We did ED for athletics and so they were pretty open to doing a pre-read for our financial aid. Not sure about other schools, but for Muhlenberg that was exactly what we got.
Not sure if this has been listed (have not read the entire thread!) but Wheaton in MA gave a nice merit package, about half tuition, and d wasnāt a top stat student. (This was as a transfer app, but I would assume freshman app would have a similar award).
My two with their corresponding financial awards:
child 1: Bentley: $44k/yr (30k academic scholarship/14k financial aid). He had pretty crazy academic stats tho.
child 2: Brandeis: $55k/yr (grant) plus work study . She had very good academic stats and was recruited athlete (D3).
Would highly recommend looking at the near the top smallish to small LACs in the northeast. If you have the academic numbers, they seem willing to throw your student $. Both mine wound up being cheaper than flagship instate U. The third, we shall seeā¦
While the history of college is an interesting one, it really have nothing to do with college 300+ years later in the U.S. Life expectancy in the 1600-1700ās was like 35 years. You didnāt have the luxury of spending extra years in college. Today, life expectancy is more than double that.
Now, employers expect college grads to have taken x number of classes to graduate and see many kids with second degrees, several minors etc. In addition, I doubt students studying abroad was feasible 300 years ago but in todayās age, adds to a college students āeducationalā experience. Lastly, most kids want to graduate with their friends and peers they started with as freshman.
Again, whatās the rush? You might be working a career for 40 years, itās ok to spend 4 years between ages 18-21 to explore and figure out what you want to be doing for the next 40 years without the responsibilities of having a family, mortgage, employer demands, contributing to your retirement (401K), etc.
Enjoy the ride and journeyā¦
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@chipperd Is your grant from Brandeis for financial need or merit?
@time4adventure My second kidās is just called a brandeis grant and itās not tied to any gpa requirements, so Iām assuming itās based on need. I forgot to mention that my second went E.D., as most athletes do when they go D3, whereas my first didnāt to his school.
@chipperd My daughter is being recruited at Brandeis. Just curious if they gave you the financial aide number before you applied ED? My daughter loves it there but the cost is crazy and they said they canāt give us any idea of what she will get until she applies and is accepted. We definitely donāt qualify under the FAFSA but we are completing the CSS hoping there is some FA there.
@SBmom0702 : Congrats on the interest in your daughter at Brandeis. Mine really likes it there and has been on the āBran Vanā into Cambridge, and then Boston a few times already. Let me know if itās track and I can help you more directly.
Like you, I was uncomfortable committing to pay for something without knowing the cost up front, which is what I told the coach during the initial interview with our daughter. Later on in the process, after it was clear my daughter wanted to go to that school (after visiting 17 others with coaches interviews!), they did the early academic read to make sure she could get in. After that hurdle was cleared, the coach suggested an early financial read and got us in touch with someone at student financial services. The process from there for us was fairly simple. We needed to submit the most recent tax forms (all of them), W2, 1099, etc. Within a few weeks, we had her financial offer that they couldnāt guarantee would be 100% accurate, but would be within a small margin of error. This has turned out to be 100% accurate, actually they gave her a bit more in the official offer. PM me if you have additional questions, happy to help.
Love the school for our kid. She is really enjoying the environment and has made a variety of friends there. If it is track, I canāt tell you how much she has enjoyed her team mates and all their support so far.
Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but York College of Pennsylvania, which has a very reasonable tuition to begin with, offers automatic merit awards to all (ranging from $1k-$10k per year).
Got 80K (20 per year) for UVM, which made it a contender. That school is very $ OOS
Drew University in Madison NJ! $27.5k merit for high EFC family, and the sticker price is less than $55k. Itās a beautiful SLAC walkable to a train station to NYC with excellent science, business and theatre opportunities. My kid fell in love and couldnāt see paying more than twice that for undergrad much to our relief.
I will add our D20ās so far ā¦ this is all merit only, no FA. (Note she is NMSF)
We focused the search on those schools with good merit aid for great stats
UTD ā¦ AES award, Full tuition, plus monies towards expenses. Expect this to change to NMF in March which is full COA
Fordham ā¦ Presidential (full Tuition) 52,980 per year ā¦ leaves quite expensive R&B
Temple ā¦ Presidential (full tuition) 33,000 per year (OOS) ā¦leaves reasonable R&B
U of San Fran ā¦ 25,000 per year (half tuition)
Uof Portland ā¦ 27,400 per year (half tuition)
UCF ā¦ As NMSF will be full COA plus additional monies for travel abroad, etc.
St Johns ā¦ 31,000 per year (full tuition) ā¦ leaves reasonable R&B
Wish I could figure out how to edit a post ā¦ St Johnās is $41K per year typo on that oneā¦ and R&B is semi-reasonable
Thank you for providing such great information!
As to editing, you have only 15 minutes to edit the original post. Meaning, it isnāt you.
D has 30 ACT and 3.75 UW. Has received the following merit offers per year:
Depauw $32k. ($64,540 COA)
Marist. $17.5k, ($61,800)
Catholic $28K ($63,000)
Wooster $33k ($66,750)
Ohio Wesleyan 32k ($57,246) **
Butler $19k ($56,600)
Susquehanna $38k ($64,880)
Ursinus $35k ($68,740)
Elon $0 ($49,250)
**also invited to scholarship weekend where she will receive at least $2k more per year
@buckeyeinbama
As a Buckeye myself, I encouraged an app to tOSU and got a big no. In fact not a single app to any of the great colleges in the state of Ohio ā¦
When you are in the position like us where our ECF is high but that outlay is not reasonable, knowing where to apply for high end merit aid is so important.
We are blessed by a high achieving, self-driven student who also tests very well.
Understood! See my earlier post (#1842) in this thread.
My S19 did apply to OSUā¦ ended up with the National Buckeye and Maximus (pretty sure it was this one) for $16,500 annually in merit. Both are auto-by-stats. Not enough to make us jump, but it was nice he was accepted.
Itās hard when we want our kids to apply somewhere and they balk. I hear you.
Congratulations to your kiddo!
@buckeyeinbama Thanks so much!
Sorry. What is ASU?