<p>So, UChicago is my dream school. I got in EA, but I haven't yet received a financial aid package. I'd love to call it quits, and just not worry about applying anywhere else, but I obviously that's a difficult thing to do, not knowing how much it will cost me to attend. I really just don't want to waste the time and money to apply to four other schools (Harvard, Stanford, Duke and Princeton, so not exactly easy schools to get into) to feel slightly more secure about the money situation. I've already applied to UNC and UC Berkeley, and UNC should probably give me a fairly good financial aid package (family income is 75-80k)... so I don't really know what to do. Is it worth applying elsewhere, with the knowledge that if I get a good package (although I still don't really know how I define "good"), I'll be committing to UChicago? Or should I not risk it and apply to a few more places?
Sorry for the rambling, haha..</p>
<p>I would say apply to more places, but without knowing your competitiveness as an applicant, I think some of the lower Ivies would provide a better chance of getting good financial aid simply because there’s a higher chance of being admitted in the first place.</p>
<p>When money is a factor, having more options is better than having fewer. </p>
<p>It’s odd that you haven’t yet gotten an aid package. Why is that?</p>
<p>Definitely apply elsewhere. I would try to pick a balance of schools in whose applicant pools you are competitive and schools you know could afford to give you a really nice FA package. Needless to say, I wouldn’t apply to any schools that won’t meet 100% of demonstrated need.</p>
<p>My son was in this situation last year. We were talking about it a couple of days ago, and looking back he realized he lost motivation for the applications after getting into Chicago, his top choice. In turn, he thinks the late December apps were not as good as the early ones. So if you do proceed with more apps, make sure you do a great job on them. It turned out that the other schools to which my son was accepted offered less generous packages than Chicago. But this is all hindsight because at the time it was not clear that the Chicago package would be attractive. It’s good to keep options open, but since you use the phrase “waste of time” you may want to narrow the list depending on how interested you are in a particular school. Duke, for example, strikes me as a very different place than Chicago, even if both lean toward Gothic architecture.</p>