<p>CA resident here. I grew up in MA and once upon a time was accepted to UMASS but went elsewhere. D not thrilled with idea of UC/CSU and would like to experience east coast for college. Looking at UMASS because OOS tuition is not much more than UC/CSU in-state. Another poster mentioned a "president's scholarship" for OOS that waives the OOS add-on. If so, that would make UMASS substantially less expensive than UC/CSU. How hard is that to get? D has an SAT of 2080 (1st try, will take again), GPAw 4.3, GPAuw 3.9+, ranks 3/325, 9 AP's by graduation (out of 11 offered), solid EC's (debate captain, mock trial co-captain, prez GSA). Looks like she would qualify for Honors College. Thoughts? Thank you.</p>
<p>Hi - my son was accepted OOS at UMass with an UW GPA of 3.75 or so, SAT of 1900 and ACT of 28 and received the President’s scholarship so yes, it made UMass very affordable. He has an interesting story - he’s profoundly deaf - and I think wrote a good essay. But it sounds like your daughter would qualify for UMass for sure. It’s a great school and Amherst, as I’m sure you know, is just about the most perfect college town there is. Good luck!</p>
<p>With UMASS the question to ask (and I would suggest contacting the school directly to see what they will be offering for students entering fall 2014) is Tuition and FEES… at UMASS Tuition is a “drop in the bucket” compared to “Fees,” which include the “Curriculum Fee.” When combined with what UMASS calls “Tuition” it is equal to the cost of tuition alone at other schools. So, if they are only waiving “tuition” it may not be as great a deal as anticipated.</p>
<p>[Tuition</a> and Fees | Office of the Bursar | UMass Amherst](<a href=“http://www.umass.edu/bursar/tuition-and-fees]Tuition”>Tuition and Fees | Office of the Bursar | UMass Amherst)</p>
<p>Not saying that they may not offer some students great aid and/ or scholarships, but an OOS tuition waiver when the OOS student would still have to pay the OOS “fees” may not be the deal you are looking for.</p>
<p>KatMT - Thanks for the head up. I was assuming that the scholarship in effect treated the OOS student as in-state for all fee purposes (tuition or whatever they call the add-ons), but obviously I could be wrong. I just sent an email to the admissions office seeking verification and clarification.</p>
<p>I’m out of state and I received 12k in scholarship. My family is also in substantial need and received a very generous fa package. Overall, UMass is about 10k for us.</p>
<p>
UMass, as a matter of publicly-stated policy, is attempting to increase the number of OOS students in order to collect the higher OOS amount. Both tuition and fees are higher for OOS students, and collectively about double the tuition and fees for IS students, which means OOS students pay around $13.5K more than IS students.</p>
<p>One of the things UMass does to encourage especially desirable OOS students to attend is to offer a discount off of the $13.5K extra, in the form of scholarships. These range from a couple thousand up to $12K. They may go higher but I don’t remember seeing any reported.</p>
<p>For a student with the stats of your D, I would guess she is easily in the running for a $5-6K scholarship, and maybe more.</p>
<p>If you go through the “Accepted Student” threads for the past few years, you can get an idea of how stats and scholarships line up.</p>
<p>I would encourage your D to try to get higher test scores, and definitely apply Early Action. The highest amounts definitely go to the EA students.</p>
<p>notrichenough - Thank you for the response. CA public universities have been doing the same thing due to the budget crisis… accepting more OOS students who pay the higher fee. While costs vary somewhat from campus to campus, as an IS student, for tuition/room/board we’re looking at $28k/yr for a UC (UCLA, Cal, etc.), $20/yr for a CSU (Cal Poly, San Diego State). UMass OOS looks to be about $36k/yr. If they knocked it down to $30k/yr, that might not be enough to entice D to choose it over, say, UCLA (assuming she were accepted to both). But if they knocked it down to say $23k or 24k, well, now it’s starting to look pretty good, especially for a kid who wants to explore another part of the country. I’ll check out the admissions threads. Thanks for the tip.</p>
<p>Looking at the 2013 admissions thread, it looks like quite a few OOS students with >2000 SAT’s and high GPA’s were being offered scholarships in the $8k to $12k range. If they maintain those kinds of levels for 2014 admits, it sounds very promising for my D. Would make UMASS a good safety and reasonably affordable choice.</p>
<p>Umass admissions confirms these OOS scholarships exist. Cannot commit to amounts for next year. Only program that waives full OOS tuition is for OOS students from other New England states, which doesn’t help me. But the $12k max is pretty darn close (IS and OOS difference is about $13.5k).</p>
<p>Make sure to apply EA for your best chance at the most money.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>My son applied RD and received the president’s scholarship. With that, it made UMass about the same financial as nearly everywhere he applied and was accepted except for our state flagship - UNH. It was $10K more!</p>
<p>It would be interesting to hear about OOS scholarship $$.
I’m in-state and had good grades (4.56), good SATs (2350) and had lots of sports & extra curricular activities. I received the the Abigail Adams free tuition scholarship (not much at $1700/yr). A president Scholarship for ($2000/yr) and a little grant money. The rest of the aid was loans. Even though I’m in-state UMASS was one of my most expensive schools (and weakest scholarship package). I was admitted to the Commonwealth College but in the end chose another school (TUFTS) because of the very little aid & the amount of new construction in the school. (TUFTS with scholarship turned out to be much cheaper than UMASS – I never imagined that was possible)
It wasn’t very appealing walking past the Commonwealth college construction site then past the other construction by the student union as I went to the engineering building.
I’m sure it will be nice when its done but it looked dumpy about a month ago. I actually wanted to go to UMASS (I wanted to run track) but there was no financial motivation to go there (other than the in-state tuition).<br>
Instate Scholarship was terrible so maybe the OOS is better. Good luck.</p>