<p>aunt bea, what my guidance counselor meant is that I shouldn’t look at the sticker price of a college, but rather the amount of financial aid it may be able to offer me. An LAC may have a sticker price of 50 000 dollars/year, but it may give me 40 000 dollars in grants. On the contrary, a public university may cost 20 000 dollars/year but can only give me 5000 dollars…in that case the LAC is a better deal, even if it may not look like so at a cursory glance.</p>
<p>I’m all for private schools. Even though I’m middle class, the only public school I considered was my in-state school. Private schools, especially elite ones, will award you with a lot of need-based scholarships. My in-state school would cost me 3x more than my private school this year.</p>
<p>you can get a waiver for application fees, then just apply to every school you are interested in. compare financial aid for the schools you got into and choose the best option for yourself. </p>
<p>how is this difficult.</p>
<p>Apply to the state school to please your parents, but don’t count on them having $$ for you. It is likely that in your situation you will get more assistance paying for college from private colleges. I am imagining that you parents are thinking of somehow managing to work twice as hard so that they can just get enough to pay for the state school, and they know that they can’t even with all that extra work earn enough to pay for private colleges, so they want you to go to the state school. But what will actually happen is that the private schools will put together a FA package that means they will likely take less money from your family than the state schools. You are in an area full of possibilities, talk with folks who live near you who have helped students that come from your situation get funding for school.</p>
<p>It depends on which private school. Some private schools are good with financial aid; others are not. In general, the ones that are better with financial aid tend to be more selective. Check the net price calculators.</p>
<p>Would you then not recommend Early Decision to a low income student since admission is binding and he/she wouldn’t have a chance to compare financial packages from different schools?</p>
<p>Anyone who wants/needs to compare FA packages should not apply ED. If accepted ED, you will have to make a decision about attending that school without knowing what other schools would have offered you.</p>
<p>Do not apply ED DestinyPenrose, only EA. You need to be able to compare aid packages. It is very possible amounts can vary. Also, some packages may have a loan component and other none.</p>
<p>I only have my son’s experience to reflect on…but we are an example of a slightly lower middle class family who couldn’t afford our state colleges. (We’re NYers, so it’s the SUNY system) When all was said and done, it would have costed us twice as much out of pocket to send him to his state choice than it is costing us to send him to his private LAC choice that happens to cost 3 times as much. My suggestion, cast a really wide net. My son applied to 15 schools, a mix of in-state states, OOS states, LACs and larger universities. Definately talk to your GC about the waivers. There’s a link floating around CC of schools that are free to apply to. Questbridge is a terrific resource. Trinity is a QB member school and they were super generous with us. As was Bowdoin and Northwestern. Good luck!</p>
<p>Destiny, I’m another QuestBridger’s Mom and what your GC and the other posters on this thread are telling you is true. Public or private isn’t the issue, it’s how much aid you’ll get. I looked at some of your previous posts - your stats are not much different from my son’s, and he did well as a QB applicant, even though he wasn’t matched.
It’s a shame you couldn’t make the QB Conference, you would have learned a lot. I suggest you go through their website carefully and learn what you can. And get started on your essays - Sept. 30th comes mighty quick!</p>
<p>Feel free to PM me if you have questions about our QB experience.</p>
<p>What if I apply ED to an Ivy or a top private school? Those generally give very generous financial aid, and admittance rate is higher for ED.</p>
<p>Technically the ED acceptance rate is higher but not really. The applicant pool is self-secting and has a higher representation of athletic recruits, legacies and other hooked applicants. Apply to a school ED if you love the school and it is clearly your top choice, but don’t apply ED just to increase your chances.</p>
<p>Look at both. Consider schools’ sticker price but also their financial aid and especially merit scholarship policies.</p>
<p>The most competitive/selective colleges offer great financial aid packages to low-income students. My family income was closer to $70,000 when I applied and I ran some of these NPCs, and these top places (Brown, Yale, Harvard, Wellesley, Smith, Amherst, Williams ) would’ve covered all but about $4000-10000 of the cost of attendance. For you, it will be even more. Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and other Ivies will cover your entire CoA because of your family’s income.</p>
<p>But you have to be admitted first, and sometimes even that additional $3,000 is more than poor families can afford to come up with to send their kids. So also apply to your local public university. When you get the financial aid packages in April, you can compare.</p>