Faculty with experience across several schools have discussed Hamilton’s atmosphere in comparison to that of other colleges. This comment is specific to Hamilton and Colgate:
This comment from a different faculty member contrasts his experience at Hamilton with that at a large university:
(https://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/darren-strash-computer-science-new-faculty)
(https://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/faculty-jason-cieply-russian-studies)
@AnonMomof2 I think it might be prudent for your D to send the inquiry to Hamilton to ask if they will match Colgate’s FA offer ASAP. What if they offered 20 ‘dancers’ knowing they wanted 10 and if you wait 15 ‘dancers’ accept in the mean time. They might be less willing to match.
I too always wondered how the 4 year match would work. My D asked a school to match her best Need-based offer and they did and sent her a 4 year plan with built-in COA increases and everything with the EFC/SC remaining the same. I always assumed their need calculation program had some way to assign a ‘matched’ value to a student so that every year it kept the better rate.
I seem to remember that Johns Hopkins awarded 3 merit scholarships when I checked the CDS when looking for selective schools that had merit awards. So it did not make my D’s list (though she did get into their Grad School)
Also I believe most of Duke’s and Emory’s merit is more regional-based meaning you have to be from NC/Ga or other specific locale.
Have you visited MHC? It’s a bit in the middle of nowhere itself. Sure it has larger towns Amherst and Northampton nearby but MHC itself is isolated with a small retail village next door. She’d have to take a bus to town and the other schools.
Are you guys in CA? Did she look at Harvey Mudd or the UCs?
Is this the talk where he says the top third at any school is going to be excellent and persist in math and science?
If so, excellent talk. He says it’s better to be top third at Hartford than bottom third at Harvard.
The two schools S23 is still strongly considering are WPI and BU. I had to call BU financial aid office about something else, and so I asked them about how they process this. They said exactly what the WPI financial aid office told you: S23’s financial aid package already takes into account that he will have a sibling in college next year. 
And that means that unless the special circumstances consideration makes a big difference in the package they offer, he will (most likely) be attending WPI. He likes both for different reason, but can’t justify (or afford) spending 10K more a year for BU over WPI.
My daughter has been accepted into Rice University (Houston) and UT MCombs (Austin), but she’s still weighing her options between UT McCombs and Rice’s business programs as she’s highly interested in pursuing a major in this field. Can you provide any insight on which program might be the better choice for finance career?
I re-read the email I had received. They said different colleges do have different policies on this issue. Thinking about it, I can understand the college’s policy for planning purposes- it’s difficult to revisit every continuing student for this potential aid change. But when your EFC is almost halved from the prior year, you’d think that would be grounds for some kind of consideration.
If both sons are at WPI next year, we would be paying $40K MORE than the 2 EFC’s added together.
My older son likes it there (although I know he’s being academically challenged and not having the time to fully experience all that WPI offers), and the flexibility for my younger son (who is still bouncing around on which STEM major to choose) is valuable. This decision is going to be difficult one way or the other.
I wish you luck! In the end I know the choices our kids have are all great.
Rice’s program is new but they’ve long had a graduate b school.
Both will be great. UT might have a better track record - but at UT you might get lost. It’s big sports, big greek, big bureacracy.
Rice has no greek, has the residential college system, etc.
If you google linkedin + rice + name your bank - I used Goldman Sachs - you find plenty of alums.
So to me this is a fit question - which do they prefer? After all, you’re there day after day for four years so you want to be happy - and one can’t just presume an IB career (if that’s what you’re even after) as most don’t make it. For corporate finance type, any school mainly works.
Some will prefer Rice. Others want all the zaniness that comes with the big public.
Of course, finances matter too for many and that’s part of fit.
Two great choices.
No wrong answer.
Best of luck.
Generally colleges calculate aid every year for all students. There are new laws/changes every year and in the Fall if a school uses a package they’ll receive 2 new processes - 1 for Federal Methodology(FM) and 1 for Institutional Methodology(IM). And if they have a homegrown system they’ll have to create their own new versions based on the changes.
That’s fantastic! How did you approach this? Did the school have an official appeals process?
Wow, there were a lot of assumptions I really hated in here, starting with “there aren’t enough smart kids”. It’s a quite interesting concept about elite institutions and relative deprivation, though. I would never tell a STEM kid, or any growing teen (or adult for that matter) “you’re only good enough to be the smart one at a lousy school.” It’s such a damaging message about themselves and the world. But this talk was interesting.
We have not asked our one offer to match the other yet, however I was reading that you only do an official appeal if your financial circumstances have changed. In our case, we would ask them to match our offer from a statistically almost identical school, and give our reasons why she could see herself better at their school but that we can’t do it without the match. It is not a small amount so not going to hold our breath.
I have watched this before–it is interesting, but loaded with issues of course. I agree with the general point that a kid could have a harder time if they are near the bottom of the pack, but I disagree that close to the middle vs toward the top makes much of a difference. I also think a lot depends on the kid: some students thrive best when they have the majority of others around them similar to much “smarter”(however that is defined: better STEM, better writer, speaker , analyzer, what ever) to push them, while others reach their best when they are near the top–they like being the one other students always turn to for help on problem sets, etc: it is a self-esteem boost that pushes them toward a higher potential even though they already stand out from the vast majority of peers. Other students, if way above the group of peers, may strongly dislike always being the one who has to lead class discussions and help others, and might check-out or coast, losing ambition. Plus it is a nice reality-check for these types to meet a critical mass of as-smart or smarter students in college, sometimes for the first time in their lives they have worked among such a mix. This applies to music or other talent too: whether you work best toward the bottom of a fabulous group, primarily being pushed by the “better” players, or you prefer to be the outlier, with others mostly learning from you.
Each kid “fits” each college differently and think that this talk oversimplifies the situation.
This isn’t quite the same. 4 years ago we sent a letter to Pitt asking for more merit for D19. We wrote it pretty sappy but also included the offer D19 received from Miami U(OH). Sent it directly to the director of admissions. Pitt did increase their offer by $5K per year. D19 ended up going to Miami.
I am a believer of you always have to ask and you always need to fill the form(app) out. You never know until they officially tell you no.
Sometimes, you don’t have to tell them. They realize on their own what is best for them. Or, what they think is best for them. My DS23 grew up adoring NC State. Went to camps, visited, tons of peers there, great engineering program etc. In a nutshell, his dream school. I will admit that we are not talking Harvard or MIT here, but you get the idea. My kid is a pretty average kid. This was all great until he got deferred EA, even though it was a solid match. Then he was accepted for spring admission. Dad wants him to consider NCSU but his stance is “Why would I go to a place where I am at the bottom of the totem pole?” I have been telling him to keep an open mind but so far, he has refused to sign up for spring admitted students’ day, online calls and such.
So, some kids get that opportunities might be better at an institution that loves them back! I think he might be passing up a better opportunity given the quality of engineering education he can get along with RTP adjacent career opportunities. But, if he does not make it past the weedout classes, it will be of no help.
My D wrote the FA office and it was a very casual email - something to the effect of I really like your school but I really like this FA offer from your peer school better - is there anything you can do about that? The response was also pretty casual something to the effect of - let’s see what we can do about that and then listed the new offer.
You son sounds quite mature. It would be tempting to go with the dream school and take fall to do something else in the meantime. However, his stance about being the bottom of the totem pole is astute and important to him. Keeping an open mind at this point is a good idea, but maybe he is also getting himself used to the idea that he’s letting it go.
This is an excellent point. If he ever decided to leave because it’s too high pressure (or too much of whatever factor), then the other school would clearly have been the better one.
my friend’s daughter is a junior and serious dancer (ballet) and she LOVES colgate and the dance has been fabulous for her. great faculty and tons of opportunities. she loves the size. it’s a bit bigger than some of the the LACs.
I found the old thread from 2017 where I was asking for advice about asking a school to match and was told by someone (paraphrasing) ‘who has done a lot of consulting’ that s/he could almost guarantee that the school would not match and that we were wasting our time. Wrong! 
Also I’m not sure it still happens but for my D17 in those decisive days of April one school upped their offer twice unsolicited to be basically the same as her best offer.