<p>Hi,</p>
<p>The thread on schools that do offer merit aid was great...thought it might be useful to consider the converse. :-) Helpful in looking toward the future and avoiding the sticker-shock heart attack that I'm pretty sure is coming in a few years....</p>
<p>Thanks a lot for any ideas!</p>
<p>Many of the most selective schools, Ivies, HYPSM, do not offer merit aid, but do commit to meeting "100% of need." Now, they can meet that need with a mix of grants, loans, work-study. Many believe that they tinker with the mix in such a way that they give more "free money" (grants) to those they want to woo - a form of merit aid. However, if you have zero need according to FAFSA/CSS Profile, you will not get aid from such schools.</p>
<p>So...if you are accepted by these schools, they'll work with you to try to get a mix of loans/grants/etc. so the student can attend, it seems. I wonder how you can figure out what they'll give you <em>before</em> they accept you, in case you wanted to do an early decision.... </p>
<p>These are really basic questions...I'm sure others have covered them long before! Thanks!</p>
<p>There are Fafsa worksheets that can be used to estimate the required family contribution. For a middle-upper middle class income, the EFC is will be about 1/3 of the W2 adjusted gross income - but there are a lot of factors involved.</p>
<p>"So...if you are accepted by these schools, they'll work with you to try to get a mix of loans/grants/etc. so the student can attend, it seems. I wonder how you can figure out what they'll give you <em>before</em> they accept you, in case you wanted to do an early decision.... "</p>
<p>That is not the way it works; they don't really work with you but simply determine what they will give you (after which you might try to appeal for better) and none give any indication before you are accepted early decision. </p>
<p>As noted above, high ranked schools like the ivies and Stan do not give merit aid, and you can add Northwestern to the list.</p>
<p>Princeton has the best fin aid policy of the Ivies- no loans included!</p>
<p>Swarthmore (only to about 1%), Williams, Amherst, and Carleton (except NM) do not give merit scholarships. Also maybe Pomona; I'm not sure.</p>
<p>Others already gave you the low down. I'll just add similar information. The highly selective colleges, including the Ivies and others in that kind of range, do not offer merit aid. Sometimes, people advise students of that calibur to also apply to schools another tier down if they are looking for merit aid because they will be quite qualified and the schools just below often do offer merit aid (not all). The most selective schools do offer need based aid. This is determined by your FAFSA form and for many schools, also the CSS Profile. They have a formula to it and the aid package is based on what THEY determine YOU can afford (not necessarily what you believe you can afford, mind you). The aid package usually has a grant component, a loan component and a work study component. Princeton's has no loan component but that is unusual. You can get an idea of what a school would offer by doing the FAFSA worksheets. Princeton even has an online worksheet sort of thing where it gives an estimate and you can try that for an idea. If your child's decision as to which school he/she is going to attend is partly based on which school gives the best financial aid package, then your child should NOT apply Early Decision. If you have to compare packages, you can't under ED, and it is a binding decision. Of course financial need applicants can apply ED but if the decision to attend is going to be based at all on the amount of the financial aid offer, then he/she should not do this. </p>
<p>With my own kids, we did apply for financial aid to all schools. However, we did not consider the aid package in letting them choose where to attend. Whatever aid we got was going to help but we let them pick the school. They did not apply ED (did Early Action which is not binding) but we would have let them apply ED if they had wanted to because we were not deciding where to go based on the financial aid package and did not use comparison of packages in making that decision. </p>
<p>For my oldest child, we thought that NONE of her schools had merit aid because she applied to quite selective schools and most don't. We had no idea that two of her schools actually did have merit aid until she was the recipient (Lehigh....her safety, gave a very large amt. of merit aid and Smith, an easier match school of hers, also gave merit aid). She also was offered a free ride based on merit at our state university. The rest of the schools did not have merit aid but gave need based aid (the merit aid schools ALSO gave need based aid on top of the merit scholarship). The aid package had a grant, loans (student ones, but we added Parent Plus Loans), and work study (which we declined though at Brown, my oldest D's school, all freshmen's work study is taken care of by grants so that none do work study that year). While only a small portion of the package was a grant freshman year, the grant shot up very high to quite a significant amount this year because we have two in college, so it is based on your financial need. They don't "work with you" but they do adjust it based on circumstances.</p>
<p>My other D is now a freshman and I did not realize her schools had merit scholarships but she got them at each of her schools, some quite a large signficant amount, plus need based aid which included grants and we do have two in college. She is at NYU. </p>
<p>Anyway, just know that the most selective schools in general don't have merit aid. You can figure out an estimate of the family contribution under a need based aid system. If the amt. of aid or grant money offered is a determining factor as to where your child will matriculate, then Early Decision is not for you. Further, in some ways, in the ED round, a school is not as compelled to make the financial aid package as attractive as it is a binding agreement and so they know you are not comparing the offer with other schools. Whether this truly enters into it, is hard to say but it might.</p>
<p>Susan</p>
<p>susan, nice summary</p>
<p>
[quote]
Princeton has the best fin aid policy of the Ivies- no loans included!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>But this does not necessarily mean that you will graduate debt free. As others have stated, the school determines your EFC. Some parents get the EFC and feel that this is not what they can afford so the student may still end up taking out loans to defray some of this cost.</p>
<p>In addition there was just a recent discussion as to the school does allow you to take a loan to make up the difference between your food plan and the cost of an eating club memebership/</p>
<p>And to add to the above info and soozievt's excellent summary, many here on cc have found that they get very different estimates of their EFC depending on whose worksheet/calculator they use.</p>
<p>Correct me if I'm wrong, everyone, but that EFC gives you a total number only - eg, your Expected Family Contribution is $15,000 (or $6000, or $41,000). It does NOT give you any breakdown of how your need might be met: % loans, % grant, % work-study. That is where I believe folks REALLY begin to find variation.</p>
<p>Remember, also, many of the top schools pledge to meet 100% of need (as soozie says, 100% of what THEY say is your need, not what you think/hope), but many others don't and can't afford to. You can find what % of need schools pledge to meet, sometimes on their websites, on the College Board profiles, etc.</p>
<p>sybbie-Yes, that's very true, but
1) You can use outside scholarships to avoid that
2) It's still better than graduating $20-23,000 in debt</p>
<p>Work-study isn't so bad either; many people want to work in labs or other things they enjoy anyway.</p>
<p>And you also need to find out how the schools work with the FAFSA info. Last year, we found out the the U of Ch strictly adheres to the FAFSA formaula for all students - it does give some merit aid, but very limited. D couldn't accept because they don't vary from FAFSA, and the amount was HUGE! American gave tremendous merit aid - full tuition, 4 years, so no need to deal with FA. Amherst, however, uses the FAFSA info but does its own calculations. Students that don't have to pay much or nothing, will be placed under the FAFSA umbrella and Fed Aid. Others, middle class, etc., are dealt with under theAmherst formula, which they believe is much more accurate, so D got about $10K more from Amherst, because they didn't use the FAFSA formula. No merit aid, just FA, and originally the package included very small loans and WS, but outside scholarships took care of that. So it is the school's application of FAFSA that must be looked at. Trinity (SA) is a strict FAFSA school. All this is what we learned last year at accepted students' weekends, etc.</p>