My child hasn’t received any financial aid packages yet, but the merit awards - $2000 less than the top published level - that came with acceptances don’t look like they will be affordable.
Covid 19 did a number on us regarding financial aid. When I ran the NPCs pre-Covid, the midwestern LACs looked manageable. Then due to Covid, our income increased past a certain line that changed the formula. That 2020 income will not be repeated, in fact, the wear and tear of that year probably hastened my husband’s retirement. Yes, we put much of that money aside for college costs, but it won’t cover the difference for 4 years.
Since you’re already looking at fly-over country, would your son consider Truman State University in Missouri? It’s quickly become our financial safety. We’ve been impressed with every communication from the school. They even offered $3000 more than the published merit award. I believe it was for her ECs and community engagement. Bonus - last night we explored the area on google maps and they have a Mediterranean restaurant within walking distance. This has been hard to find with other midwestern small towns. Four years without shwarma and garlic sauce is hard to imagine for a kid from southeast Michigan.
@Juno22 – If you had significant one-time income, many colleges will let you file an appeal to disregard that income because it was an anomaly. Some will disregard it altogether, and some will move it to assets (but since assets are assessed at a much more favorable rate than income, that is still a big help). This happened to us – we had significant one time income in 2019 and both of my son’s colleges decided to disregard it entirely after we filed an explanatory appeal.
Also, many colleges will have forms for an appeal and may have a special area just for this circumstance – so they are used to this type of a request.
Thanks Juno. Obscure public institutions are the ones I’m seriously lacking information on. I’ve scoured the LAC territory and pretty sure I haven’t missed much or at least done my best. I just have no idea how to go about finding something like Truman State. I’ll look into it.!
Usually what I find is that so many states other than CA really take care of their people (other than community college). Ironic that others wish they had our access to CA publics.
Take a look at this list. I have especially heard experienced posters on CC talk about University of New Mexico, University of Arizona, and University of Alabama (especially Hunstville, which has a lot of high-stats tech kids due to its proximity to a NASA hub and, since it is very close to the Tennessee border, is not as “Deep South” as it might seem. No offense to the Deep South intended, but many find it to be too much of a culture shock). I looked at the first two, and it appears that as an out of state student with good GPA, the total cost is much less than the UCs.
Edited to say that they seem to only show the top award (ie, they say University of Arizona needs a 4.0, but if you click on the University of Arizona link, you will see that there are graduated awards depending on GPA).
It’s a pretty mainstream mountain college. Not particularly artsy or edgy or anything. I think they have a good nursing program and good education programs. It’s about 12000 students, so not too big, but not small either.
Thanks! From that blogpost only UofA could work since the others use weighted GPA (no access to a high weighted GPA) or test scores. Only my 4.0 could take advantage of the UofA, which uses unweighted.
Anything College Board related (APs, SATs) rules us out.
Yes that’s one you showed me-- it does come in a bit lower, a little bit once you factor transportation. If there was merit scholarships for OOS, which isn’t specified, that could be a good option.
UNM says they use unweighted GPA, so that might help.
I would consider calling them, because they say this:
** New non-resident freshmen with a 3.0 GPA or a test score of 20 ACT or 1030 SAT may be eligible to pay the tuition and fee rate of New Mexico residents if awarded a scholarship. This could be less than tuition rates in your home state.
(So, scholarship plus OOS might work out for your family).
As for SAT/ACT, have they never taken it, or are their scores too low to qualify? Either way, since the deadline for the Amigo Scholarship is 2/1/22, they might be able to take the February ACT and have the scores still considered, even if they are received by the University after the deadline. Might be worth a phone call to find out.
Here’s the link to the Amigo Scholarship.
And another possibility for your particular situation, since you have twins, is if either or both can get accepted to a CSS Profile school. No one knows it the CSS Profile schools will continue to give more financial aid to families with two kids in college at the same time, even thought the FAFSA schools won’t, but the thinking is that some of them might – especially the ones with generous financial aid to begin with. It might be worth some phone calls to their financial aid offices to ask, if there are any schools on the list that seem like a good fit academically.
Won’t both your kids qualify for the U of A merit? Just your son would get a bit less, but it should still be less than UCs. My understanding is that it’s automatic, so they aren’t being compared against kids with potentially higher GPAs (due to weighting) but if they pass the benchmark and are accepted, then the merit scholarship is guaranteed. Or maybe I’m mistunderstanding what you posted.
Yes my daughter, who hates deserts, but also hates debt, gets 35k in merit which is a bit cheaper than UC. My son (3.8) who applied got 20k which keeps it the same as UC at best. She should definitely apply.
EDIT: Actually double checked and my son’s merit leaves about 33k which is not even close to UCs and competitive with basically nowhere. Probably should have done the math before paying for the application. Oopsies.
For my daughter it leaves 18k which betters UCs considerably and is competitive many places but maybe not with well-endowed elites, should she get in.
I think UNM requires test scores. My kids did not take SATs or ACTs. I don’t remember exactly how UNM got ruled out, maybe it was the tests.
CSS schools are more likely to have endowment, and more likely to continue the sibling benefit, though nothing is certain about that. A well endowed CSS school will almost certainly keep the sibling thing going, I would expect, but that is something also to determine should there arise any actual choices.
We started the search way back when with CSS only since that was a concern early on but since then drifted and have a variety of schools on the list. I’d want something in writing stating a FAFSA only school’s intentions, although that might not be possible to get.
I still can’t believe they are going to kick thousands of kids out of college in the next couple years though. How are they going to pull that off politically?
That’s good news about your daughter! And yeah, bummer about big an impact a couple of B’s can have.
Thinking back, here are a couple of things that were helpful for us when assessing the true costs of a year at college.
The Cost of Attendance includes an allowance for travel ($1,900 at U of Arizona), personal/miscellaneous items (also $1,900) and books ($900). But my kids’ expenses for all three of those items were way, way less than that (at different schools, but still), so we ended up paying much less than estimated for that portion of the COA. And we figured we would be paying for their food anyway, so we also “discounted” the COA by what we estimated we spent on food. Plus, no more money for ECs, which also was a savings. Of course, there are often extra costs that some kids accrue, based on their interests and habits, which could negate some of these savings, but the above metric helped us when assessing offers.
If she applies to UA, she should definitely also look into applying to their honors college. It looks like she missed their priority deadline, but it appears that they will still consider honors college applications.
Also, re: UNM. It looks like since California is a WUE state, both of your kids would qualify for in-state tuition ($9,228) since they have better than a 3.0 GPA. They are calling it “WUE-plus”. I think it works out to the same as the Amigo Scholarship, but doesn’t require test scores. Based on the official COA, it would still be 25k each, but again they are allocating a lot to personal items, travel and books so you could probably save several thousand over what they estimate.
It looks like your daughter could get more money from Arizona, but maybe UNM is a viable option for your son?
The UNM works out about the same as UC, maybe slightly better. It’s not terribly attractive. The honors college at U of A would probably admit my daughter late and I think you can also upgrade once there.
In other news Hendrix came through with FA and added 5k I think it was to the not top merit of 21k, so it comes in at 1-2k less than UC, which is what people said would happen-- that Hendrix would just barely underbid UC, and no more.
“yay I’m not going to Arkansas,” was the word around here, but I think highly of Hendrix and the fear of the South is unfounded here. I keep telling them, where do you think all the cool people in the state go?
We’ve also heard back from the Earlham AO who was very open about everything. He encouraged my son to apply up the food chain, which in his opinion is quite doable (not so much in my opinion) but it did show that my kids can be taken seriously by an AO and he specifically mentioned that my son “went to a good school” so maybe it means it’s just hit or miss. Hendrix didn’t seem to take my kids transcripts seriously, nor Hollins which was a big disappointment, but Earlham was a hit only they just don’t have money to give, except in negotiations which he actively encouraged my son to do, to go out and get better offers and come back.
When we ran the numbers for ourselves last year, the UCs came in about 35k, which is why I thought UNM might be a better price-point with the WUE plus at around 25k. But of course, transportation would be a lot less with a UC.
That’s great the Earlham is giving you advice on how to do better with them! Also, did they come in close to their NPC? I was able to appeal one package we were given because it was significantly different from their NPC.
I’m glad that Hendrix came through with some FA though I know the amount is still disappointing. I still think your D is an excellent candidate for their competitive awards and I bet you’ll be hearing from them in January about that! It’s good that you got that feedback from Earlham, it’s a long road for you guys to see what comes back affordable and tackling every avenue, while a lot of work and certainly frustration, will probably yield the best results! I’ve got everything crossed for a great outcome for your kids!
Yes they were close to their NPC, which showed the same merit and a very small grant less than 1000, and the actual offer was just sans the small grant. My son just really wanted to go there so gave it a try. In hindsight, we probably shouldn’t be dealing at all with that sort of college, Earlham or even Hendrix, Lawrence, etc. which is the majority of where the effort went.
In prior years a lot of people here reported some of these SLACs coming in much lower than the NPC, some of whom reported actual figures, so it wasn’t totally unreasonable, just maybe a mistake to put so much effort there.
My thoughts too. It’s a long uncertain road when looking and waiting for the right amount of aid to come across. That uncertainty leads to a few frustrating moments. In the end, the hard work will hopefully pay off.