<p>Each school will have their own calculator, because each school considers ‘need’ differently. However, a number of schools use calculators through collegeboard, which will auto-populate the calculator once you enter in the account information.</p>
<p>“iWow! You have all provided me with a lot of info. I have my work cut out for me! Thanks so much. I have forwarded them the info on U Pitt, and Northeastern as well as the full tuition scholarships at Tulane. I think that a family meeting is in order to narrow down the parameters.”</p>
<p>“Question about the net price calculator. Does each school have it’s own, or is there one “universal” calculator?”</p>
<p>Since most schools do not meet need, each has its own calculator. However, be aware that some are “optimistic” and will give an assumed better pkg.</p>
<p>When the family sits down to discuss, the have to understand that there’s a huge difference between assured merit and competive merit. uPitt’s merit has become increasingly competitive, and being from a nearby state, may not get offered to your nephew (or may not be a big enough award). It’s full tuition offers have some odd caveats…don’t remember the exact, but I remember Entomom’s D not getting the full tuition offer even though she had a very high SAT score. </p>
<p>While it’s fine to apply to some schools with competitive huge merit (like Tulane), since this family must have large merit, he needs to apply to a few schools with ASSURED huge merit.</p>
<p>A good rule of thumb to have is…It costs about $15k to cover room, board, books, fees, and misc costs (some schools have higher R&B costs). So, if the family can only cover THOSE costs, then the student needs at least a full tuition scholarship.</p>
<p>thanks all. mom2- so other than Rutgers, what other schools would you suggest within a 4-5 hour drive of NJ with ASSURED huge merit?
just spoke to my sister. she is totally overwhelmed with the thought of all of this. she seems to think that they are destined to take out student loans.</p>
<p>Go to this link</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/15330528-post205.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/15330528-post205.html</a> </p>
<p>The 4-5 hour distance limitation will be a problem because that area of the country isn’t known for large merit without NMF status. The NE tends to be more “need based aid” oriented.</p>
<p>just spoke to my sister. she is totally overwhelmed with the thought of all of this. she seems to think that they are destined to take out student loans.</p>
<p>Bad idea…that could ruin their lives. I don’t know if they have other kids, but the thought of even big loans for one child is awful…but multiplying that for multiple kids could mean absolute disaster, especially if they won’t be able to qualify for the multi-year loans.</p>
<p>thanks mom2. There are two kids. My niece is in 8th grade, so they have a little while before they have to worry about her. Nephew is coming over on Sunday to start to work on all this.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>The problem isn’t that they have 4 years before they have to worry about the younger child…the problem is that if they take loans for Child #1, they will still be paying on those loans when Child #2 goes to college. Student loans are for 10 years. So, when Child #2 applies, the parents would be thinking, “yikes, we’re still paying $XXX per month for Child #1, we can’t suddenly start paying twice that.”</p>
<p>When you have more than one child to put thru college, parents taking out loans usually isn’t the answer unless the amounts are small.</p>
<p>Your sister may not know this, but her CHILD can only take out small student loans…</p>
<p>5500 frosh
6500 soph
7500 jr
7500 sr</p>
<p>So, if she’s thinking that Child #1 can borrow a lot for college, she needs to know that he can’t do so without the parents cosigning (taking responsibility). Those loans are very risky. </p>
<p>There’s a mom who posts here that faced that problem. She was still in debt with Child #1’s student loan payments when Child #2’s college costs came along.</p>
<p>WPI’s maximum merit aid is I believe 25K/year against a total COA of over 50K.</p>
<p>Case Western and URochester give merit, to what extent I do not know. I’d also suggest tip-top privates who give tremendous FA, they might get more than they would expect.</p>
<p>Alfred University (NY) established in 1836 as a co-ed university. A regional university, 2300 undergrads, small classes-know your professors, Division III athletics, merit aid, need based aid, co-op, Honors program, housing all 4 years, services for students with disabilities, many clubs & organizations, no greek life, friendly people in village of Alfred, NY. Alfred State SUNY is across the street from Alfred University.</p>
<p>At peak break times, shuttles go to and from Rochester airport.
At peak break times, bus service goes to NYC from Alfred. </p>
<p>School of Art & Design
School of Liberal Arts
School of Business
School of Engineering</p>
<p>Princeton Review Best Northeastern Colleges
Princeton Review Best Business Schools
USNWR’s Best Value
Washington Monthly’s Best Master Degree Institutions
Fiske Guide 2013 Best Buy
Princeton Review’s Best 377
Fiske Guide 2013
USNWR’s Great School Great Price
Fiske Small Schools Strong in Engineering
Fiske Small School Strong in Art & Design </p>
<p>[Alfred</a> University : Financial Aid : Undergraduate Freshmen Scholarships](<a href=“http://www.alfred.edu/finaid/scholarships/]Alfred”>http://www.alfred.edu/finaid/scholarships/) Merit Aid as high as $15,000/year </p>
<p>Highest cost of attendance about $40,000/year for Business, Engineering, Liberal Arts. </p>
<p>School of Art & Design is NYS sponsored, so COA is lower.
Several Engineering majors are NYS sponsored so COA is lower. </p>
<p>[Alfred</a> University : Academics : Degrees/Majors](<a href=“http://www.alfred.edu/academics/degrees_majors.cfm]Alfred”>http://www.alfred.edu/academics/degrees_majors.cfm) Majors & Minors </p>
<p>[Alfred</a> University : Honors Program](<a href=“http://www.alfred.edu/honors/]Alfred”>http://www.alfred.edu/honors/) Honors Program </p>
<p>[Alfred</a> University : Research and Outreach](<a href=“http://www.alfred.edu/research/]Alfred”>http://www.alfred.edu/research/) Research Opportunities </p>
<p>[Alfred</a> University : McComsey Career Development Center : Co-op Resources](<a href=“http://www.alfred.edu/cdc/services/co-op_resources.cfm]Alfred”>http://www.alfred.edu/cdc/services/co-op_resources.cfm) Co-op Information </p>
<p>With maximum merit aid of $15,000/year and COA at about $40,000 or lower, same price as Rutgers (in state) at about $25,000/year. A private school education at same price of New Jersey public. </p>
<p>[Alfred</a> University : Undergraduate Cost of Attendance](<a href=“http://www.alfred.edu/finaid/undergraduate_cost.cfm]Alfred”>http://www.alfred.edu/finaid/undergraduate_cost.cfm) Cost of Attendance '13-'14</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Honestly, I think Rutgers is the better (and better known) school out of the two of those. Just because a school is “private” doesn’t necessarily make it “better” although I’m sure each school has its benefits. Certainly if you prefer a smaller school Alfred may be a better choice than somewhere like Rutgers. And yes, if Rutgers is too close to home, other alternatives may appeal more. ;-)</p>
<p>Hopefully the OP will find out from the family as to how much they pay each year, so it will be known how much merit they need. Often, families without college savings aren’t able to pay out $30k+ per year unless they can live on one income and pay college with the other. </p>
<p>While it’s true that HYPS would give super need-based aid, the other “full need schools” may require a greater contribution than the family can pay. We also know that those schools are the hardest to get accepted to…especially if you’re already from that NE/TriState area.</p>
<p>Also, knowing likely majors (STEM vs Liberal Arts/etc) will also influence choices.</p>
<p>fwiw, we are paying less than our FAFSA EFC as our family contribution for Cornell, although the kid does have $9500/year in self-help built in (7500 in loans and 2K in work study) on top of the “family contribution”. The amount of loans is capped according to family income and can be as low as zero for lower-income families. There may be other high-endowment Profile schools that compute a more reasonable family contribution for some families than FAFSA does.</p>
<p>The most difficult thing for our family has been getting D to work hard enough on apps that she is not particularly enthusiastic about. We explained that the future is unknowable and that our savings are not sufficient to account for economic calamities, that we’ll mostly be paying from current earnings. She sort of understands, but that doesn’t translate into positive action. We insisted she apply to some financial safeties to guard against emergencies. We could die, H could lose job etc. One safety is our state flagship down the street to which many students around the country as well as in our city are dying to get accepted. But she really wants to go AWAY. And none of the guaranteed full-ride NMF scholarship schools appealed to her. So then when it comes time to write essays for apps, honors apps, scholarship apps, not much effort goes into the ones for the safeties. It’s worked out OK, but it’s been stressful. And in fact, over the past several years our fortunes have declined. Some of it was predictable. Economy is bad, so university hasn’t given profs raises for many years. There have been temporary furloughs. Could have moved but we are loathe to move kids in HS, so need to wait 2 more years until youngest graduates. Then this year the profs got a big permanent pay cut. Now suddenly we’re down more than $10,000 per year and there isn’t as much money available to ‘pay-as-we-go.’ So the scholarship schools are looking better and better. I say this because I assume for OP that Rutgers would be a natural safety. But their Pres. Scholarship is somewhat competitive these days, depending on which schools in the college you apply to, and the essays on the app can be the thing that determines whether or not you are chosen once your stats are high enough. If the nephew doesn’t want to attend, perhaps similar to my daughter, that essay won’t be the best. Our flagship doesn’t have merit scholarships like Rutgers, so it didn’t really matter for that app, but then later for getting into honors and such, some schools make you jump through hoops to show you are serious about honors. One school had 4 essays for honors!</p>
<p>*for our family has been getting D to work hard enough on apps that she is not particularly enthusiastic about. We explained that the future is unknowable and that our savings are not sufficient to account for economic calamities, that we’ll mostly be paying from current earnings. She sort of understands, but that doesn’t translate into positive action. We insisted she apply to some financial safeties to guard against emergencies. We could die, H could lose job etc. One safety is our state flagship down the street to which many students around the country as well as in our city are dying to get accepted. But she really wants to go AWAY. And none of the guaranteed full-ride NMF scholarship schools appealed to her. So then when it comes time to write essays for apps, honors apps, scholarship apps, not much effort goes into the ones for the safeties. *</p>
<p>Luckily, many of the big scholarship schools do not have difficult applications. Some don’t require essays, LORs, or really much anything beyond transcripts and scores and filling out an easy app. A number of parents end up filling these out because the apps just ask for basic info.</p>
<p>thanks again everyone for all of your input.
celest…yes Rutgers is a natural choice and probably a real possibility. Since my sons did not apply to Rutgers, I am not familiar with their application process. I only know that it is not on the common app. You mentioned that the Rutgers scholarship is competitive and depends on which schools you apply to. Can you elaborate? Can you apply to multiple schools and do they each have their own essay??</p>
<p>Well, I’m not from NJ, but trying to understand from outside. You can apply to up to 3 schools within the university when you send the application. You just list them. The acceptance, honors process and scholarship awards are determined separately for each school. You might get accepted to one and denied at another, get Pres. Schol. at one and something smaller at another. If you get Pres. at a school, then honors is automatic in that school, but some schools have some other procedure if you don’t get Pres. SEBS has a special honors day where you go and take test, do group work, etc. But since my D got Pres. for SEBS, she got to bypass that. SAS considers you for honors as part of application process. Not sure about other schools as D only applied to these 2. Kids are complaining this year that in prior years everyone who met the published criteria would get Pres., but now app pool is getting more competitive and not everyone gets the award. People were speculating that essay or ECs is coming into play. Some kids were rather upset. Rutgers doesn’t say they guarantee it for certain stats, like some schools, but it seems it used to be practically a given. I gather pharmacy is the toughest school to get into, don’t know how it ranks after that.</p>
<p>I know many of the big merit schools have easy apps. But then if you want the school to be a realistic option, you want to be in honors, which may require an app with more than one essay. The schools may have extra small scholarships available with applications containing yet more essays. My D wants to go to ASU since less than a month ago cuz the oboe prof turned out to be so cool and she loved Barrett when she visited for audition. When the initial app went out it was just an easy extra and very peripheral. She just spent all kinds of time on her Barrett app, even though admission is fairly automatic for NMFs, since there is consideration for extra scholarships as part of Barrett admission, and she slaved over another special scholarship app that required 3 letters and a long essay. But for schools she didn’t care about she didn’t work so hard. The problem is you don’t necessarily know which ones you’ll care about early in the process while still visiting and so forth. Then deadlines may pass with forms not filed or work done sloppily and kid figures out late he/she really likes that school after all and wants to attend. Luckily ASU had deadlines for all this stuff after the date she decided she loves it. We unfortunately didn’t get started looking in sophomore or junior year as is ideal, which could have eliminated much of this late decision issue. For the next kid we’re doing it differently.</p>
<p>Here’s a link to a current thread about Rutger’s Engineering in case your nephew is interested in that.
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/rutgers/1461455-engineering-honors-academy-application.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/rutgers/1461455-engineering-honors-academy-application.html</a></p>
<p>Someone comments that his son got Pres. but still had to apply for honors in SOE. What probably happened there is like with my D. She got a letter inviting her to apply for SEBS honors and go to the weekend. She set it aside and a week later we got a correction saying since she got the Pres. she didn’t need to do anything and the honors was automatic.</p>
<p>@mathmomvt, I did not state Alfred University was better than Rutgers, please do not put words into my mouth.</p>
<p>I mentioned Alfred University due to its attributes as stated above. You could view my past 3,000 posts and see the same remarks.</p>
<p>The OP’s nephew is 20 minutes from Rutgers and does not seem interested in applying.
So why not mention a “hidden gem” because that is what Alfred University is!</p>
<p>Without knowing the major or the family’s EFC, it may be possible that the COA could be under $25k/year.</p>
<p>Was just reacting to the “A private school education at same price of a public” which seemed to be suggesting that “A private school education” was something to be valued just because of it being a private school. You could have just said that it was a hidden gem of a college that could provide the family with an alternative to Rutgers at a similar price. The emphasis on private versus public rubbed me the wrong way, especially since the public is the stronger school in this particular case.</p>