Is Santa Clara known for providing almost no financial aid? My DS has a 1560 SAT and a weighted 4.02 from one of the Top-5 Catholic high schools in America (it’s really difficult and they don’t grade inflate). Planning to major in CompSci with focus on cyber. We don’t qualify for need based, but it’s hard to stomach paying the full $70K at SU when he has a merit scholarship to a comparable school (not in CA) that will mean we only have to pay about $20K per year. I just lost my job last month and Santa Clara was not exactly “understanding”… what are my chances to squeeze a little out of them? What do they do with the financial aid offers to students who turn them down?
If you recently lost your job, I wouldn’t commit to a $70k/year school. I suppose your son could ask to defer for a year to give you an opportunity to locate another job? But if Santa Clara wasn’t understanding about your job loss, I’d move on. Why pay $70k when he can attend a comparable school for $20k?
FA is a formula plain and simple based on what happened last year or year before, so your job loss won’t come into play until another tax/earnings cycle. Not uncommon for kids with high test scores and weighted gpa’s of 4.5+ to see small amounts of merit from SCU, particularly in CS/Engineering. It has been that way for a long time it seems.