<p>I'm not going but fin aid really sucked...</p>
<p>$1100 of grant per year
$1750 scholarship per year
$1500 + $850 tuition waver
$3200 work study</p>
<p>and finally...: the loans.. $7800 (before the scholarship and tution offer it was close to 10,000 dollars) Although if my parents do pay 3000 dollars per year, it would be closer to 4000.</p>
<p>I would not go instate and owe this much money at OU.. did anybody else get crappy fin aid?</p>
<p>i did well academically in high school and i got no academic scholarship and i got only minimal loans.</p>
<p>and i was already hesitant to go there because it is so impersonal. i've never even spoken to my admissions counselor.</p>
<p>So are you going to go somewhere else?</p>
<p>They have a good scholarship for national merit finalists.</p>
<p>thats is my impression too. For the NMS they have money but for man other people ...no.</p>
<p>Ok this is really late but i'm gonna compare my school and OU's fin aid.</p>
<p>$1100 of grant per year
$1750 scholarship per year
$1500 + $850 tuition waver
$3200 work study
$7800 loans</p>
<p>$35,000 grants (private school-tuition is 35K)
$2000 scholarship
$5K loan
$2750 workstudy</p>
<p>I wish OU's finaid was better... booo</p>
<p>I applied for literally over a hundred scholarships before transferring here at OU. I transferred with a 3.6 GPA and was very active in clubs, organizations, and volunteering. This is what I received annually:
$700 sooner heritage
$1500 apartment scholarship
$1500 transfer scholarship
A BUNCH OF DAMN LOANS!!! (parent plus, subsidized, unsubsidized)</p>
<p>I hate financial aid here.</p>
<p>Welcome to OU. They give most of their money to National Merit folks who get almost a completely free ride! In fact, they get a computer and a trip abroad worth $1,500. Even better, for most of these benefits ( such as waiver of out of state tuition), they only have to maintain a measly 2.8 overall GPA!</p>
<p>These folks should thank you for subsidizing them…</p>
<p>OU’s fi-aid was simply terrible. I am going to be able to go to an Ivy league school for half the price I would of payed at OU. And I am no slacker of a student. I simply don’t understand how they expect to get any top non-national merit student’s unless they increase merit aid.</p>
<p>That’s not the only area that needs improvement. My D applied back in January and just found out she was admitted 2 days ago. She qualified for automatic admission, but we weren’t going to count on that until we had it in writing. They’ve had some kind of computer issue that’s lasted for 6 months. It took several emails to get hold of our admissions counselor to check on the status, but we finally found out online. Now they say it may be a few more weeks til we find out if there’s any aid coming, although judging from this forum, there probably won’t be. A few more weeks will be at the national reply date. This is crazy.</p>
<p>It also took me over 5 months to hear back from OU admissions. and I easily jumped the automatic admissions criteria. While the staff seems very professional on campus, I’ve been far less than impressed with their outside communication. I’d say good luck on the fiaid D of cal</p>
<p>You must remember that the University of Oklahoma is first and formost a STATE university. OU is mainly trying to get in state kids. The in state tuition is one of the LOWEST in the nation, and OU does give out plenty of in state tuition waivers for non national merit kids. (oklahoma higher regents, presidents scholars, ohlap, as well as departmental waivers). OU is sacrificing out of state financial aid in order to keep costs of instate students down. Since Oklahoma isn’t exactly the wealthiest state, this is crucial in order to allow lower income students to get a college education. As I am a National Merit Scholar from Oklahoma, I realize that I have a different viewpoint on this issue than many since I get a fine scholarship package from them. I do however recognize that Oklahoma’s financial aid is a nightmare for out of state non national merit students.</p>
<p>EDIT: I also have to mention that the financial aid office here is ridiculously dumb. I encourage anyone applying for financial aid at OU to quadruple check your financial aid report as they will screw everything up that is humanly possible. Its too bad that such a great University is marred by a subpar financial aid office.</p>
<p>Well while I agree with you in general bhill, I too am an in-state student. and have found that if you’re not an OHLAP student, or a NMF, then your finaid sucks. period. even with a 34 ACT score, being a states regent scholar, and native american scholar, it would still be more expensive to attend OU than any of the 3 ivy league schools I got into. In my opinion, that is ridiculous and has resulted in me losing alot of respect for OU’s policies.</p>
<p>I got a pretty decent financial aid offer from OU and I am neither NM or OHLAP. I will agree with pretty much everything being said in this thread though. The first thing that annoyed me about OU was the utter inefficiency of their admissions office as evidenced by how they treat applicants. They think they have a monopoly on higher education in Oklahoma, which couldn’t be any further from the truth.</p>
<p>Here’s an example:</p>
<p>I applied to OU and OSU both the same night via their nifty online application. These two colleges get about roughly the same number of applicants. Two weeks later I got my admission letter back from OSU and a really cool packet full of helpful brochures and pamphlets outlining the rest of the admissions process and helping me realize what a great college OSU is. Right after that I actually got a call from my admissions dean offering to take me out to dinner if I should be in Stillwater any time soon. </p>
<p>Getting impatient, I called the OU office and asked what their deal was. A rude call center technician put me on hold and transferred me to an even ruder “admissions representative” who told me “it is currently taking us 14-16 weeks to process applications at the moment, thank you, click.” I was stunned and amazed at how it almost seemed like OU did not even want me to go there, and then I realized what they were doing: They were going to try and wait things out and give me my admissions letter by the time that I had no other options than OU from waiting so damn long.</p>
<p>I realized a stark difference setting apart OSU from OU. People really were much friendlier in Stillwater, not to mention competent. Their staff had the attitude that they were working to make the lives of the students a little easier and move them along the path of success. OU’s staff had the attitude that people in the state of Oklahoma grew up rooting for OU their whole life because that’s all white trash rednecks ever amount to (take OU’s biggest fan, Toby Keith for example)…maybe a lot of students are idiotic enough to just apply to OU. It wouldn’t surprise me at all. They don’t compete for students unless they are NM scholars.</p>
<p>I applied to like 5 schools, got rejected by Michigan (that hurt! lol), and got fairly decent finaid packages from OU, OSU, and SMU. Then I got a letter from OU accepting me to their President’s Leadership Class. I was told by several people of what an honor this PLC thing supposedly is and how you form a personal relationship with David Boren. Yeah right. I’d rather form a personal relationship with an eel than an ex-politician who loves the sound of his own voice more than anything else in the world. What did I do? I called my OSU admissions dean and told her of the OU offer, and asked her if OSU had a PLC as well. She said they did, and she also told me that upon reviewing my extra-curricular resume she was definitely going to make sure I got “extra consideration” for it.</p>
<p>In every way possible, the people at OSU have really taken care of me. In almost every way possible, the people at OU have just really annoyed me. I could chose OSU over another college on its own merits, but when the admissions office that really serves as a student’s first impression of a school is THAT bad, the choice becomes even more apparent. The conclusion of this long rant, mostly over how much I dislike OU, is that OU is one of those schools that uses its long lines and idiotic red tape as a crooked advantage in every way possible. By putting the student down, the school administration’s job is easier.</p>
<p>My daughter is a National Merit Finalist as well as being a recipient of the Academic All-State Award. There are some nice things that come with that if one chooses to go to OU: a tuition waiver, a year studying abroad at a reciprocating university which honors the tuition waiver, the ability to live on the NM floor in a dormitory, and a $1500 laptop allowance. This is a very nice offer, and one not to be taken lightly. All told, it would have allowed our daughter to attend OU for only about $5,000 a year. This is the amount the admissions people told us to expect for food, books, fees, things that the waiver didn’t cover. </p>
<p>After my daughter had received her finaid packages from the two schools she was considering, OU and Vassar, her father lost his job, which brought our income down substantially. We notified the financial aid offices of both schools. We actually visited OU’s financial aid office. We were told that nothing would change. We didn’t qualify for a Pell Grant, so there was nothing else they could do. Vassar, however, upped their offer to the point that it would cost the same money for her to attend Vassar, which also lets their students study abroad for a year, and built into our package enough transportation money for her to fly home a couple of times during the school year. </p>
<p>Naturally, we chose the Vassar education over OU’s offer. It surprised me that, with all the hype about wanting as many National Merit scholars as possible, OU didn’t do more to keep this one.</p>