<p>I didn't know such a thing existed until I got a letter from UPENN focusing on their financial aid policies. Apparently somewhat recently they've adopted a no-loan aid policy. Whereas they meet 100% of established need, and that need is met via grants and scholarships rather than a large percentage of it being student loans. This blew my mind. I've always faced the reality that my parents wouldn't be able to provide much (financially) for my education and I'd have to take several years after graduating to pay back loans.</p>
<p>Today I read of a similar policy (need blind admissions + 100% need + no loans) from some college... I think it was Pomona. EDIT: I just double checked, it is Pomona and they also commit to maintaining "equivalent support" as their costs increase over the four years of a student's attendance as long as the students family income remains the same... too bad I'm not looking to attend a liberal arts college.</p>
<p>In any case, as awesome as this is, I realize that this combination of policies is likely to be extremely rare (or so I'd imagine), but does anyone know of any other schools who offer this or something similarly amazing?</p>
<p>Currently a list would look like...
UPENN
Pomona</p>
<p>Add to it of you know of others or... if such a list exists here on CC (or elsewhere on the "internets") I'd very much like to see it.</p>
<p>I think both of those schools are great schools with enough of an endowment that their definition of need is not restricting. As is the case with most of the schools I know with this policy. However, when you go through this process, you’ll find that you need to cast a wide net. Yes UPenn and Pomona and other such no loan, all need met schools are great. But they are also highly selective. You also need to look at schools that are sure to take you AND that you can afford. That is the tough part about looking for college. The pie in the sky schools are wonderful, no question about it, but they are truly lottery tickets in terms of admissions. By all means have some on your list, but balance it with some sure things.</p>
<p>Also be aware that if a school truly wants you, their definition of need can be more generous than usual, and you could get a very nice merit within aid package that would meet full cost + some. Schools that give a lot of loans in general, tend to gap and/or have a tough definition of financial need for most students, can be very, very generous to a select few. They can, because they are less generous to others. So depending on your stats and those of the schools, your best bets may not be the best bets by just lookng at the average stats.</p>
<p>There are a few “no loan” schools, but they tend to be the hardest schools to get accepted to. Plus, schools get to define what your “need” is, so you may still have to take out loans if they determine that your family can contribute more than it actually can.</p>
<p>Princeton University, Davidson College, Amherst College, Harvard University, Pomona College, Swarthmore College, Haverford College, University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, Bowdoin College, Stanford University, Wellesley College, Columbia University, Claremont McKenna College and Vanderbilt University. are some schools. Dartmouth and Williams were on this list until recently. Other colleges are expected to reintroduce loans so if this is very important to you, make sure you ask the college fin aid office as you start your app process. Things do change year to year.</p>
<p>I meant to ask more in terms of a general question for information sake, and not so much a list of schools for me personally to apply to.</p>
<p>I do plan on applying to UPENN but I have no delusions of getting in. I fully intend on having a fair amount of match and safety schools when I apply to colleges in the fall but for now I’m just trying to get an idea as to what some of the “best case scenario” schools might be - financially.</p>
<p>Though, do you know of other schools that have a no-loan policy? Preferably with need blind admissions and promise to meet 100% of demonstrated need. Just wanted to compile a list of schools that meet this criteria.</p>
<p>EDIT: Wow. Seriously? I’ve heard of all of those schools primarily due to their excellent academics, and was aware that most if not all of them could afford to meet 100% of demonstrated need (which I do realize is something the college gets to decide) but I didn’t realize they promised no-loan financial aid packages. I have never heard of this policy until… yesterday.</p>
<p>My understanding is that there were about 70 schools that have a no loan policy. You can get a list of need blind/100% of need met schools by googling this. There is a Wikipedia entry with the list. But as I warned earlier, the admissions situations is a moving target. A school that was need blind one year, could change the next, and they don’t exactly announce the policy change all of the time or highlight it on their website. Son and I went to 5 schools for visits in April that I know were not needblind and/or did not meet 100% of need, but you would not have gotten that impression from the info session, nor did any of their viewbooks and brochures have that info in there. </p>
<p>Also, again, bear in mind that the definition of aid is a biggie. You can hit the jackpot at schools that are not needblind, do not meet 100% of need, have not eliminated loans from their aid packages. They can and do give packages to SOME kids that can be more generous than those schools that meet all of those criteria. I’ve seen kids get their most generous offers from schools like NYU, Fordham, Wash U, Lafayette , etc, in fact, more generous than their offers from the schools that are considered the most generous.</p>
<p>The “no loan” part and 100% need does vary. My girls applied to many 100% need and no loan colleges, the awards varied, some higher or lower, but none were enough for them to not take any loans at all. That might in part be, because we couldn’t save very much over the years, but it couldn’t be thought of as an “easy” payment, just much better than others. We had amounts vary 10.000 and less with the same “need”. One D is going go a “no loan” school with a loan because it makes it doable for us and the interest is less (we will help her later) Yale gave a much better package than UPenn, (but she didn’t try to see if they would meet it either.) The other is going to a 100% need school (H.Cross)with loans and a monthly payment from us but got better packages from other schools that she was at the top of their pool, but they met much less need overall. It was scholarships (sometimes more than one)that made it attractive. I found many families that did better at non-100% need schools because of that.
I just say, don’t expect anything and you wont be disappointed, don’t put all your eggs in one basket and don’t try to entirely figure it out…you can’t.</p>
<p>OK, here are somethings that you need to bear in mind.</p>
<p>If stafford loans (subsidized or un subsidized) are included in the package, they are loans. Not sure what the package there for those schools is i.e. does it include Stafford?</p>
<p>Second, all schools that do not use the FAFSA alone, get to determine what your EFC is based on their own criteria. No loans does not mean $0 EFC. The FAFSA may give you an EFC of $15000, the college criteria (based on the CSS/Profile) may give you an EFC of $25,000.</p>
<p>Now if the EFC is $25,000 you are expected to bring it in from your family and if you take out loans to meet the EFC, that is your decision in the college’s mind. Let us say you parents own their own home for the last thirty years and have an equity of $250,000. FAFSA ignores the home the parents live in but the CSS Profile does not. The expectation is that you or your parents will somehow use that asset to generate cash that can be used for college e.g. a HELOC which is a loan but will not show up in the college calculations. There may be cases where you cannot get cash from some assets. </p>
<p>So yes there are colleges (often very difficult to get in as pointed out by others) that minimize or eliminate the amount of direct loans. However, they may still expect a sizable parental contribution. So approach this with a sense of caution. Sometimes these statements are true, sometimes they are too good to be true.</p>
<p>Agreed, Mazewanderer. The colleges themselves define need. I know a number of those schools do require a larger parental contribution that FAFSA might, include assets that FAFSA ignores, requires a larger student contribution, and includes non custodial parent and step parent financials. All of these things can really bump up your need figure.</p>
<p>Most of these schools do have a fairly generous need package if you do not fall into any of their special niches. It’s the acceptance that is difficult to get. The Staffords are still available to students, and because the schools have no loans in the package, the Staffords can be used towards expected parent’s and student’s contributions. Be aware that there likely will be two sets of needs being defined here. The EFC generated by FAFSA is what governs the Stafford and is not usually the same as the need defined by the college. </p>
<p>I’ve known families that have gotten a jolt when 401K accounts, home equity amounts, and siblings’ accounts have all been included in the assets when privates schools do their analyses.</p>
<p>What your parents will provide and what the school thinks they can provide are often two different things. It is not uncommon for someone being admitted to a no-loan school but still not getting enough financial aid to attend. If you want to get a rough idea of how much financial aid you can expect from a school that meets 100% of demonstrated financial need you need to determine what your expected family contribution is. You will need to know roughly what your parent’s income and assets are. There are many online calculators, I don’t know if UPenn has one or not.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt does not include any loans - loans can be requested by the student in lieu of work-study.</p>
<p>From the Vandy Site:</p>
<p>Financial aid awards do not include loans. With our Expanded Aid Program, Vanderbilt’s financial aid packages for undergraduate students include only grant assistance and a reasonable work expectation.</p>
<p>I know the problem for our family and it happened to my sister, we made more money the last 5 or so years than most of our children’s upbringing. If we made what we did before my husband retired and got another lower paying job, it would have been much cheaper. That said, we wouldn’t have been able to pay off pay off some large expenses from home repairs etc. either.
I also found another component in FA, was that some schools that are only fafsa, consider children in grad school. Luckily on this site, I learned some of them, others I emailed. The difference in their packages was over 6,000 since they counted one more child in school. That in itself can make a big difference if you have a child leaving college and entering grad school.</p>
<p>^^^^ Again, I think that articles like this are extremely misleading.</p>
<p>Yes, they are for the most part need blind in admissions.</p>
<p>Yes they meet the demonstrated need.</p>
<p>And, Yes, they get to define what the demonstrated need is. In many cases what they define is not what parents or students can afford and or even think is fair. Like the example I gave before, if your parents have $100,000 equity in their house and the only way they can get the money out is through a loan (HELOC). Yet many colleges on the list will consider a part of that $100,000 as parent contribution and do not care how you get that. </p>
<p>So yes, at some level that article is true but as they say the devil is in the details.</p>
<p>We found a huge variance in financial aid among equally selective 100% need met no loan schools. There was a difference of about 15K. Also, some schools with partial loans offered better packages than the “no loan” ones. In addition, often the schools that offered some merit were less affordable than the 100% need met without merit schools. Basically, apply where you want as there is no way to predict your financial aid award.</p>
<p>ETA: Do make sure you apply to a financial safety or two.</p>
<p>“Yes, they are for the most part need blind in admissions.”</p>
<p>This is (or should be) mostly irrelevant to an applicant. It affects the chances of a needy applicant being accepted, but not the general attractiveness of the school to the applicant.</p>