<p>Now that college web sites have net price calculators, you can get financial aid estimates to assess the likelihood of being able to afford to attend if you are admitted. This can help students design their application lists appropriately*. However, it does seem from posts here that many people (students, parents, and high school counselors) are still using the “apply and hope” method, or make not-necessarily-correct assumptions about how much financial aid will be forthcoming from various schools.</p>
<p>*It can also give a more realistic reach/match/safety assessment in cases where a large merit scholarship is needed to attend because the need-based aid is insufficient. In this case, the reach/match/safety assessment would have to be based on the chance of getting the merit scholarship, not the chance of admission.</p>
<p>“This can help students design their application lists appropriately*. However, it does seem from posts here that many people (students, parents, and high school counselors) are still using the “apply and hope” method, or make not-necessarily-correct assumptions about how much financial aid will be forthcoming from various schools.”</p>
<p>Considering that a school gives a very large AVERAGE aid package (40k+), has a large endowment, and a student is poor and has a higher-than-the school’s average SAT, GPA, etc, and the school meets 100% of aid, is it still to unrealistic to hope/predict a large finaid package?</p>
<p>It all hinges on how the school calculates your need. You don’t know what’s up til you open that letter, from each.<br>
So, hope- but inform yourself, through the NPCs.
You do know what goes into their calculation of what you can afford to pay, yes?</p>
<p>@ lookingforward
Isn’t it just income and assets? and I didn’t think it would be that different. Is there really a school whose calculations would say someone whose family is making 20k doesn’t have a lot of need?</p>
<p>Why guess and hope based on averages when you can get estimates and predictions specifically for your situation with a few clicks on the web? You are not necessarily the average financial aid applicant.</p>
<p>Don’t be the student who is back here in April asking whether you should choose the $80,000 in debt school or $100,000 in debt school because that is all you have to choose from.</p>
<p>collegebound, Not all schools meet need. They could give large merit scholarships but not designate as much for need. Other than that, there are some special categories of poor kids who may get less aid than you would think at a very generous school: kids who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents, kids whose parents are divorced/ remarried/ or never married and the school considers non-custodial or step-parent income, kids who have a parent or parents who are self-employed or run a business and kids whose parents have low income but a lot of assets somehow.</p>
<p>I was legally homeless and an orphan when I applied for college. My SAT scores were 1530. The guidance counselors at the public schools acted like they had their noses in the air, giving me no guidance for applying to college and made remarks along the lines of “people like you are lucky to succeed in technical training” and “focus on getting a job when you graduate high school, IF you graduate.” Whatever. I had the highest PSAT scores in the district when I took them, but then promptly moved. So, I never finalized any sort of paperwork for National Merit.</p>
<p>I simply went off to the local state university and was giving a ton of student loans to pay through.</p>
<p>Knowing what I know now, everything would be different. And for me, I cannot cannot cannot stand bigots who treat children like that, just because the child is not in a privileged life. It was not my fault that my mom had a brain aneurysm and then my dad had a nervous breakdown over it. But I was treated like a criminal because I had no legal parents by then, and was working multiple jobs to try to scrape together a meal. Oh, and the social worker that was supposed to be overseeing me, did not even point me to any sort of food stamps or other welfare programs. She dropped the ball too.</p>
<p>The Williams College Golf course would probably be grandfathered in under my formula, altough that does raise the rather thorny issue of operating costs in general and inter-collegiate athletics in general. For what it costs Williams to maintain its primary position in NESCAC could bring back need-blind admissions for internationals.</p>
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<p>I know, I know. Yale’s Old Campus, Wesleyan’s Foss Hill are such hovels.(jk)</p>
<p>I’ve seen a lot of motivated low-income high-achiever “college prep-caliber” HS urban students specifically directed to highly selective colleges and universities. Depends on quality of high school college counseling department to help those kids flag schools and apply.</p>
<p>I live in NoVa and that is simply not true. Yes, UVA is competitive, but with a 33% admission rate it is not “near impossible to get into”. Yet I know so many people here who somehow believe that “no one gets into UVA” (actual quote I have heard multiple times) that there are qualified kids who don’t even bother to apply. Ironically (considering the title of this thread) some of those kids are highly talented kow income students.</p>
<p>Perhaps low SES kids are deterred from top schools after realizing the competition they face coupled with rumors that high SES kids at these schools are obnoxious snobs.</p>
<p>DD14 had a situation in soph year where the GC’s get students together in groups of 3 so they can browse college websites/begin thinking about the college process and where they might want to matriculate after graduation. The college that the GC’s brought up for the students to look at? Our local community college. So offensive. As if thats all these kids can aspire to. That is why I am “that parent” and do what needs to be done for DD. I have had many a situation with her GC and have had to switch GC’s 2 weeks ago. Which is unheard of in this district. But enough was enough. I hated to do it so late in the game, but better to jump ship now than to wait until senior year and have issues. </p>
<p>Now that I sit here and think about it(with a foggy 5am brain), the GC can play a HUGE role from day 1 in where the kids end up. Yes, family plays a big role but going in in 9th grade, GC’s should be pushing kids to think about high quality schools. It should be apart of the culture. DD says that many kids have never even heard of the schools that she is considering and give her odd looks when she mentions Wesleyan(which is only 25 minutes away), Amherst etc. They think that UCONN/Central CT/Western CT/Eastern CT are the only options or the local CC. Sad.</p>
<p>NewHavenCTmom - that’s so offensive on so many levels. First, what’s the point of putting the C student in with the A student in browsing / thinking? Second, isn’t it offensive to make any assumptions about anyone’s ability to pay? I, too, wouldn’t have wanted my kids constrained by students who weren’t as good as they were, who were in need in significant financial aid, and had the “why go outside your backyard” mentality.</p>
<p>The GC office is like an ATM machine, IMO. You go there to get things you need (transcripts, etc.) but you don’t solicit their opinion on what to do with the money you withdraw. That’s not a dig at them at all. They were nice people. But if given the choice between getting my kid into fancy-schmancy school A versus fancy-schmancy school B and getting another kid financial aid so he can at least get to Directional State U? Well, frankly, the latter is probably more important in the long run in the context of the overall mission of the school.</p>
<p>I agree that the guidance office tends to make assumptions, but you can’t always take it personally. Our college person (not D’s GC who was great), laughed when D named her first choice school. Then she said something like well everyone wants to go there, they don’t get in. In all fairness, according to the Naviance, D was the first accepted from that HS in 4 years (several applied each year). But I took a closer look and found that the kids with stats similar to D had gotten in. The same person told us that D was a perfect fit for one of our top state schools (we are in Va), so she did think that D was a good student. I think that she suspected (correctly) that we would not qualify for a dime of FA and the state school was far more affordable. She did not know that in our case we were able to send D to the more expensive school full pay with no loans.</p>
<p>I think many of us are “that” parent and worked to help our kids find good fits on all levels. </p>
<p>The more I think about this, the tougher the GC’s challenge seems, when he/she tries to take this on in soph year, based on a few semesters of hs. How do you know which kids should aspire higher? Our GC had only general talks then, pointed kids at the books and web sites, discussed std tests- and the students’ decisions about rigor and ECs. At that point, the publics were used as an example only; the question about “better” kids aiming higher waited until some results were in. And was done cautiously.</p>
<p>Our GC simply had nothing to do with any of it. We did all the seeking /selection ourselves. I can see working with a private counselor or consultant who gets to know you, but a public hs GC who has a couple hundred kids? What insight can they have about a given kid? I also think GC recs are a farce too except for small or private schools.</p>