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<li>If your family income is less than 60K, or 40K depending and you have stellar grades and SAT/ACT scores, you pretty much can pick any school and get a low cost education if admitted.</li>
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<p>What do YOU define as stellar? What do YOU define as low cost? Some people regard the current cost of even the most expensive schools low. Some feel that asking for $1000 for a year of college is high. Yes, there are kids lined up at the fin aid office who cannot come up with even less than that, their families cannot come up with any money either. When you look at scholarship criterion, some have cut offs at ACT 30, gpa 3.5, for others, to realistically have a chance of getting a merit award it’s a lottery ticket with even perfect numbers. </p>
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<li>University ideal student = High grades/scores + high family income. Its the Robin Hood story. If every high performing kid gets a scholarship, who pays? Remember its a zero sum game.</li>
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<p>Most schools are need blind in admissions. There are not very many schools that are need aware for admissions except for certain category of students (transfer, waitlist, international, for example)</p>
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<li><p>Full tuition/everything in top 50 schools = Very rare and competitive.
ALL schools, not just the top 50. Even the top schools tend to have a required student contribution and there really are very, very few schools that offer full ride award and there aren’t many of those even at such schools. </p></li>
<li><p>Read the fine print. Eg Cornell U say they will provide no more than 5K loan for family income less than 120K.
That 5K is for the student and family is expected to fork out a large portion.
Don’t understand what you mean here. It’s not so the fine print, but trying to find all of the information in one place. I think you misunderstand what the deal is at Cornell. They meet full need as THEY DEFINE IT, and when they put together a package for the student, they do not include more than $5K in loans in there if the family.</p></li>
<li><p>Either you are in the Ivy or not, there is no significant difference between the 15th and the 50th university in the workforce. But a grad degree makes a difference.
I disagree with you fully here. The biggest difference in the workforce is the type of person the student is, the field in which the student is looking for work, and the record said student racks up in college. Though yes, a grad degree makes a difference in ones options–to get certain jobs without one would be nigh impossible, in some fields doubling the chances of finding a job in certain fields when the chances are so low, doesn’t make it much of a difference. </p></li>
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