<p>I hear a lot of talk on the various forums about students needing to make sure that in addition to have safety, match and reach schools on their college list, they also need a financial safety. For all practical purposes shouldn't all schools on a college list be financial safeties? M son's list only includes those schools who either guarantee to meet financial needs (and we've tried to research which ones are likely to require large loan packages, although sometimes that information is hard to ferret out) or those schools where his stats are high enough that he should qualify for merit scholarships (again, you can't be 100% sure, but you can get a pretty good idea). As I told him, there's no reason to apply to a school that I know I couldn't afford to send him. I'm confused as to why parents would allow their students to apply to schools they know there is no way they can afford. Do other parents not look over and/or suggest schools for their senior's list, or are they just assuming the money would be there or maybe they just don't understand how the process works. I see a lot of people posting that they were accepted to a school, but don't know how to pay for it. It just seems to me to be a waste of the whole process if you end up with acceptances but no way to pay for it without a bunch of private loans. Am I missing something here?</p>
<p>Depends on how emotionally attached the student gets. I certainly agree that nobody should apply to schools that are financially impossible, but often there is doubt or uncertainty involved in the distribution of financial aid or merit scholarships. As long as everybody remains practical and objective, it may be worth applying to a school that may or may not be workable to find out if they can come through with the money.</p>
<p>Part of the problem is that you really don’t know how a school will meet financial need and whether it would offer merit aid. I have read about financial aid offices offering money for high SAT scores and other factors. I have also talked to families that received generous scholarships that made it possible for their children to attend a private university. Others on cc will know much more than I about this topic, but I think it’s a bit of a mystery until you receive actual offers. That is also part of the reason for having financial safeties.</p>
<p>Scribbulus,</p>
<p>All too often both the parents and the students are clueless about just exactly how the financial aid system works. That is why cooler heads find themselves repeating the same advice over and over: Identify at least one Financial Safety. They, like you, are tired of reading all of the “I just found out that my family can’t afford any of the schools I got into” threads that appear here in April.</p>
<p>Personally, I see no sense whatsoever in applying anywhere that the student doesn’t have good reason to believe the family can afford. However, given that each family determines for itself what is financially feasible (and that many families are willing to stretch themselves further for a particular institution than they would be for another), a policy that works for one family will seem unreasonable for another. </p>
<p>You and your son are on the same page about his application list. That is probably the single most important factor in this whole process. You will have a list that works for him and your family will be able to afford his education. You deserve a big gold star! Too many parents and children neglect to have that conversation until late in the game, if at all.</p>
<p>My daughter applied to a few “wild card” schools because she was interested but there was just no concrete information available about scholarships. We only knew that merit aid was available and that she was in the top 25% of admitted applicants. Also, colleges love to talk about their generous need-based aid but that can also be difficult to pin down (we looked at information on the common data set but that is still based on averages).</p>
<p>S2 had a wild card college or two on his list but totally understood that he would not attend if it didn’t fit our budget. We had a very reasonable budget but not one that would cover full ride at a $50,000 a year college with only an unsubsidized Stafford and multiple years of “over-lapping” kids. So sure, in theory you only apply to financial safeties, but sometimes you just don’t know how a particular college will package up your student and colleges are loath to give information in black and white and a five to ten thousand dollar grant or scholarship might make a difference. My practical S1 looked at college costs and immediately eliminated all the pricey eastern schools. And four years ago there was a big difference between schools in the NE and the rest of the country…the differences have narrowed considerably now. So he, did, in fact apply to all financial safety schools.</p>
<p>No one should apply to schools where there is no potential of having need met and many do because they simply don’t understand the process.</p>
<p>Can’t tell you how many families I’ve tried to exlain this too but they believe the myth that there is aid for all.</p>
<p>I agree. Its a waste of money on all sides; a waste of time by the admissions and financial aid people if you get accepted or to have to read your application, and a waste of time for you to have to come up with your tax returns and fill the FAFSA and then before that fill out the application itself and send SAT scores and other things. Its just silly, obviously, and perhaps a little coler heads and foresight to understand. </p>
<p>Most schools though will work with you so it is worth a shot, as long as you are willing to accept it if they cannot meet your need AND it is not a financial hardship to apply.</p>
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Well I can’t say I have any sympathy for wasted time on the part of the admin and fa people, since they seem intent on getting as many applicants as humanly and inhumanly possible. </p>
<p>DS has one school on his list that we couldn’t afford without a large (and unlikely) merit scholarship. It could be a great opportunity, so we are applying anyways - kind of like buying a lottery ticket. He is also applying to one Ivy, just to see if he can get accepted, even though we have made it clear we can’t pay for that one.</p>
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<p>perhaps you can say that about the admissions, but hwo can you sit there and even suggest comtenplating that the financial aid people are somehow responsible for yield management policies? That’s like saying that the accountant at a company is somehow responsible for the marketing programs, or that the dentist of a politician is somehow responsible for that politicians political policies?</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s necessary that every school on a list be a financial safety. What IS necessary is an understanding on the part of the student that if the aid isn’t good enough, the school is a no-go.</p>
<p>My D was accepted to 8 schools that meet need. The 8 aid packages were all different - a couple were laughable, with the amount of loans included to meet need. She attends a schools now that has been ridiculously great with aid … and it is one of the most expensive schools in the U.S.</p>
<p>S started college this year. He is interested in a program that is not available at many schools. He applied to several schools that we knew were probably not going to work out financially … but we didn’t know that for sure. One of these schools gives great merit aid to students like my S, but it turns out that students in his major do not get the great merit aid … they get the “meh” scholarships. At another school, S would have had a really good merit scholarship … but we found out that students applying for his major get NO merit scholarships (the competitive nature of the program means they don’t NEED to give any merit scholarships). He ended up at a state school with a decent scholarship. It’s still more expensive than D’s really expensive private, though.</p>
<p>You never know, which is why it doesn’t hurt to try. :)</p>
<p>Well I can see most students having a wild card on their list, my son talked about MIT where he would be in the bottom 25% (and of course someone has to make up that bottom %25) but when we actually talked about “would he actually go if by some chance he got in” because even there I think it’s a waste to apply unless you would strongly consider attending. And it is true, some schools make it difficult to pinpoint aid but you can usually get a general idea. Parents can calculate a general EFC for both FAFSA and profile, so I’m not sure why parents don’t run the numbers (if they don’t want to share that info with their kids) and say if need be “well it looks like most schools will expect us to kick in about $25000, but your dad and I only feel we can swing 15000, so you’ll need to look for schools where merit scholarships, a PT job and maybe a subsided loan with that 15000 will cover your costs”, or our EFC is only 1500, we can’t swing much more than that so you need a school that meets full need, preferably without big loans (or with loans if that’s cool with your family) or even money’s no object we don’t care if it’s 75000 a year. It’s true families put their own values and priorities there and that’s as it should be, but I don’t understand not letting your child know up front. It’s like when I helped S shop for a used truck this spring. It was “you have this much you saved, I can kick in this much and if it’s a wonderful deal I might can come up with $250 more.” We didn’t share that with the sellers of course, till it came down to the nitty-gritty, but it gave S a figure to know what he could even look at. College is very important to me, but it’s still a product, and while you can’t actually negotiate the price (I know a few schools will adjust packages, but not always or often)a student should at least have a basic budget. Nowadays even more so, because the money is tighter now than it had been recently.</p>
<p>Agree absolutely, scribbulus. We had to run the numbers to know that we would need merit for any private school, and roughly how much we would be looking for. That allowed us to eliminate schools which don’t give merit aid, and focus on those that do. </p>
<p>That said, to me the definition of a financial safety in our case is the one state school on the list, where DS is very likely to be accepted and which we could manage with no aid or merit $. In other words, the backup plan in case no one offers merit at any of the private schools. I don’t consider the private schools “financial safeties” because it isn’t a safe bet that they would be within financial reach.</p>
<p>BTW, paragraphs are good :)</p>
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<p>I agree with you completely! And I think that the reason that families don’t run the numbers is that, in many cases, no one has told them that they should or that they can. We went to a “college information night” for parents of juniors last spring, and absolutely NOTHING was said about the fact that “need-based financial aid” is based on SOMEONE ELSE’s (FAFSA, CSS, financial aid office, etc) determination of YOUR “need.” That was an eye-opening fact I learned here on College Confidential. After running my numbers through some calculators and determining that we’d be full-pay anywhere, I stopped agonizing about where my assets were located and whose name they were in, because I knew it wouldn’t make any difference, I turned my attention to schools that offer merit aid. (Another thing I didn’t know was that some do and some don’t.)</p>
<p>I think there are parents who truly do not know there is an alternative to filling in the FAFSA paperwork and waiting for an answer from on high.</p>
<p>Yes, it relatively easy to calculate EFCs but that doesn’t really mean anything at colleges that don’t guarantee to meet need. The mystery/surprise factor is usually in the gap!</p>
<p>There is a trade-off that some people are willing to make. For example: I am willing to pay $25000 for MIT or Duke (or Columbia etc.) but I am not willing to pay more than $5000 for any state university … In other words, I am willing to pay a premium for a Mercedes, but only a discounted price for a Hyundai. If you (or your parents) feel that Harvard education is worth the sticker price, you will apply to Harvard even if you will not get aid and have to borrow money.</p>
<p>There are college rankings which take into account the average salary </p>
<p>[Top</a> US Colleges ? Graduate Salary Statistics](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/top-us-colleges-graduate-salary-statistics.asp]Top”>http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/top-us-colleges-graduate-salary-statistics.asp)</p>
<p>So the median starting salary for a CalTech graduate is $69,900 but for Brown (an ivy league) it is only $49,400. So in one year, if I can recoup $15000 (adjusting for taxes etc.) and pay of my loans, it may be worth going to Caltech, even though it is not a financial safety. So it is not as clear a decision as it may seem.</p>
<p>I disagree with the OP’s thought that one can tell in advance whether the student will qualify for merit scholarships, except in the case of a college that offers guaranteed merit scholarships for certain stats. My daughter has a 4.0 unweighted and ACT scores in the top 25% for every college for which she is applying, but even after extensive research, I have no idea what she might be offered. Several of the named scholarships for which she is applying will have several thousand applicants, but fewer than 30 students will receive them. As a result, she is applying to at least six colleges, with her financial safety being an instate public university that we can afford. It doesn’t make sense to me to prohibit her from applying to the other five when there is a chance she could receive an excellent merit scholarship from one of them.</p>
<p>We depend heavily on financial aid in order to send our kids to college (both merit and need based). SUNY is a stretch for us, in fact, but doable.</p>
<p>At this time I have a D @ Smith, and an S @ Stevens IT. Older D graduated from Colgate, and step-D graduated from Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Not every package that was offered to each student was affordable, but if we hadn’t applied to the schools and completed the FA forms, we would never have known that these schools would even be possibilities.</p>
<p>Younger S (a HS senior) is a RPI medalist, so it will be interesting to see what colleges offer him in the spring. There is a SUNY on his list, but the rest of his schools are private.</p>
<p>The kids just have to know what we actually can afford, and what is not doable.</p>
<p>Reach for the stars - you just might catch one.</p>
<p>As long as you have 2 - 3 financial safety schools on your list, it’s ok to have a few schools that you don’t yet know if you can afford.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t bother with schools that I was CERTAIN I couldn’t afford, but there are some schools that might surprise you with merit or aid of some sort. So, those can be “money reach” schools.</p>
<p>Don’t fall in love with any school that you aren’t sure you can afford.</p>
<p>mazewanderer: Thanks for that link to salaries by schools. I found it very interesting and informative. When you see it down in black and white it makes it a little easier to consider that prestige factor. Wonder why so much difference in starting salaries, when the mid salary range is much closer. I’m guessing the assumption is that those programs are so demanding that if you make it through, an employer can count on you to know your stuff. </p>
<p>Schokolade: You are correct, you can’t always know scholarship amounts unless they are guaranteed scholarships. I’ve found the information on the common data sets to be very useful, if you take the time to calculate the information (and luckily son is a math whiz). Plus I’ve noticed the wording on some schools financial aid pages, their mission statement so to speak, gives a clue as to how generous a school might be.</p>
<p>What I’m saying more or less, is there is a big difference between applying to a school that gives a very limited number of competitive scholarships when you’re in the top 25% range and have the EC’s and everything else to back up that rank and applying to the same schools, while being in the bottom 25%, with easy classes and limited ECs. If you’re in the second group, it just seems to me that parents need to do a better job of gently pointing out that its highly unlikely they’ll get that scholarship and without it, there is no way our family can pay for that school, so lets focus our search on some more likely prospects.</p>
<p>That said, as the song goes “to dream the impossible dream”, go ahead and apply to ONE of those schools, because it COULD happen, but parents need to help their students be more realistic, because after all, they think they know everything, but we know better. </p>
<p>Now when you have that student with all the dots connected in the right places, then you can be a little more crazy with the list, because as I told my son, even if you’re the tip top of the very top, there are still a lot of kids there, and admission to some schools is just so selective, it’s almost like winning the lottery. </p>
<p>I just feel for some of the kids, who seem to have very little knowledge of how the money side works, and I’m guessing they’re not getting guidance from their parents or school. I know there are some kids who aren’t going to listen to any advice, on on their own shoulders it will fall, but most of these posts seem to me to be from students without even a clue as to what their parents can and will pay, and to how much it actually costs.</p>