<p>I realize what “average” means and also that some pakcages include loans. I also know that scholarships are the best kind of aid. I also know that it depends on the college as to how much in grants are given out to those with need. It’s just interesting that in SOME cases, merit aid can basically not be worth anything if the scholarship would have gotten replaced with a grant. Again in SOME cases this can be true. The whole finacial aid deal is quite the animal, and it has been enlightening to say the least!</p>
<p>nightchef - that is interesting, but how would one possibly know what to fill in there until they hear back from the colleges with the FA packages? Or is this a site to help figure things out once you have all the data? In either case, I don’t see how that applies to merit scholarships not reducing EFC. Not trying to be snarky (for a change!), I just am not sure how that relates. I am probably missing something.</p>
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<p>it’s also not fair to advertise merit to kids who really can’t afford their EFC and have them hope that it will cover their costs, then be like “Nope, you’re no better off than if you had just gotten need based aid”
That’s not only not fair…it’s dream crushing</p>
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<p>But you don’t, rocket6louise.</p>
<p>The assumption of the financial aid system is that the students parents are the financially responsible party. You have stated on a number of occasions that your family does not agree with this assumption, and that students who take money from their parents to pay for college are spoiled or whine-y (or words to that effect). But you are not able to fund your own education (nor should you be able to). Just because your parents do not believe in funding your education, that does not mean that the institutions should take on the role of financially responsible party. That is not how the system is designed to work. Most families believe that it is worthwhile to pay for their kids education to the best of their ability. And many families – not all of them wealthy – believe that borrowing a reasonable amount to finance college education is a sound strategy. </p>
<p>Your posts suggest that you believe youre entitled to a full ride because your parents do not wish to make a contribution to your education. But who do you think makes those full rides possible possible? Theyre largely funded by generous alumni and donors who thought it was worthwhile to make scholarships available to pay to educate other peoples children. And theyre subsidized by other parents, not all of them wealthy, who felt it was worthwhile to pay for their kids education to the best of their ability,</p>
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I don’t understand this at all. What are you calling a grant? Do you mean basically no-loan aid?</p>
<p>wjb: I resent that you think I think I"m entitled to anything…I’m hopeful for a miracle and I realize that I will probably end up at a financial safety</p>
<p>I’m simply FRUSTRATED that I looked at schools with merit aid policies, when I really shouldn’t have bothered… No matter what, I can’t win in this system…</p>
<p>I want to fund my own EFC and am trying to find a way to make that happen. I work nearly 20 hours a week and save everything…and I still lose</p>
<p>I’m very grateful that there are schools who are willing to help me fund my education, believe me, but at the same time I feel like all my hard work has been for nothing</p>
<p>^^ and fallen, you are setting up a false dichotomy. Nobody has said a full-pay should not be eligible for a merit award; it is simply being pointed out that full-pay gets a dollar-for-dollar out of pocket reduction for “full value” of the merit award.</p>
<p>Nobody is even demanding that financial need applicants are entitled to anything, or that “merit awards” must offset FA EFCs; again, it is simply being pointed out that for FA aopplicants, they DO NOT get a dollar for dollar out of pocket reduction (or any reduction) of their EFC.</p>
<p>True, a FA applicant may consider the merit award valuable regardless: loans go to grants, w/s may be covered, and the prestige value of a coveted scholarship.</p>
<p>But FA applicants are entitled (dreaded socialism, or pure contract/fraud law, you tell me) to know that the merit award they are being enticed with by the one hand will not reduce their EFC in the final reckoning.</p>
<p>Pretyy simple – for the insiders in the know, which families navigating colleges admission are not.</p>
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And how are they supposed to know this? Again, your situation is the rare exception, and knowing that you had an exceptional situation, you had a greater responsibility to research more. I know that sounds harsh, but it is true. If colleges stopped taking into account parents’ EFC because the parents refused to pay, half the parents in the country would start refusing to pay tomorrow! They have to do it this way.</p>
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<p>Sybbie, that is entirely out of line and you owe Rocket an apology. Rocket has posted with grace thorughout this thread and has simply stated, HAD SHE KNOWN MORE AT THE TIME OF APPLICATION, she would have targeted other schools.</p>
<p>fallen: would it kill them to be like “our merit does NOT stack with need based”
it’s a sentence…and it would clear up all confusion</p>
<p>Rocket, the colleges didn’t know and still don’t know that your parents are unwilling to pay for college. What dreams have been crushed for you? Your path for sure will be more difficult than for someone whose parents are willing to pay their EFC but where’s the crushing? And who is doing the crushing? And the hoping?</p>
<p>If colleges made a practice of saying, “we will pay for you to come here regardless of your circumstances” then I think you’d have a point. Other than Berea and Deep Springs (correct me if I’m wrong but I think they are free); Cooper Union (free tuition but living in NYC is expensive); and the military academies, which institutions advertise free???</p>
<p>My local public school is free. Even that comes with caveats. If you live in the next town, it’s only free until they catch you. (And the city has the right to bill your parents for the right for you to get your ''free education" to which you are not legally entitled.) If you want to play football, you have to pay for your uniform and extra training, transportation costs. If you want to eat lunch every day, you either pay for it, bring it from home, or qualify for Federal Aid based on your parents income.</p>
<p>None of this is “fair”. But how else to keep the system at all equitable but to charge non-residents, users of expensive “extra” services like team athletics, and those who like free food (basically everyone?)</p>
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They estimate what different colleges will offer based on your EFC. I have no idea how they calculate these estimates or how reliable they are. I was just saying, in light of your comment about the importance of distinguishing loans from other forms of aid, that I like the fact that they place the loans on the cost side when calculating their estimates.</p>
<p>clueless - No they (the low EFC’s) don’t get a $ for $ out of pocket reduction, they get a reduction in their long term obligations. They have to borrow less. Why is that so hard to understand? Sure, it is different for people with money than for people with less. That is a news flash. But the value of the scholarship is nominally the same none-the-less. I am not saying that some people still won’t be able to afford to go to University X, but the alternative, short of just charging those families less of a starting sticker price, is to saddle them with larger long term debt. Your solution might help some, and might cripple others who think “I can do this, the $120,000 in loans I can take care of later” and then live to regret that decision mightily.</p>
<p>Clueless</p>
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<p>No, it is not just double dipping if a family takes money off the table. By definition of a need based award, it is double dipping if a merit award did not reduce a need based award.</p>
<p>Why - a need based award is just that - based solely on need. Your need is reduced if you are given a gift of a merit award so for you to continue to argue a merit award should not reduce a need based award is wrong and advocating double dipping</p>
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<p>Frankly, before reading this thread I would have no idea what that jargon meant. Stack? I promise you extremely few people would know what that means.</p>
<p>But I get your point, and no it wouldn’t kill them, but there are so many terms and conditions on these things they would be isolating a factor that YOU happened not to know about. Again, it is your responsibility to find out what the deal is. No one picks up the phone these days.</p>
<p>For example, most schools have a minimum GPA you have to maintain. That is probably on another page somewhere. If you got to the end of the year and you got a 3.1 andthe minimum to keep it was a 3.2, would you cry “But I didn’t know! You should have put that on the first web page!”? And there are other things like that. You have to read the page.</p>
<p>nightchef - I have to say that seems fraught with danger. No site can know what a university will do for an FA package, they vary quite a bit.</p>
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In order for a word like “fraud” to have any meaning here, you’d have to show that the colleges have somehow implied that merit aid will reduce EFC rather than COA. And I have yet to see a website that implies anything of the kind. You’re treating your own assumptions as if they were promises made by the college, and then holding the college responsible for fulfilling those imaginary promises.</p>
<p>I do agree that colleges should make things as clear as they can, for everybody’s sake, and most college websites do make this information reasonably clear to anyone who is willing to spend a little time looking for it.</p>
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<p>well…let’s see…I had assumed that merit would take a chunk out of my EFC…If this were the case, it would first cancel loans, then work, then EFC…If I would get a 15 k merit scholarship with a 9k EFC, I would be left with like 5k/year to pay, total of like 20k in debt for undergrad</p>
<p>Without the merit out of my EFC, I have at least 36k for my undergrad…I still have grad school to think about…36k is too much to borrow if you ask me, especially with grad school on the horizon…</p>
<p>Like I said, if I had known this, I would have applied to more generous “need only schools” and skipped the merit ones</p>
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Well, you’d certainly be foolish to bank on it. I think it’s just supposed to give you a rough idea of which colleges are more generous with aid and how their packages tend to break down. I took it with a grain of salt, certainly.</p>
<p>r6l: Need-only schools, even those with generous policies, are still going to consider your parents’ income and assets in calculating your EFC. Colleges will not reduce your EFC simply because your parents don’t want to pay.</p>