<p>One of my relatives, who had top grades in high school, lost his scholarship last year and had to transfer/commute from home. (Not sure what the grade requirement was at that school.) Parties and GF (especially GF, it seems) resulted in inability to focus on studies. Family could not afford the original school without the scholarship, so home he went. At least he has options at the other school in same major. Detour, but not the end of the world. </p>
<p>My son’s school requires that he complete 32 hours for the year and maintain good academic standing. There is no GPA requirement. They say that they want to keep these students, not discourage them.</p>
<p>My son’s school requires a 3.0 cumulative at end of each school year. Seems very reasonable and no issues so far, even for the engineering kids. On the other hand, we know several very bright and hard working kids in STEM at GaTech who are reportedly struggling with the Hope Scholarship GPA requirement (3.0 (regular) or 3.3 (ZMiller) at end of each year). </p>
<p>One of the schools our D1 was considering in her search 4 years ago has a 3.75 GPA requirement to keep their largest merit scholarship (full tuition award). She opted for a different school needless to say.</p>
<p>We’ve strongly suggested to our kids that anything higher than a 3.3 requirement should be seriously mulled over before committing to it, and stressed the importance of trying to “build a buffer” in the first 1-2 years before getting into the hardcore upper level classes.</p>
<p>The requirement for a high gpa to retain a merit scholarship is common in the lower tier law schools. They give out large merit aid for first year students, but only 1/3 or so students retain those for second and third year, and then have to pay ~$40k per year in tuition. It really is a scam</p>
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<p>Lots of students and families find few or no options here, particularly for safeties:</p>
<p>a. Most these schools are highly selective, so they are safeties for no one. This is also why their graduation rates are high – if you can select a class to have only top-end students going in, your graduation rates will be high.
b. “Meet full need” is not a very useful claim, since the schools define “need” differently, and have different expected student contributions as well. So the net prices of two schools which claim to “meet full need” can differ by nearly $40,000 in some cases.</p>
<p>3.75!??!? Wow. D is at a 3.0 school, which is fine.Even the 3.5 would probably be fine, but a nail-biter. For us the problem hasn’t been the academics per se. It’s more about learning to live on on her own and manage her own life along with some depression that started at college. And how that affects the academics.</p>
<p>A 5X/week required class offered only at 7:30 am and she is a sleeper. Not remembering to actually go to the dining hall and eat, letting the blood sugar get so low that it is hard to get moving by the time you realize you are half-starved. Not carefully reading syllabi to really understand attendance policies and submission deadline times for documents submitted electronically. And waiting til the last minute to submit when computer jams up. Not taking lights /helmet on an evening bike ride so that an accident left her bruised and scraped for a couple of weeks. Not getting flu shot as mom repeatedly advised from a distance. And on and on. These are the hard things, not the actual course material. Not making needed doctor appts., etc. All this stuff interferes with the 4.0 that was so easy in HS. </p>
<p>A lot of kids don’t have any trouble with these ordinary life steps, are very mature and ready for everything. But that was not how things went freshman year for D. And I suppose I could have predicted that. Should’ve listened to the faint whispers in the back of my mind and kept her home, had her attend the flagship down the street while she took a couple more needed years to grow up. </p>
<p>It is easy to stumble the first year in college. when in high school, a strong student who is a bit disorganized may have “family support” keeping things together. Then once away at college, the safety net is gone. There is a thread about just that sort of student right now. </p>
<p>And it isn’t necessarily helicopter parents failing to teach kids to leave the nest. Some kids are just like that and it’s really hard to change their nature, push them beyond where they are at developmentally in executive function stuff. I have another younger one who is polar opposite. Changes his sheets, cleans his room, remembers doctor appts himself and reminds me. Goes out to buy his own bodywash and cologne. Reminds me to buy things we are running low on. Tells me when he needs a haircut. Chases me around to leave house on time. Makes food himself if noone is around to serve him a meal. Brings papers to get signed, etc, etc. Raised in the same environment but a different brain.</p>
<p>And… some kids do great in hs academics but find it a tougher game at the college level. </p>
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<p>When did soap become bodywash?</p>
<p>Yep, remember that human brains generally don’t fully mature until 30. In the “old days” (depending on the country/culture, that could be a century ago or present times even), many kids had to grow up faster, but most of us generally don’t want the type of conditions where circumstances force a 15 year-old to become the main breadwinner for a family.</p>
<p>If the scholarship is not automatically based on scores and GPA but requires some extra screening and competition on the front end, one would hope it would be biased more to the self-starter, independent type of student who would have no trouble independently remembering to turn in homework. </p>
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<p>I’ve run a number of hypothetical scenarios, across a wide range of income/asset combinations, and have yet to come across a spread that is that large for the subsets of those schools I’ve considered so far. I’m not saying it can’t happen. Some schools treat non-custodial parents, business income/equity, etc. very differently. So you do need to run the NPC estimates for your own numbers and prospective schools.</p>
<p>What I’ve found is that there may be a spead of about ~$5K - $10K for a typical subset of 3-5 “full need” schools. Nevertheless, at both ends of the spread they often are still competitive with the best alternatives for incomes up to ~$120K - $~180K (depending on school). Typically, for the numbers I’ve tested, at least one “full need” school winds up with the lowest net costs. Super selective schools do tend to be among the lowest, but other “full need” schools often are not too far behind. </p>
<p>YMMV. </p>
<p>@tk21769, try running the NPC for USC/UNC vs. HYPS.</p>
<p>All say they meet full need.</p>
<p>For some income levels, the spread isn’t that big. For others, it is huge.</p>
<p>Two of the schools my D was admitted last year are need met schools. But the actual out of pocket costs per year are ~$9000 apart (~$5000 difference if based on NPC or initial FA package). The more expensive one is private and the cheaper one is in state flagship. Both require CSS profile.</p>
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<p>Body wash is a detergent-based product, not a soap-based product. One isn’t a renaming of the other, any more than chicken became turkey.</p>
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<p>You must have missed this thread:
<a href=“"Meet full need" schools can vary significantly in their net prices. - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1675058-meet-full-need-schools-can-vary-significantly-in-their-net-prices-p1.html</a></p>
<p>Income $100,000, assets $400,000 ($200,000 of which is home equity), one student in college, gave net price of $11,817 at Yale and $51,543 at USC, both of which claim to “meet full need” (also $32,563 (list price) at in-state UCLA).</p>
<p>^ O.K., that’s a good case to keep in mind.
Although, it is a scenario involving one of the most generous “full need” schools and what may be one of the least (see the Kiplinger rankings). The $400K in assets strike me as rather high for that income level. Yet even in this case, at least one “full need” school offers a far lower net price than the in-state public alternative. I’d want to know if a random selection of several other “full need” schools are closer to Yale’s cost estimate or to USC’s.</p>
<p>Let me offer a few of what I think are counter-examples.</p>
<p><a href=“Is attending an expensive under-grad school worth it in the long run? - #24 by tk21769 - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>Is attending an expensive under-grad school worth it in the long run? - #24 by tk21769 - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums;
(post #23, $120K income, Yale cheapest, Pitt in-state most expensive, ~$18K spread)
Yes, there is an $8K spread across the listed “full need” schools … but there is an even bigger spread between the most expensive “full need” school (Penn) and the in-state public university (Pitt).</p>
<p><a href=“Amherst Cries Poverty - #65 by tk21769 - Amherst College - College Confidential Forums”>Amherst Cries Poverty - #65 by tk21769 - Amherst College - College Confidential Forums;
(post #64, $120K income, Colby cheapest,Arizona State most expensive)</p>
<p><a href=“Why do you want to go to an Ivy League school? - #48 by tk21769 - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>Why do you want to go to an Ivy League school? - #48 by tk21769 - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums;
(post #47, $120K income, Princeton cheapest, Columbia most expensive, ~$4K spread) </p>
<p><a href=“Looking for schools for pre-med CA boy - #73 by tk21769 - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums”>Looking for schools for pre-med CA boy - #73 by tk21769 - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums;
(post #72, $90K income, Colby cheapest, Holy Cross most expensive, ~$7K spread)</p>
<p><a href=“Looking for schools for pre-med CA boy - #105 by tk21769 - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums”>Looking for schools for pre-med CA boy - #105 by tk21769 - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums;
(posts #102 and #104, $80K income, Vanderbilt cheapest, Alabama most expensive … or Colby cheapest, Rochester most expensive using different assumptions)</p>
<p><a href=“What are some schools with good undergraduate physics programs I should look into? - #22 by tk21769 - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>What are some schools with good undergraduate physics programs I should look into? - #22 by tk21769 - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums;
(post #21, $80K income, UChicago cheapest, UIUC OOS most expensive)</p>
<p><a href=“Parents of non-NM finalists, did your kid get scholarships at OOS state universities? - #77 by tk21769 - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums”>Parents of non-NM finalists, did your kid get scholarships at OOS state universities? - #77 by tk21769 - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums;
(post #76, $76K income,Yale cheapest, Purdue OOS most expensive) </p>
<p><a href=“Is UMich a good choice for OOS students? - #15 by tk21769 - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>Is UMich a good choice for OOS students? - #15 by tk21769 - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums;
(post #14, $34,600 income, Notre Dame cheapest, Michigan OOS most expensive)</p>
<p><a href=“Should a prospective engineering major not apply to ANY schools without engineering? - #38 by tk21769 - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>Should a prospective engineering major not apply to ANY schools without engineering? - #38 by tk21769 - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums;
(post #37, $30K income, MIT cheapest, GaTech most expensive ) </p>
<p>In each of these cases, covering incomes between $30K and $120K, a so-called “full need” school has the lowest estimated net cost. So I don’t think the “full need” claim is entirely meaningless … athough it may be more meaningful for some colleges than for others. </p>
<p>Investigate a variety of options (covering different kinds of schools) using your own financial data in the online NPCs.</p>
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<p>Why would that level of assets be especially high for a high income family if the family were saving some of its money for various future needs (kids’ college, parents’ retirement) and building up home equity after having purchased a house some time ago?</p>
<p>Yes, HYPS will out-financial-aid everyone else for “ordinary” financial aid situations (of course, uncooperative NCPs and the like are a different story). But not every “meet full need” school is HYPS-generous with financial aid.</p>
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<p>The fact that a “meet full need” school has the lowest net price does not mean that all “meet full need” schools will have low net prices. (And how many “meet full need” schools can be safeties for anyone?)</p>