<p>Harvard has a new financial aid initiative that takes home equity out of the equation, and allows families with incomes of 120 to 180k to pay 10% of their income.</p>
<p>My question is, what other schools have similar financial aid programs just like or close to this?</p>
<p>Yale and Princeton, Stanford does count home equity, don’t know about Yale. No other college is close.</p>
<p>uhhh god these schools are the tough ivies to get in to, how will i ever be able to go to a good college without paying a fortune AHHHHHHHHH</p>
<p>This is what every uipper class kid on the planet wants to know. It’s tough!</p>
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<p>Not that it makes a big difference but is it 10% for fixed costs that are paid directly to the university, like tuition, room and board and fees or 10% paid for total cost of attendance (fixed costs + variable costs like books, travel and leisure)</p>
<p>^nvm, just reread the answer to the question</p>
<p>Check this out: [Project</a> on Student Debt: What’s the Bottom Line?](<a href=“http://www.projectonstudentdebt.org/ncoa_chart.php]Project”>http://www.projectonstudentdebt.org/ncoa_chart.php)</p>
<p>^Love that site.</p>
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Harvard and its competitors keep upping the ante, and it’s only a matter of time before one of them goes completely free. I’m calling it now.</p>
<p>That may have been the case before endowment losses, but forget free now. They were under pressure by Congress to spend more of the endowment, that’s a distant memory now.</p>
<p>In my post above, I meant upper middle class.</p>
<p>yeah our income is around 120k, so i guess thats upper middle class. so basically my plan will be to apply to</p>
<p>these four reach schools: HYPS, and see what aid I get, IF i get in any
good merit giving schools: Cooper Union…(can anyone add to this?
financial safeties: UConn Honors? …(can anyone add to this?)</p>
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<p>Don’t forget, this is only part of their formula for determining FA packages. Assets also count, including in some cases home equity. Colleges have an amount they consider ‘typical’ assets which are exempt, but they reduce your need above that level.</p>
<p>There are other schools with good aid such as the other ivies and top LACs that make it doable for many upper middle families, although you will pay more. Talk to your parents about what they will pay and calculate your EFC on calculators provided by the colleges that interest you. Several will probably cost you less unless you can get a near free ride via merit.</p>
<p>*these four reach schools: HYPS, and see what aid I get, </p>
<p>*My parents can pay only about $15 to 20k a year. I realize that my family’s income may be relatively high, but do these schools look at other factors such as savings and the number of college bound children in your family?</p>
<p>Quick stats: 2300 SAT, 35 ACT
4.10 W GPA
3.85 UW GPA
Best thing on my resume: Honors Achievement in the National Chemistry Olympiad (Top 150 in the nation)*</p>
<p>IF i get in any good merit giving schools: Cooper Union…(can anyone add to this?</p>
<p>financial safeties: UConn Honors? …(can anyone add to this?) *</p>
<p>Are you instate for UConn Honors? </p>
<p>You say that UConn Honors is your financial safety, but doesn’t it cost about $25k per year. That may be do-able, but it will be tight with your parents’ $15k contribution, a $5500 student loan, and maybe some savings from a summer job. Or do you know if you will definitely get merit money from UConn?</p>
<p>You really need to include some other schools where you’re likely to get big merit - otherwise you may feel like you don’t have any choices if you don’t get into HYP.</p>
<p>Cooper Union has free tuition, but of course you’ll have NYC room and board costs. I don’t know what kind of “full college campus experience” you want, but I think that might be lacking at Coopers. </p>
<p>Look here for some schools that will definitely give you big merit for your stats. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html</a></p>
<p>Yes, I am instate for UConn honors.</p>
<p>We would need to know your EFC (institutional) to really help. They don’t care about college bound kids until they’re in college. As for savings, they want a piece of yours as opposed to giving more because you don’t have any.</p>
<p>You need to have a solid idea of what schools will expect from you before deciding whether your strategy is to look for need based or merit aid. Let’s face it, even among the absolute best and brightest 4.0 val/2350s, few make it into HYPS.</p>
<p>I posted this in financial aid forum as well:</p>
<p>almost all of the guaranteed scholarships at colleges and universities around the United States have some sort of matrix with SAT/ACT scores and High School GPA, plus a minimum gpa you must maintain while in college. </p>
<p>There are many generous private colleges out there for good but not stellar students, thank God…where a 3.0 or 3.2 gpa and a decent SAT, plus perhaps some good EC’s can get you some decent scholarship money to make it affordable…though “affordable” is a relative term and always involves student loans and maybe some parent plus loans. </p>
<p>Its a huge investment of money, but hopefully the investment pays off over your lifetime.</p>
<p>The really really good plans like Harvard, Princeton and Yale go to those lucky 10% of kids who are admitted from their applicant pools and those kids are all with uber stats (except athletic scholarships).</p>
<p>The simple truth is that many people have to go to a local state flagship or even a local state university that is not the flagship campus, and live at home (like many kids did in earlier decades), to save money. </p>
<p>You dont know if you don’t apply for aid/scholarships/admission, so it always pays to apply and see what happens. Sadly, the results are not always very equitable. There are gross injustices in doling out scholarship monies and even grants under FAFSA. No school is required to give you what your needs are. There is disparity even among upperclassmen, when the 'have you locked in" and you are less likely to bolt for a transfer school. </p>
<p>Universities have oodles of highly paid consultants (charging sometimes millions of dollars) who take a long term view of things with capital expenses, capital campaigns, endowment management and all sorts of agendas, including sports…where college coaches routinely make millions of dollars a YEAR to coach basketball or football. Its insidious.</p>
<p>We live in a very uneven world. Nobody will EVER convince me that some kid with a 1350 or even a 1300 SAT (1600 scale) is unworthy of the SAME scholarship monies that a kid with 1400 gets…but that is where they often draw the line, particularly if you are not a URM. So the kid with a 1400 gets a half ride or even sometimes a full ride and the kid with a 1300 gets squat. Statistics show that the gpa’s of college students with that small a differential in SAT scores is infinitessimal. Sometimes the higher SAT score has a lower gpa in college. It happens. </p>
<p>I wouldnt want the job of doling out the money. Tough and thankless job. But on the other hand, they need to find a way to give some relief to middle class families. </p>
<p>If your family makes 120k a year, you likely don’t have a lot of money to spend on college tuition/room-board for your kid. After taxes and expenses (mortgage, food, insurance, clothes, car payments etc.), a family of 4 may not have much at all to put away for college. So if you kid is below the 1400 magic number, he gets burned. Meanwhile someone with more money than they know what to do with, has a kid with a 1400 SAT and gets a huge scholarship to somewhere like Duke. Seen it over and over and over…many many times. Its very unfair.</p>
<p>And we can all lament the somewhat mysterious sharp spike in tuition and room/board rates at colleges the last 5-10 years where it has tripled at some schools. Its just outrageous. What is causing that? Meanwhile their endowments have largely recovered from the crash of 08 and many schools have hundreds of millions socked away for a rainy day, while they soak the incoming students and parents.
These schools are often preaching about social justice but not practicing it.</p>
<p>ghostbuster, are you saying that it would be unethical of me to get a scholarship off of my SAT score?</p>
<p>No. Its not unethical at all. That is a complete misread. I am saying colleges are unfair and arbitrary and capricious who they give money to. In my view, the best possible result is if colleges use financial need in the process. Afterall, scholarships are supposed to be a means of assisting people to pay for college. So it means that the very rich will have to right the check, so be it. In other words, lets call it academic financial aid, or as the Ivy League does, no scholarships at all…its either you get financial aid or you don’t. </p>
<p>I am not blaming students at all. Congratulations for having good genes and hard work. If I were a rich person, I would actually prefer to give the money to someone who truly deserves it and needs it.</p>
<p>Ghost, this is all business. The rich schools like the ivies long did what you describe–the money just went to the poor. The middle class and non wealthy upper middle class were not represented, they simply couldn’t afford to attend. The top schools seek a real world distribution now by providing money for the inbetween, hard to fault.</p>
<p>Non top schools that cost a lot remain mostly for the wealthy. They give many discounts, known as merit aid, to bring the cost closer to that of state schools for the upper middle class. They reserve a little money for the poor but by and large remain wealthy enclaves.</p>