<p>Oh, I see what you mean PoTs. I read it as thought you had the college money set aside and could really write the check, not that you could write it if you wanted to drain your retirement! There are tons of us in that spot where we can’t really go full pay for expensive colleges but don’t qualify for tons of need based aid either. </p>
<p>I really am sympathetic that you’ve been surprised by this. I don’t share your bitterness or cynicism about it, but that may be because I was aware of it long before my kid’s acceptances started rolling in and had warned him. To be honest, I was afraid of not having great options, but I never felt bitter about it or like it was owed to my kid. I just really really hoped it would work out. </p>
<p>Good luck to your kid in wherever he/she ends up! And congrats to him/her on the scholarship money, even if it doesn’t impact the parents’ bottom line enough to make UR the final decision.</p>
<p>I’m sorry that you didn’t understand how financial aid works at private colleges before now. Merit aid always reduces need first, then and only then is any need-based aid awarded. Need-based aid is only awarded up to the college-specific calculated need. Your EFC will not change.</p>
<p>Your son’s hard work hasn’t been in vain. It got him accepted to some highly competitive colleges that perhaps would not have accepted him otherwise.</p>
<p>As for it being unethical to notify your son of an increase in merit–I think you’re being harsh and unfair. As I noted earlier merit aid is awarded by the admission office which does not know what the family’s financials look like or whether it will change the parents’ bottom line. </p>
<p>And consider that while your son might be a minor right now, he won’t be very much longer. This is his future and he will need to start taking charge of it–and that include understanding the financial implications of his college choice.</p>
<p>I would rather have the U of R give my child $20 per week to spend however the child wanted than increase the Merit Award with no difference on the bottom line.</p>
<p>For example, assume before the increase in Merit Aid our family was supposed to pay $25K.</p>
<p>Now the U of R wants to reward the students hard work, I still pay the $25K but the U of R gives the child $20 spending money per week. Not to go to the parents bottom line but to the child since the child earned it.</p>
<p>Instead of a Merit Aid increase of $7000 with no change in the bottom line, give the child $20 per week to spend however they want. There are less than 40 weeks in a school year so it would be less than $800 total and the child actually gets something of value for their hard work.</p>
<p>My problem is not the cost of U of R but that they are trying to say the child earned something when clearly they didn’t.</p>
<p>If the child earned something, give the child (not the parent) something.</p>
<p>I echo what ParentOfTwins said. It is all from the same pot of money and they just call it differently. It makes me much more appreciate those need-based aid only schools. For middle-class people who have some needs, merit award does absolutely nothing unless it is a full-ride. For low-income people, merit award is just another name for need award. People who will really benefit from merit award are those who have no financial need.</p>
<p>That is basically right, except for some middle class families at schools which don’t meet need, the scholarship may be a better deal. </p>
<p>My oldest D’s school was thinking of reducing merit awards in favor of more need-based, but it ended up that they still want the students who will come because of the merit award. If my D chooses Rochester, it will absolutely be because of the scholarship, because need-based schools judge our need as very little, if any. That was her strategy in applying to some schools which award merit aid. I had been around CC long enough to have been aware of that with my first also, but it is a nasty surprise if you don’t know.</p>
<p>U of R has always been my son’s first choice. We were a little disappointed by the low amount of merit aid given to him (less than 10k). On the other hand, I realize that some students received no merit aid at all. I am really hoping that his need based aid can make up some of this shortfall. So my question is…if there is only so much money in the “pot” for merit awards… will a school try to make it up on the need-based end? Or is it a flat calculation and that’s it. Finally, my son is an athlete who has been on an “official visit” to U of R and is being recruited. I realize that this is a Division III school so there are no athletic scholarships. Wondering if anyone knows if they will bump up need-based/merit aid for athletes that the are actively recruiting?</p>
<p>UR is a “meets need” college, but like all private colleges, UR will determine your need using the CSS Profile and its own proprietary financial aid formula for calculating a school-specific EFC. It will likely be higher than the FAFSA EFC. </p>
<p>If your son’s merit aid award does not completely fill your son’s UR determined need, then he will receive need-based financial aid starting with: </p>
<p>1) student self-help (expected student contribution–yes I know this sounds contradictory, but students are expect to work summers and contribute their earnings to their education)
2) federal Stafford loans
3) work-study </p>
<p>and if any need remains, then with UR’s own grants.</p>
<p>Athletes don’t get much if any special consideration in FA. The special consideration comes mostly in the admissions process itself.</p>
<p>ParentOfTwins, the issue may be how you (personally, not the universal you) define “need.”</p>
<p>Think of it this way - I want to buy a coffee maker costing $50. I have $10. That means I “need” $40. The store is willing to loan me the $40. </p>
<p>Now along comes a friend who says, “Your birthday is coming up. Let me give you $10 towards the coffee maker.”</p>
<p>Now my “need” is only $30, so the store reduces its offer to me. Why should the store benefit by my friend’s generosity? Because the store isn’t giving me the money because I’m nice or because I deserve it. It’s giving me the money because I need it. I don’t need it anymore.</p>
<p>That’s what a merit scholarship does. It removes some of the “need.” You don’t “need” the money to meet your EFC; that’s what the school has determined you can pay. (Whether that’s reasonable or not is a totally different question!) Once the need is met, then the scholarship can reduce your EFC.</p>
<p>I’m sorry that you feel that this is unfair. But it’s the only way the process can work.</p>
<p>BlueDog
There is a loophole in financial aid: students who are married file their FAFSA with their spouses, not their parents. So two college kids earning close to nothing who are married would likely have an Expected Family Contribution close to zero.</p>
<p>Find a Rochester student that will sign a prenuptial agreement for a quick divorce upon graduation to marry your son and you are home free. They will both get essentially a free ride.</p>
<p>What is the downside? It’s immoral, dishonest and expressly intended to dump the burden of your child’s college cost onto the lap of the financial aid office and the taxpayer.</p>
<p>Is it anymore dishonest than the school saying they increased your aid when the overall cost stays the same?</p>
<p>@wayoutwestmom— so if I am understanding you correctly… if my husband can meet whatever U of R deems as our EFC…the rest will be covered by loans, grants, workstudy, etc.? I do find this forum very helpful…especially being a mom whose first is heading off to college! So can I ask why FAFSA calculates and EFC if the colleges are just going to recalculate?</p>
<p>Private college recalculate need using the CSS and with good reason. FAFSA does not take into account retirement savings when determining financial aid.</p>
<p>Lets say Family A has a combined income of $100,000 and a retirement savings of $12,000. Family B has a combined income of $100,000 and a retirement savings of $4.2 million. Assume all parents are 58 years old.</p>
<p>Under FAFSA, both families are expected to contribute the same. Clearly Family B with a net worth of $4.2 million can contribute more than Family A with a net worth of $12,000 but FAFSA says they are the same.</p>
<p>FAFSA does not take into account credit card debt so two families with identical finances except one has $100,000 in credit card debt and the other none will have the same EFC.</p>
<p>So Private Colleges collect more data with the CSS to get a more accurate picture.</p>
<p>A FAFSA EFC is only used to determine eligbility for federal funds. Colleges use a FAFSA EFC to qualify students for Pell grants, Stafford loans and federal work-study.</p>
<p>Federal rules limit the amount of aid a student can recieve–even at private schools. A student cannot recieve aid above the amount of the COA - federal EFC without losing eligibility for ALL federal aid, including student loans, work-study and Parent Plus loans.</p>
<p>The CSS Profile is a more detailed look at a family’s finances. It considers information not collected by FAFSA like home value, retirement account value, value of a small business (often adding business expense deductions back into the business income) and other family assets like assets held in siblings’ name, cars, boats, cost of family vacations/summer camps, etc. </p>
<p>So bluedog, in theory, if your family can pay the school determined EFC, your son should recieve enough need-based aid to make UR a possibility. But be aware that aid WILL include loans and self-help.</p>
<p>It actually doesn’t quite work that way in practice. Private colleges can and usually do require married students whose mean of self-support is not obvious to supply parental financial information. If parents provide ANY support (including allowing children to remain in the parents’ health insurance, cash gifts, room & board with one of the families, parents co-signing loans etc) to the married couple, then private colleges will require a parental Profile. </p>
<p>This happens all the time at private professional schools—which require parental financial info for FAFSA independent adults students well into their mid-30’s. Even married students if there is not a working spouse. </p>
<p>So, IOW, if there are 2 college students who are married, but they have no income, no assets and no obvious means of support (like a trust fund), the FA office, at their discretion, can require the parents of said students to fill out the Profile. If the families refuse–then the school does not have to offer them any FA except federal student loans and perhaps some work-study–which they qualified for by filing a FAFSA. School-based need aid is not a right; it’s at the discretion of the school.</p>
<p>How much more time are we going to spend on PoT’s disappointment at receiving a generous merit award? I’m feeling left out. No one wants to take a crack at the graduation rates issue?</p>
<p>For me, this is analogous to a student getting 4 As and 1 B. Rochester gets all As in my book except for this 1 B. So I’m still very, very impressed, but I am curious to know about the reason for the B. I consider a 4 year grad rate in the 65-75% range as good, 75-85% as very good, and everything above 85% as outstanding. Is it because the more science/engineering kids take longer? But then not a significant number more are graduating at 6 years either. And I don’t quite understand how this fits with a 95% retention rate.</p>
<p>Looked at UR’s “peer” institutions (Specifically those who are now part of its new consortium: Brandeis, Duke, Emory, Notre Dame, Northwestern, UNC-CH, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest and WashU). UR’s 4 and 6 year graduation rate is lower than all those schools, but UR is the only school on the list with a music conservatory.</p>
<p>I looked at the graduation rate at several universities that have large music conservatory programs and their graduation rates are lower than UR’s. And at pure conservatories --the graduation rates are very low: in the 40-70% range.</p>
<p>So I wonder if Eastman is what’s dragging down UR’s graduation numbers? Eastman’s data is included in UR’s data on IPEDS.</p>
<p>Good work WOWM…I did a quick general search too and came across Oberlin with a lower rate than I would have expected. Is that one you are talking about? I found a rate for Oberlin that about the same as UR. I am trying to understand also how a lower rate fits with a very high retention rate.</p>
<p>I found very high 4/6 years rates of course for the Ivies, small Ivies, top Midwest LACs, Davidson, Villanova, and also a few other that surprised me. Some notables similarly lower to UR were engineering heavy schools (like a RPI) and schools that expect more than 4 years (like a Northeastern).</p>
<p>The 4 year rate doesn’t bug me. A fair number of students opt for the free tuition with the Take 5 program (allowing a different double major). My own son is seriously considering this already. These have to be approved, but we talked with students who had them approved, so it’s a viable path.</p>
<p>The 6 year rate I wondered about, but it’s true that some in the tougher majors (music, engineering, etc) don’t make the cut at a top level school and may opt to transfer to other schools, esp if they can’t keep merit aid. This happens fairly often at other schools, so I assume the same for URoc.</p>
<p>I did a quick search of Case Western - their 6 year rate according to collegeboard is 78%. Pittsburgh is 79%. UR’s is 85% at the same source. 15 out of 100 don’t graduate within 6 years for whatever reason. The rest do. I’m ok with that.</p>
<p>Nice analogy Chedva! Couple it with the fact that different offices offer merit aid and need-based aid (they don’t decide these things together in one room - they are separate entities) and it really does make sense.</p>
<p>It’s also what all colleges that offer merit aid I’m familiar with do…</p>
<p>As mentioned before, the one nice thing with merit aid is it stays. If your income or assets increase, your need based aid will go down.</p>