This is a recipe for getting financially shut out. Those who do not consider costs when making the application list risk finding that none of the schools that admit them produce an affordable net price.
Many applicants can get a good preliminary estimate before applying by using each school’s net price calculator.
@collegehelp " Applicants can’t do an accurate cost-benefits assessment until all the information is available in April. "
Again, I think this is absolute madness - at that point it is TOO LATE.
I do agree that you should not just dismiss a school out of hand based on a high sticker price, but there is plenty of analysis that should be done BEFORE an application is ever submitted - calculating EFC and comparing it to family finances, running NPC, combing through the college web site and other available information to understand how the school allocates financial aid.
In this day and age, there is so much information available and the failure to take advantage of it will almost certainly lead to an unpleasant surprise for many applicants.
@collegehelp I think the points you made in post #14 are very good.
Terrible advice. With net price calculators to give a sense of the probable need based aid, and the common data set & info on the websites to give some info on merit aid possibilities, no one needs to wait until April to see what their costs may be. Even if you have a small business (I do) and divorced parents (as my kids did), you can add business assets back in and/or run the NPC with probable ex-spouse numbers to get an idea of the impact of those things. This is just ridiculous advice.
And telling students what “should” be their criteria (major, then selectivity) is really pushing your own agenda on applicants. Not every student is going to consider selectivity as the be-all and end-all. Finances, family needs for a kid to be close to home due to parent illness, the kid’s own personality and ability to cope in various school environments, long term goals (want to work in your hometown area? You might be better served by your state university than a higher ranked school across the country), etc. all might trump selectivity, and rightly so.
As an application strategy, I think it makes sense to apply to about 10 or 12 schools and include one or two financial safeties, your state’s most appealing public school, some academic reaches, matches, and safeties. But, students should apply to a few, well-chosen “dream” schools regardless of sticker price to see what kind of financial aid offer they get. I was offered a large scholarship to (out-of-state) U. Michigan in April that didn’t show up on any EFC calculator. I didn’t go to Michigan but it was sure tempting.
“include one or two financial safeties”
this is terrible advise for most middle income families these days.
Most cant afford to shell out $240000 for a college education.
Families who need financial help need to cast a wide net and apply to a LOT more financial safeties than one or two if they want their child to actually have the chance to go to college.
The following schools all have a net price under $15K per year for families with incomes in the $48K-$75K range:
Harvard University
Princeton University
Yale University
Columbia University in the City of New York
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Amherst College
Dartmouth College
Kenyon College
Brown University
University of Pennsylvania
Vassar College
Colgate University
Middlebury College
Williams College
Hamilton College
Wellesley College
Barnard College
Johns Hopkins University
Families with average incomes should not rule them out.
@collegehelp, your experience with Michigan was a one-off, and not something to build a strategy on. For private schools, the NPCs are accurate for need-based aid and the school websites nearly always give solid information on merit aid, which you can use the Common Data Set to corroborate. We just completed the process with my daughter applying to a number of private and public schools and the aid packages, both need and merit, from these very different schools all came in almost exactly as expected based on the research we did before applying. There was one exception, an astoundingly generous scholarship from an LAC that nothing could have lead us to expect, but it too was a one-off.
“Families with average incomes should not rule them out.”
this should be modified to read-
“Students whose tests scores and GPA’s put them above the 75% percentile of accepted students AND who come from families with average incomes should not rule them out.”
lets be real here… in this day and age, In order to be eligible for FA at the above colleges, a student has to be ACCEPTED first- and for most students that is far more difficult and unrealistic than finding Financial safeties - schools where admittance is likely AND is affordable.
I fail to see the point of the OP… Especially seeing that 1) some schools have higher admissions rates by virtue of having a self selective group of applicants. 2) For the top 75 most selective colleges, being in the top 25% does not guarantee admissions or even make admissions likely.
^^agreed.
the OPs original post is just an exercise in statistics.
There is no basis for calling ANY college with an acceptance rate lower than 15-20% a " match" for anyone.
Over 3 million students graduate from HS each year. The schools listed in post #26 can enroll less than 1% of them. If you’re a strong student, by all means consider some of the ~60 colleges that claim to cover 100% of demonstrated need … as long as you family can cover the Expected Family Contribution. If it can’t, then you need to consider schools with some combination of lower sticker prices or sufficient merit aid to close the gap. It’s far better to decide on a cost-management strategy early in the process than to discover too late that you cannot afford the only schools that accept you.
hs2015mom, that’s two of us who were surprised by a large scholarship offer. I wonder how many others have had that “one-off” experience. It only takes one offer like that to give you a great, unexpected option.
It isn’t just the elite schools that can have very low net price. The following good schools all have average net price under $18K for families with incomes in the $48K-$75K range.
Berea College
Sewanee-The University of the South
Kenyon College
Davidson College
Madonna University
Lyon College
Brigham Young University-Provo
Blackburn College
Bryn Mawr College
Macalester College
The College of Wooster
Cornell College
Rockhurst University
Trinity College
Dickinson College
John Brown University
Thomas Aquinas College
St Olaf College
Ripon College
Denison University
Eureka College
University of Richmond
Quincy University
LeTourneau University
Presbyterian College
At some point, however, the cost-benefit analysis will probably show that you are better off or just as well off at the state public. It is the affordable, elite schools that are most appealing, the schools that are significantly more selective than the state public.
“It is the affordable, elite schools that are most appealing.”
most appealing to whom??
This is an attempt to read into other peoples minds.
1-Not all students are interested in going to an “elite” college, especially ones far from home.
60% of students go to colleges within 400 miles of their homes.
2-Most students do not have the stats to get into an “elite” college, just as most people dont have the money to buy a Tesla.
So it does them no good to even think about applying , regardless of how “affordable” they may be to the students who can get in.
The “affordable” elite colleges are an illusion to all but the top 3% of applicants each year.
There is nothing “appealing” about those hard acts to the vast majority of HS seniors.
I think OP provides a very useful metric here, because for the vast majority of applicants scores really do matter. A great score, alone, won’t necessarily get you in but a poor score usually will keep you out (unless the school is test optional, or there are explainable, extenuating circumstances).
As for students going to the most selective school they can get into, we know students who were miserable at Cornell and at U of Chicago. Both left and thrived at “lesser” schools. But we also know students who have loved being at Harvard, Princeton, Penn and Swarthmore. It all depends on the individual student.
Regarding the controversial comment, “cost should only become a factor in April after you get the financial aid package.” I agree with this so long as the applicant has several “financial safeties” lined up in case the aid packages don’t come through. I was really surprised by some of the merit aid D received with her acceptances, and I wouldn’t have predicted it in some of the cases. So I totally agree with the “go for it” advice, so long as a solid financial back-up is in place. In our own case, D had an acceptance in hand before Thanksgiving, at a college she really liked (one of her top 4 choices), with a merit aid award amounting to approximately 2/3 of the tuition cost. This made everything so much less stressful as she waited for other “go for it” results to come in.
Thanks for weighing in on this topic, MidwestDad. The application fees are miniscule in comparison to the size of a college investment. Why not apply to a few reaches and dream schools? They may not be as out-of-reach as some students and parents may fear.
As an example, a student in the top quartile at Penn State is probably in the range of the bottom quartile at U of Pennsylvania. Would you rather be in the top quartile at Penn State or in the bottom quartile of acceptances at the University of Pennsylvania?
@collegehelp - re:#38: Your (presumably rhetorical) question would be a no-brainer for me, but not necessarily for everyone. I would infinitely prefer Philly to “Happy Valley,” but a lot of kids and parents would prefer the traditional, rural campus environment. I also never considered a field like medicine, which would involve years of expensive post-graduate education. I went to graduate school, but my parents paid the full freight. A student from an upper-middle-class family in PA might qualify for a huge merit package and admission to PSU’s Honors College, if he or she has the chops for Penn. Furthermore, PSU has one of the most fanatical alumnae/i networks I know of. It might hold great social and financial appeal for many students. A middle-class pre-med student might say that being at the top of his or her class at PSU, and saving tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, would be a wiser choice.