hi everyone!
i’m a first gen college student so all of this is pretty confusing.
first offs, my efc is just under 7,000
i’ve received a few financial aid awards from other schools to know that i should be getting SOME money.
purdue on the other hand said i had a “financial need” of 37,000, however they gave me no money, besides loans and a work study.
is that typical? does purdue not cover anything even for a pretty low EFC? did anyone appeal? did anyone get better financial awards?
You’re OOS and that’s a state school.
They charge high OOS rates because your family doesn’t pay taxes there.
Indiana taxpayers aren’t going to cover your costs…they expect OOS students to pay. If they were going to cover those high OOS costs with need-based aid, then wouldn’t they just lower their OOS costs so that they wouldn’t have to give as much aid?? think about it.
Purdue is mainly for instate students. That is the school’s purpose.
Awards from other schools certainly do not let you know that you should be getting some money. That is not how it works.
First EFC only determines if you get federal aid.
Most school there will be a gap between your EFC and the cost of the college and you have to find a way to come up with those funds if you want that school…
For colleges that claim to ‘meet 100% of need’ they calculate your need using fuller information than the FAFSA.
Some colleges practice preferential packaging where they will try to meet need of some highly desired students and the rest may get a small award, and many will get no award. You would have to research the practices of each school to see if you could expect to get anything or not.
For state schools, if you are instate it depends on the state how good the aid is. If you are OOS you often will only get your federal entitlements for need based, and nothing else, although you can get merit at some places. Most state schools are only interested in financing their own taxpayers.
Basically students that need a lot of aid need to apply to colleges that give a lot of aid. And a start would be to use the net price calculator on the college website.
@justynabby I sympathize with you - it is very confusing and completely overwhelming. Every school seems to do things differently and it feels a bit random when you’re on the receiving end for the offers. Most colleges are up front that they cannot meet 100% of financial need so you do get very different offers from different places. We are out of state and we were pleasantly surprised by the financial aid package my daughter was offered by Purdue. She had already been offered a Presidential scholarship so we didn’t expect that we would see much more than that but we did get some additional money that, for us, makes Purdue a serious contender. We’re just starting to receive financial aid offers from the other schools she was accepted at and the variation has been huge. UIUC offered her nothing but loans, Minnesota offered her scholarship money, loans and work study, CU Boulder offered scholarships and loans. We’re still waiting on financial aid offers from some other schools and at this point, I’ve no idea what to expect from them. It does seem surprising that the offers are so different when they’re all looking at the same FAFSA information but it’s hard to know what is factoring into those decisions.
It may be worth you giving the financial aid office a call and talking with them about it. The financial aid people at most universities are very helpful and encourage people to call with questions. If nothing else, they can explain to you how the decision for your financial aid was made and why you may be seeing different offers from different places.
At the end of the day, the decision you make should be the best one for you, both academically and financially. In my daughter’s case, unless they send a scholarship offer later, UIUC just dropped pretty low down her list as they’re not offering a good enough education to justify $50,000 a year when comparable or better schools have offered better financial packages.
Don’t expect much need based aid, if at all, from an out of state public school. You cannot really expect similar financial aid packages from different universities. We saw $1765 to $41564 in need based scholarship money on my D’s FA packages from different schools last year.
@ProudWImom What was your EFC?
FYI…since merit scholarships aren’t need-based aid, some OOS publics will offer them no matter what a person’s EFC is because the student is “buying the test scores” to help their own reporting “middle quartiles”. The school isn’t being benevolent.
thanks everyone! UIUC actually gave me money and i’m in state, however my heart was set on purdue. A lot of small engineering out of state schools gave me money, so that’s why i was pretty annoyed/upset with purdue because that was probably my number one besides northwestern (decision not yet released).
So in conclusion, I shouldn’t bother with an appeal?
You can try but they’re likely going to tell you, no. They just don’t have need-based aid for OOS students.
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UIUC actually gave me money and i'm in state,
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That’s likely because you’re instate. That is a public univ’s mission…to educate its residents.
If you get into NU, then it will likely give you lots of aid unless you have an NCP that has a good income.
Purdue has a very accurate NPC. I remember when my S was interested in the school, and a quick NPC check showed us that the merit award for which he qualified wasn’t going to be enough. When that happens, it’s time to move on …
Very true…and it seems that both Purdue and IU have cut down on their merit awards…or at least have increased the thresholds.
@ProudWImom We had a similar experience with Purdue last year. My D got the presidential scholarship there with $10k/yr. Then they added another $10k/yr scholarship and a few hundred dollars in grant. While UIUC only offered her less than $2000 in grant. Both are oos for us. We dropped UIUC out of the list immediately.
^^
Purdue has been known to give some generous merit awards to high stats females, particularly those in eng’g. I don’t know if those extra awards are from the Col of Eng’g or if the school is underwriting those.
What were your D’s stats? What was her major?
@billcsho
@mom2collegekids It was almost exactly one year ago when my D got the FA award notice from Purdue. The first $10k/year was from the Presidential Scholarship while the second $10k/yr I am not sure what was the source but it may have a need component in it. I could not find the record right now. She got ACT35/uwGPA4.0. I don’t think she submitted her SAT2 scores which were both 800 in Math2 and Chem as they were not required. She was accepted to engineering with intended major in ChemE. They also offered additional scholarship ($1000 or $2000?) if she decided to continue playing music instrument at Purdue. So yes, they are very generous. Indeed, UIUC was the only one offered no merit aid to her.
I suspected that she had very high scores and was eng’g. A similar award was given to a high-stats girl from my kids’ high school…it was a mix of school and eng’g awards.
These Col of Eng’g often only have 15-20% females…so they will often offer generous awards for high stats girls.
Yes, most engineering schools have less than 25% girls and they would have higher admission rates and higher chance to get merit aids.
@billcsho your DD’s ACT score of 35 is extremely high - and her female status, as other posters have mentioned. My DD also had a uwted GPA of 4.0 (wted 4.2) but had to work her way up to ACT 30. We do know numerous kids that can test well at the get-go, be it ACT or SAT.
We live in an engineering-rich area, and in our family we have several close family members on both family sides that are engineers. It does help with exposure and understanding what the field of study entails.
The important thing is that they like what they are studying and do well in their colleges, and that it is affordable for their parents. Cost/benefit of various schools be it in state or OOS, depending on family’s location and school options for DD/DS.
Last year, ACT 35 was the threshold for the presidential scholarships as some did not get it with that score.