<p>I've heard that Private schools give out much more aid and scholarships, especially to out of state students. Is this true? Does anyone have experiences they would like to share? Do Public schools rarely give out scholarships to students OOS?</p>
<p>I'm looking at Pomona, and they give NO merit aid, so if I go there, I'm gonna have to get a ton of outside scholarships (which reduces the amount of financial aid) and take out outside loans. So at Pomona, their aid sucks.</p>
<p>I would have thought so, but our experience this past year is to the contrary. There seems to be individual school trends, but no reliable overall gauge. Our state schools gave quite decent aid relative to their cost. One local private LAC was generous and one local private university gave almost nothing. OOS privates were generous as I don't think being a state resident is very important to them. One OOS public school (UVa) lost our financial aid material and had no package to offer in time to include them in our decision list. In the end, with one exception, all schools gave aid in amounts that made the cost of attendance almost the same. I recommend you research individual schools to see what aid is available and who it usually goes to. Also, go for private local scholarships.</p>
<p>You can find virtually everything you need to know by reading the financial aid information in cc. It's well worth the time. See Financial Aid Resources posted by the Administrator at the top of the Fin Aid & Sch thread.</p>
<p>The three scholarships my son was offered at three private schools varied from three to five thousand per year which didn't begin to touch tuition.</p>
<p>My daughter has need based aid at a school that pledges to meet 100% of need
Her grant is well over $20,000 for each year
She also has relatively small subsidized loans</p>
<p>Policies vary from school to school so there is not a one size fits all answer to the question. This is why it is important to carefully read the financial aid policies at the schools which you are interested in.</p>
<p>There are schools that meet 100% of your demonstrated need (based on income and assets) which are heavy on grant/ scholorship aid. The ivies and elite LAC's usually give this type of financial aid. Demonstrated need, however is a relative thing because the school decides how much you need. </p>
<p>There are schools that give financial aid based on merit. Boston University comes to mind as they state in their FA policy that they award academic excellence. If you are admitted and you are at the top of their applicant pool you could get a financial aid package consisting of grants/scholarships while another student gets a package that is heavy on loans.</p>
<p>State universities- their obligation first and foremost is to try to rovide an affordable education for their state residents. Yes, unless admitted to a honors program or a highly recruited athlete, one should not look for the aid that equilavent to what an in-state resident would recieve. Some state u's have reciprocity agreements with other state U systems where you can attend at the cost of being in-state.</p>
<p>There are border cities can go in state to either state university.</p>
<p>For example, a resident of Minnesota can attend school in Wisconsin, North Dakota or South Dakota and pay the in-state tuition rate.</p>
<p>Minnesota also participates in the Midwest Exchange Program which allows students to attend schools like the U of Nebraska or U of Missouri for 1 1/2 times the in-state rate.</p>
<p>actually, pomona's financial aid package was the best one i recieved, out of Yale, Northwestern, Pomona, Miami (OH), U of Illinois, and U of Minnesota. </p>
<p>They replaced loans the first two years with grants. Still chose YAle.... dealing with those loans now and it's a *****.</p>
<p>Daughter got very generous aid from all the schools which she was accepted to. The best overall package was from williams which she used to negotiate a better package from Dartmouth.</p>