Rice fails to equal williams and Carleton on demonstrated need

Paying for College
1

<p>Hi:</p>

<p>Well, we just got back from Houston....My son fell in love, hard, for Rice. He did not receive any merit award at Rice, but I told him if the financial award letter comes in around the same as Williams and Carleton, we could make it work. Our EFC is 40 and both of them came in with us paying around 37 after a work study and a loan for my son (of around 4k).</p>

<p>I assumed, that Rice's letter would be around the same, since they said in the financial presentation that they meet 100% of demonstrated need. Williams, Carleton and Rice required the fafsa and css profile. </p>

<p>While my son was running around taking pictures of the campus, I told him I would stop in to the Rice financial aid office to see if they had completed the financial award letter. I sat down, and listened to the counselor tell me that they did receive all of the our information and it was processed on April 1st. They have that we will receive no aid and that we must pay 52,000 for my son to attend.</p>

<p>I was floored because the breakdown of both Williams and Carleton have him gapped at about 17k and they met that gap with a grant, work study, that small student loan, and, in Williams case, a book grant.</p>

<p>I told them I was confused, brought out my Williams letter, and they said, "well, you can appeal it. I don't know why it is so significantly different from those peer schools."</p>

<p>I am thinking there must be some mistake but not sure where to look or start. I felt that the financial officer was rather cold, even as they perused my williams letter. They said that they actually verify everything (like I was hiding something? and/orWilliams and Carleton don't?</p>

<p>I did send the fafsa late to Rice because I erroneosly left it off of the list but I believe it is the same fafsa and not some early on version..</p>

<p>How do I begin my appeal letter? Do I copy my carleton and williams letter and send with?</p>

<p>Does Rice raise the bar so high on "need" that they are actually MORE expensive than other schools?</p>

<p>I left the office with a heavy heart and joined my giddy son and flew back to mass.</p>

<p>What did Rice see that my other two did not?</p>

<p>Help!!!</p>

<p>It also didn't help my mood that Rice was the ONLY school that charged our family 50 dollars to attend accepted student's day.</p>

2

<p>Each Profile school uses it’s own policies and calculations to determine your need, so the difference is not terribly surprising. We have FA packages ranging from 21k to 30k to 49k for similar level, 100% need, no loan schools, and have had the same experience in the past with my older child.</p>

<p>You can start your letter by asking for a financial review of your package. Copy and send the other offers and, if anything has changed since you sent your FAFSA & Profile, include information that might give them a reason to increase your package.</p>

<p>While C & W are definitely peer schools, I don’t know what Rice’s policy is about matching other FA packages. I know that some schools do it fairly often, but others don’t.</p>

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<p>The piece that you are missing is that your “demonstrated need” is what is calculated by each school. They all have individual methodologies. Your EFC has nothing to do with it. </p>

<p>As you’ve found the need can vary by many thousands between schools even when they use the exact same figures.</p>

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<p>Thank you. Of course it is the number one exciting choice that I have such a large jump for!</p>

<p>I will copy both award letters and send a respectful reconsideration for aid letter on Monday. Worth a try anyway…</p>

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<p>Yes it is. I’m doing the same right now, good luck to both of us!</p>

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<p>Glad that he has some excellent “fall backs” in Carleton and Williams.</p>

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<p>Hi:</p>

<p>Carleton and Williams are excellent schools and both offered my son 17k more than Rice.
My son loves math, physics and possibly engineering, that is where Rice comes in. I am trying to convince him to go to both accepted student days (at williams and carleton) because, he might love either one of those and be perfectly happy studying math and physics and pursue either math or engineering at the graduate level.</p>

<p>As a former psychology major, I feel somewhat ill equipped to advise him. I just know I do not want him to pile on debt. We can pay around 38k and he would have to loan out the rest.</p>

<p>Shelly</p>

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<p>It sounds like Rice would cost 14K more per year and your son is interested in good fields. Maybe you could borrow $5K a year for four years and get a part-time job to earn $9K for four years, and then he can go to Rice.</p>

9

<p>

It didn’t. So you need to show your math-oriented son the numbers. Preferably on a spreadsheet. I like the automatic graphing features with spread sheets – somehow it all becomes so much more clear when the numbers are set out on a bar graph.</p>

<p>

It seems to me that you can pay around $40K. Your son has been accepted to excellent schools, which presumably he applied to because he was willing to attend. Now he is emotionally drawn to Rice – but why should YOU pay more because of the way he feels? </p>

<p>Because your son is the math/engineering type, I think that when he looks at the numbers in a spreadsheet or graph format – he is going to start to feel a lot differently. Math/engineering guys generally like to make decisions based on hard facts on numbers, not based on emotion – and his “love” for Rice might diminish given the fact that Rice isn’t loving him back. </p>

<p>Please be up front and direct with your son. I know that we as parents don’t like to be the bearer of bad news – but kids appreciate being treated with honesty and respect. He will get over the disappointment and if he goes to the accepted student days at Williams and Carleton with the idea that he is choosing between the two, he will have the mindset of trying to figure out which of those is best, rather than comparing them to Rice. Even if he is holding out hope for Rice, it’s better if he is visiting with the idea that he will probably be attending one of those two, rather than with the idea that he’s looking for justification to pay $60K more for Rice. (Definitely do have your son figure the math for the increased cost over 4 years, not 1)</p>

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<p>A student I have been helping out with her college apps got accepted to a lot of great schools. Rice was one of them. She needs substantial aid to attend. Princeton (her best aid award) calculated her family contribution to be ~$16,000. Rice was ~$35,000, and was the worst of the bunch, or close to it. She loved Rice, but she’s going to Princeton. ;)</p>

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<p>Williams typically gives HYPS type aid. For undergraduate math, you really can’t do better than Williams. Here’s an interesting article about the math department: <a href=“http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/85f8fdeb#/85f8fdeb/12[/url]”>http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/85f8fdeb#/85f8fdeb/12&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Congrats on you S’s acceptances. I just talked to the mom of a fellow Williams student. She said her son has found his math muse.</p>

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<p>We can pay around 38k and he would have to loan out the rest.</p>

<p>It will be too much for you son to have to borrow about $12k+ per year. And, you would have to co-sign for those loans anyway. Are you willing to do that? And, since costs rise each year, he may need to borrow $12k the first year and $20k the last year. At that rate, he could end up with about $65k in debt…which is waaaayyyy too much.</p>

<p>Hopefully, Rice will give your some some money. If not, this all can’t be about what your son “feels”…it’s not like his choices are between Rice and some inadequate school. Your son needs to go to the Accepted Students Days at those other schools so that he can realize that he’ll be happy elsewhere if Rice doesn’t give more money.</p>

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<p>I wonder if the difference might come from how they treat home equity (assuming you have some). Just a guess… it might be worth asking Rice about that. Maybe Williams and Carleton cap home equity at a lower level than Rice, or maybe Rice doesn’t cap it at all.</p>

<p>My D is at Williams as a science major (chemistry). My impression is that the sciences and math are both very strong there. She has always been a very mathy person, and she says the math people there are scary smart :-). I’m sure Carleton is just as good in both areas.</p>

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<p>Maybe because in Texas, including Houston, the housing value is lower comparing to Northeast. The equity you have in your house up in MA is a lot more comparing to the equities Texans usually have here.</p>

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<p>Great advice! That’s what we had to do last year with our math/science son. We went back to his #1 choice and they did give him more aid, but we still couldn’t get the numbers to work. I found some online loan calculators and showed him exactly what our payments would be, for quite a few years. I put it on a spreadsheet. Seeing it in black and white made him understand what a huge sacrifice it would be for us. We told him if he were our only child, we would actually consider it, but with two younger children, it just wasn’t the prudent thing to do. So he’s at his #2 school, which he likes a lot.</p>

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<p>Hi:</p>

<p>My son and I sat and read your thoughtful responses. My husband is upstairs writing the appeal letter. I wish I had a lot of equity in my home but I only have about 100k.
Part of my son’s attraction to Rice is that he is a shy kid who does not drink. I think he views the house system as an easy way to become part of something and “fit in.” He has one close friend at the high school and a lot of “say hello” type friends but in many ways for him this is an emotional decision based on the hopes of having a large (or at least larger) circle of friends in college. But yup, I can’t pay 60k more for his idea of friendships. I wish I could.</p>

<p>We are going to look at a spreadsheet and I have told him to look at Carlton and Williams as the choices unless something changes at Rice. (Or, he gets off the harvey mudd waitlist!!)</p>

<p>Does anybody know a good spreadsheet program online that compares, say five schools, so we can line them up? the finaid one is only three. I think we will work on that today. I will also look at what the loans would cost him if he went to Rice so if you have a good website rec for that would appreciate.</p>

<p>Thanks guys.</p>

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<p>I am thinking you don’t need to give them too much information, which a spread sheet might do. It might be better to simply write a request for reconsideration, enclose the copies of the other awards, and let them know that if they can match the other awards, your son will joyfully attend Rice. </p>

<p>As an aside, Rice wasn’t very generous with our DS, but he applied ED.That said, the engineering dept gave him some merit awards during his upperclassman years. It wasnt a lot (a few thousand), and it wasnt expected, but it was nice.</p>

<p>He also very much liked Williams, but decided he wanted engineering as an option (originally thought he’d major in physics). A Williams grad suggested he could travel to Albany from Williams to take engineering classes (not a practical suggestion). We visited Harvey Mudd too, but he fell in love with Rice. He did end up majoring in Engineering at Rice, and he loved it! Good luck with the reconsideration letter!</p>

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<p>I am sitting here in a hotel room in Houston having visited Rice the last 2 days. Yes, it’s a very nice school. Excellent facilities and engaged profs. </p>

<p>I’m a little mystified by the issue of drinking and friends. Won’t he have the opportunities to find friends at those other (smallish) schools? </p>

<p>BTW… Rice kids do drink…I’ve been here since Friday and the bars/restaurants are full of college-age-looking kids. I’m not suggesting that the students are a bunch of drunks, but college kids do drink/party/have fun…unless they’re at some kind of bible college.</p>

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<p>m2collegekids-</p>

<p>Most Rice students, if they do drink, tend to drink on campus. Athough Rice has recently tightened its alcohol policy [</a>" + artTitle.replace(“-”,“”) + " - " + “The Rice Thresher” + " - " + “News” + "](<a href=“http://www.ricethresher.org/news/alcohol-probation-announced-1.2114097]”>http://www.ricethresher.org/news/alcohol-probation-announced-1.2114097) it was still generally known that if a student was needing any assistance if they had a bit too much to drink, they were better off getting it from the Rice police than the Houston police. There are other colleges/universities, as well as grad, med and law schools in the downtown Houston area. Medical residency and internship opportunities abound at the massive Texas medical center complex on and around Main Street, right across from Rice. Its quite possible that the students, or student-age-looking folks you saw were not Rice undergrads.</p>

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<p>mom2collegekids: He felt like the house system with its immediate sense of belonging was a nice fit for him. He enjoyed the humor, camaraderie, and competition between the colleges. I do know there is drinking there. Many students there told him that your decision whether or not to drink is a respected choice. His roommate did not drink and felt very comfortable there. I did sit on that chief of police talk to the parents and was very impressed with the wet campus policy. Yes, I would think he would make friends anywhere. The house system just appealed to my introverted son and he thought it might be easier there.</p>

<p>jym626:Thanks for that reminder about the smallish award possibilities through the engineering department. I remember them talking about that at owl days. I definitely wouldn’t send rice the spreadsheet. I will just send them the williams and carleton award letters. It just seems odd that Williams and Carleton both granted him around 14k, with williams even giving him a book grant for four years and Rice gave him zero. :frowning:
What is your son doing now with his engineering degree? Is he still in Houston?</p>