid. Is this because you don’t have high income or is this because you don’t want to pay more than $30,000 a year.
If your income is such that you would qualify for need based aid…apply for it. If you just don’t want to spend more than $30,000 a year…you need to look at colleges that either have that as a cost to attend per year…OR where your kid is guaranteed to get sufficient merit aid to reduce the cost to you to $30,000 a year.
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Correct, work study money is federal money. So they have to have demonstrated need. Each college awards it differently.
For true merit -based awards, NO fafsa or css is ever needed! This applies to all fully merit-based awards , including but not limited to Wake Signature Scholars, Duke Robertson& the other ones, UNC Morehead-Cain, Davidson Belk, WashU Danforth/Erwin etc, the Vanderbilt chancellors and their others, the Emory Woodruff and their others. Note Ivy League does not do any merit, only need based, and among the highly competitive schools such as the ones I listed, merit is VERY rare, as in 1-3% of ACCEPTED students get these. They are typically tippy-top stat kids who truly stand out with EC, LOR, essays, etc, in an already highly competitive pool. It is simply too rare to plan a budget around getting this level of merit. But, you don’t know unless you try! My D23 got one of the Wake full cost of attendance ones (less than 30 awarded, selected from the entire applicant pool who applies by the priority deadline).
Less “prestigious” example of merit without Fafsa is Fordham, who awarded my D21 almost 30k per year in some named scholars program, full merit based as we did not do fafsa/css. Fordham gives merit to a much larger % of the accepted pool than the high ranking schools, and I am sure there are other schools in this “less” prestigious realm that do as well. we were not looking for merit so I do not have a comprehensive list.
if you are full pay and are comfortable paying 80+k per year, then do not worry about fafsa or css and shoot your shot at these.
If you do not know whether you qualify for aid OR if you are chasing merit and require less than the listed COA to attend, I would recommend to do the fafsa so you will be able to take out federal loans and be considered for need-based.
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Note that federal loan limits that a student can take out under their own name is as follows:
$5,550 for first year, with the subsidized portion not to exceed $3,500
$6,500 second year, with the subsidized portion not to exceed $4,500
$7,500 for each of years three and four, with the subsidized portion not to exceed $5,500
For the subsidized component, the federal government will pay the interest while the student is in school and for the first 6 months after they graduate.
Any other loans need to be taken out by parents, or co-signed by parents, as lenders will not typically loan to a student.
Edited to correct a typo in the “mini chart” that I set forth above.
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I appreciate and welcome everyone’s feedback and comments.
We are your typical ‘merit chasing on a set budget’ family with the average excellent student in S24. He is not looking at the Ivies and we are philosophically against taking out loans to pay for undergraduate education. I do not think his overall profile is strong enough to apply for named scholarships mentioned in @2Devils post, but it might be with a shot. Fordham’s generous merit aid keeps popping up in a lot on various threads. I know it’s in the Bronx in NY, and have not been to NY since I watched Escape from New York, so assume it’s changed a lot and for the better.
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I don’t think merit will get you down to $30K at Fordham. I know people on here regularly mention it as a place that “gives good merit” but if you read through the thread for this year you will see that for many people it was the most expensive of their child’s choices in the end.
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Have you considered Alabama and Arizona?
ETA: maybe start a new match me thread so people can provide suggestions that meet your budget. It’s worth leaving this thread as is IMO because other parents will find your original topic helpful.
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Agree with @DadOfJerseyGirl.
If you want some help with figuring out a list of possible schools, give us:
Your Budget
Your Child’s wants/needs in a school
Some info about stats/scores (for merit hunting)
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Also, be aware that for merit hunting - while it might be a good idea to apply to some reach merit school (like Fordham’s full ride offered to top 1-2%) - most of the best merit offers will be at schools that are probably academic ‘safeties/likelies’ for your student.
And the more money you are looking for, the farther down in selectivity you may have to travel. To get private universities to $30k or lower without having any financial need as defined by FAFSA and/or CSS will limit the scope of the schools you might be able to realistically get to budget.
In addition to Arizona and Alabama, other schools to check out might be UNM and Miami Ohio.
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Then you for the helpful suggestions. I have started another thread a few weeks ago that covers a lot of ground as far as our budget/stats/best options where to apply.
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Building off of what beebee3 said, my family had essentially no financial need according to the forms (FAFSA EFC mid 70s). We only have $25,000 per year per kid saved, however. When we started looking into our options, it was very quickly clear that our high GPA, high test score, but generally “average“ kid would only be able to get below that number at a few places, and we would have to be very flexible on location and prestige if we wanted to do it. We weren’t that flexible, though.
What we realized is that the magic number if you have no financial need according to FAFSA seems to be about $40,000. There are many, many schools that could get us to that number with merit but very few that could get us below it.
For our S23, in the end we decided to use our 25,000 per year + cash flow about 10,000 per year from reduced expenses (he had some activity fees & educational expenses we were paying during high school). For anything over $35,000 per year, he could use his savings, he could take out the student loan, he could work, or he could do any combination of the 3.
ETA: oh, I see from your other thread that your budget is up to $50,000. You should be able to find lots of places that will fit that, even without qualifying for need-based financial aid. There will definitely be schools that won’t meet it, also, but you should have lots of choices.
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Agree with you completely.
Looks like the big issue will be the same one so many students with excellent stats have: the list of schools they actually are interested in don’t really offer much in the way of merit aid and they don’t seem all that interested in schools that do offer big merit aid.
As with all families dealing with that push/pull - they’ll have to figure out what is most important to them.
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It looks like you received a lot of suggestions there, so you should be good.
The main thing to keep in mind is “highly selective schools” (from your first post here) does not work with “no financial need” + “$30k budget”.
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Thanks again to all of you, the journey continues!
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