D also thought the vibe at Bard was a bit off, and that was pre-Covid. How about Skidmore? There aren’t extensive merit opportunities but the campus is beautiful and Saratoga Springs is a terrific little city.
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What about Oberlin?
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Have you found this thread from earlier this summer? It has lots of good info.
Your total goal COA of 20K will be hard to attain with merit aid alone unless you are willing to look at lower-ranked ‘regional’ LACs.
We are a full-pay ‘donut hole’ family who were on a LAC merit-hunt for for our D21, and I wrote up a summary in the thread linked below. I don’t know anything about how merit and need-based aid stack, though, so I’ll defer to other posters on that topic.
Good luck to you: it’s a lot of work to chase merit aid at LACs since they are very opaque about their pricing.
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Amherst has great financial aid but rough admissions. MN schools, Carleton, Macalester, St Olaf. Hamilton and Vassar for open curriculum.
Your cheapest option is going to be something like Harvard, one of the very selective schools with very generous financial aid. But those are all tough to get into. I would at least throw a few apps that direction though and hope she gets lucky.
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I would contact the financial aid advisors at Amherst and Williams and see what they say, they have great aid programs that cover the soft costs as well (books, stipends, travel during winter study, etc.) The fin aid team is well staffed and they can provide insights that you will not get from the website.
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Thanks. We are starting to consider contacting a few schools, like Amherst and Williams, to get a sense of if our need aid would be enough (though I’m doubtful) as those are not merit schools. She may need to apply ED to a school like that to get in as the admit rates are so much better for ED.
Thanks. I’ll look back at your thread!
It’s definitely on the list. Not sure we’ll get the money we need there, but she loves the idea of that school.
Skidmore was on our list. NPC was not great, but I know it has a lot of what she wants!
So good to know. Thank you!!!
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You don’t need to contact schools to ask about financial aid, you need to run each school’s net price calculator to get estimate cost of attendance. NPCs are available on each school’s website. Here are Amherst’s and Williams’. What was the result of Skidmore’s NPC?
https://npc.collegeboard.org/app/amherst
https://npc.collegeboard.org/app/williams
Regarding higher ED acceptance rates, there is a bump at many schools discussed here, but it’s not as high as it seems at first blush. ED can typically include a high proportion of hooked applicants, such as 75 or so recruited athletes at small LACs, legacies, and Questbridge and Posse students.
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Skidmore was 30 just grant, 25 with grant/loan/work. If we were going to apply ED somewhere, we would have a conversation with financial aid in admissions beyond just the NPC. It’s too big of a decision not to ask questions directly. We’re not sure ED is the right path for us but we’re toying with it for now.
None of mine ended up with Skidmore on their final list, but I do remember being told that they were more need aware than many others. I’m not sure an ED app would have a better chance there than Williams or Amherst, and the FA won’t be as good.
If you aren’t doing ED, I would at least throw in an EA app to Harvard. Nothing to lose and it’s not unrealistic to think she would be at least considered.
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I see that you already have Richmond on your list. If you haven’t already looked at it, their Jepson School of Leadership Studies may be of interest to your daughter.
Definitely speak with the fin aid staff at Williams, they can rework the NPC numbers and discuss with you.
Merit at Oberlin tops out in the low 30s/year these days if you don’t qualify for much need based aid.
Is she not applying to UPenn? Based on my guess at the High School that she attends(I’m in Philly) I’d assume that she’d get in. I know you mentioned something about going away for school and I know UPenn isn’t very LAC-like but having the option when decision time comes along can’t hurt. Also I’m not sure what the UPenn NPC gives you but I found the offer to my child to be about 7K better than the NPC and I believe it’s because she went to a Philly Public High School and better FA is part of that whole thing.
Beloit is generous with merit, up to $41K/year. They also have a Midwest flagship match that knocked around $2K off the total. Our D applied last year, and her COA at Beloit would have been around $25K/year. It was too close to home for her, but we visited pre-pandemic and really liked the school. Very laid back and friendly, with some interesting programs.
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