I feel for all the kids nationwide who have been waiting since December for Ivy Day and other admission announcements coming this week.
As a parent I’m equally excited about finally seeing the financial aid letters. Hopefully they will follow shortly. Only then can we really celebrate acceptances.
How about the rest of you?
As far as financial aid anticipation, we were basically offered what the NPCs said it would be so there wasn’t any surprise. Sometimes subsequent scholarship awards can come, which was the case for my daughter. I hope you get what you need for your kid.
We’ve had good surprises and bad. Two top choices came back higher than NPC - one a lot more.
We’re going into my daughters’ senior years and I have found I worry every year until the packages arrive. They’re at schools that guarantee to meet need, but our income and situation fluctuates a bit (not dramatically, but capital gains and bonuses do affect things) so until I have the exact numbers in hand I worry a bit.
It’s always been fine, I built wiggle room into our budget, etc, etc, but there’s always the possibility that something awful will happen. What’s the worst that can happen? Well, one’s at a school that’s got a COA of 74k, and the other is almost 70k. But we’ve paid for 3 years so far. I just keep telling myself there’s no reason to think anything will be dramatically different, and I’ll be glad when June and July come and I’ll have final numbers.
When I applied to college many many years ago, the financial aid letters were crucial. They were my ticket to going away to college. Anything that did not meet the required numbers was off the table immediately just as if it were a denial. I’m sure the same is the case for many other students and their families
My youngest is about to graduate from college so these days are thankfully behind us, but absolutely.
Every acceptance they got had a big giant asterisk until the FA offers came, and they knew that. And in some cases, the acceptance was worthless because the FA wasn’t there. Fortunately they both got into at least one school that was both affordable and a favorite.
I have never enjoyed seeing the financial aid total with any of my kids, because who likes to think of debt. We have never qualified for need based aid but at least the first two kids got decent merit aid so the total wasn’t too bad. It was with the third one who applied to some colleges that only offered need base aid. Yes, we knew the cost, but there is nothing like seeing the FA letter with the actual cost with her name it! This year our fourth one’s dream school gives merit but seeing the total still requires a self pep talk as I am watching one of our neighbor’s doing a kitchen renovation.
I hope you get some great FA!
I think the FA package can generate far more misery. Longer lasting too. You get denied at a school, yes, it hurts, but you have a lot going on with other choices and the act of getting on board with the school that you do choose and attend really distracts from the rejections. The bandage is ripped off quickly.
When you get financial aid packages that are unrealistic and inadvisable by any sane reckoning but they are from the schools your child (and you) so dearly want…well, that’s a long tortuous discussion with efforts to make it work, and for many of us, actually going shaking that lending tree which can mean you are stuck with the consequences for many year and dollars later.
Definitely!
When my son applied to colleges back in the days of snail mail his college acceptance packets included financial aid info – and basically we figured out the concept of admit-deny very quickly. (But kids got some nice swag from some of those schools – they didn’t give much in aid, but son got a free t-shirt from PItzer and daughter ended up with a tote bag from NYU).
My daughter’s financial aid packets from some schools were slow in coming – I remember waiting at least a week after notification, maybe two, for word from U. of Chicago. (Which was a thumbs down – this was back in the day before Chicago started giving great aid).
I will say that plotting out the respective financial aid awards in bar chart form on Excel made the end decision very easy. In our case financial aid packages varied by about $15K in terms of our ultimate costs, so it was pretty easy to rule out the colleges with the less generous packages – and in each case, there was one college among the top choices that offered grant money so much beyond the others that there was really no question,
Would anyone comparing FA offers to NPCs this year want to take the short survey in http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/2133274-survey-how-close-was-your-actual-fa-net-price-to-the-colleges-npc-estimate.html to help future students and parents know which colleges have good NPCs and which do not?
Survey asks for percentage difference, so you do not have to reveal net prices that could be used to reverse engineer your income or assets.
Just FYI, financial aid letters are not necessarily “actual costs”.
The financial aid letters my kids got from their colleges were estimates of state grant, and tuition, fees, room and board effective at the time of the letter.
The actual state grant amount turned out to be higher, fees turned out higher because course fees were added to the general fees, depending on the courses they registered for. Tuition was updated for the new school year, and housing and meal plan costs reflected the actual rates for the assigned dorm and meal plan chosen.
I get it. Mine is in her first year and I have found myself logging back in to the FA portal and being incredibly thankful for the offer that made it possible. Best wishes to all of you.
@cptofthehouse, we are in that situation right now. We are fortunate enough to not qualify for need-based aid, but not fortunate enough that 75K a year is something we can just pull out of our pocket, at least not for 4 years in a row.
DD has some great merit offers from schools she is not interested in any longer, very good offers from schools that are almost everything she wants, and an acceptance without any aid from the school that is probably the best match in all areas except finances. The guilt is killing me. In theory we “could” afford it, but it would mean throwing away any other plans we had for that money–including retirement, home repair, paying for next child’s college, and caring for an aging parent. I know what the smart decision is—it is just hard to face that disappointment.
@iwantalltheinfo We are in the same boat to a degree. Our D19’s #1 choice came in light on the merit aid. She has lower COA at other schools. We could make it work if a gun was pointed at our head, but I don’t want to live like that anymore. We have a lot of things we could do with the money and we have sacrificed plenty already.
I am feeling guilty to a degree, but really is one school $XXX better than another school when they are ranked so close? Plus we have another D coming up in 4 more years. I actually started to like being able to go to the movies at night and not only at the cheap early show. Call me spoiled.
Re: #13
What did you tell her were the financial limits beforehand, and does the #1 choice fit into those limits?
IMO, it doesn’t usually make a huge difference in terms of a good student succeeding at one school over another… Studies that have quantified this have backed this up. Those kids accepted to highly selective schools but ended up at less selective ones did just as well in the areas measured. It can make a difference to an individual student, yes, but overall, the results are clear.
It can, however, make a huge difference in short term happiness which is what can cause us some terrible pain. Also to the kids. Most of us who are so involved in our children’s college admissions process have been supporting our children’s choices and doing everything we could to give them what they wanted. These are often good kids that “deserve” to get good things too. What parents don’t want to give their kids things to make them happy… And when what the want is a college that has great name recognition, a great college, of course we want them to have their first choice.
On a pragmatic note, it also helps during rough times that likely to come in college to have a kid at the school he most wants. Whether it’s sink or swim, more effort is often there when the kid was the one who made the choice. Too easy to blame any of the many problems and issues that arise in life on the school if that isn’t where the kid really wanted to go. So, yes, it’s wonderful on many fronts, to be able to give our children what they want in school choice.
But the financial consequences can be so long reaching and so intense that this isn’t a decision to take lightly. Future opportunities, old age security, all sort of very important things can be affected when you take out enormous loans or spend up your savings for a kid’s college choice. This is not a one time splurge at an expensive restaurant. The ramification can reverberate for year, a lifetime. The effect that capitalized interest has on loans is devastating.
I’d also take a look at the academic supports at all the colleges your kid is contemplating. 5 years at the cheaper school is likely more expensive than 4 years at the expensive school. And dropping out without a degree is usually a perfect storm- the loans are due whether or not there’s a BA in the picture, the kid is likely not going to enter the workforce in a higher paying job, and at some point when the kid DOES go back, costs will be even higher.
So look at the total picture- getting out in 8 semesters vs. 10; the kids who don’t finish on time, is it because they run out of money, or the college’s advising is weak (every Spring we have kids post on CC that even though they have the right number of credits to graduate, they’ve just been informed of some requirement they haven’t met, or they finished the requirements in their minor but not their major so they need to tack on another semester-- YIKES.)
Full picture. An extra semester or year isn’t just tuition- it’s living expenses, forgoing the salary the kid would be earning if they’d finished in June with their class, etc.
Today is (mostly) the end of my daughter’s waiting game for acceptances. After I started this thread we were thrilled to receive the Financial Aid letter from one of her top choice schools- it came out better than the FAFSA EFC and quite a bit better than my fears. After that I switched from worry about finances to excitement over her choices!
@blossom Absolutely about academic support. At most of our publics here in California it’s hard to graduate with an engineering degree in 4 years, and can be near-impossible if you change your specialty. The top privates seem to graduate engineers in 4 years even though they don’t require choosing their specialty until the end of freshman year.
I wish all the kids and families the best luck for today’s decisions!
Way back when I applied I knew that price would play a big role. Surpringly the most expensive school I applied to ended up the cheapest option out of all the schools including a state school after merit/finacial aid was done. I know I had my decisions by January but didn’t make my final choice until late April. I remember my mother had gone to help my brother out a few days after my sister in law had a baby April 20th and I got the last financial letter then. In my case the price differences were big enough that based on finances I had no doubt in where to accept.
For my daughter it was similar in that she knew from the beginning that final price after merit/finacial aid would be a major consideration in where she went though not the only one. The cheapest school she had was actually ruled out after careful thought between the time she applied and the time she needed to accept. However some of the most expensive schools were ruled out do to cost. There was a local school she could only choose if she commuted do to cost. In the end she got excellent merit at the school she wanted to attend so it worked out but otherwise I would have had to say sorry - we just can’t afford it. I also strongly encouraged her to find a state school she felt she could be happy at to have a safety option. In the end though, for her as well, the private school ended up cheaper than the state school even if it was much higher without aid.
Most of the California publics are CSUs that are not that selective, so the students may not be as strong as at the most selective privates, and also have many students who have outside obligations that may keep them from taking full course loads. So it is not surprising that four year graduation rates are lower. However, a strong student who could get admitted to MIT or some such but has to attend a CSU (e.g. because s/he needs FA and his/her divorced parents are still fighting their divorce) is much more likely to graduate in four years than a typical student there (and can make use of the 4-year pledge programs at many CSUs).
Really, any college that is highly selective should have high four year graduation rates (or eight semester graduation rates, if co-ops are common enough to significantly lower four year graduation rates) because the students are strong enough to avoid need for extra semesters. I.e. graduation rates are mostly a proxy of admission selectivity, with some financial aspects thrown in (since a common reason for dropping out of college is running out of money).