<p>How generous is Swarthmore on financial aid? What's the average amount of financial aid students get each year?</p>
<p>i dont know what the average is or anything, but i would say from my experience that swarthmore is very very fair. they go into a more detailed finaid analysis than just fafsa and come up with your efc and everything..at first i thought my efc was pretty high but i got a second job, looked for a bunch of essay contests and stuff and made sure my parents saved everything they could, and the efc turned out to be manageable..yea, so in a nutshell, they're not excessively generous but they will give you what you need in order to go there..not comfortably, but manageably (which i guess does make them very generous to some)</p>
<p>About 50% of Swarthmore students qualify for need-based aid.</p>
<p>The total average financial aid package is of those aided students is $27,000. </p>
<p>Of that $27,000, about $23,000 is grants and scholarships.</p>
<p>The remaining $4,000 is loans and work study earnings from campus jobs.</p>
<p>Average 4-year loan package is about $14,000.</p>
<p>Swarthmore spends about $15 million a year on need-based financial aid scholarship grants. They are among the most group of schools that is most "generous" with need-based aid in the country. However, they don't do much merit-aid, so an individual's situation may determine whether Swat seems more or less generous than another school.</p>
<p>Oh yeah. They're definitely generous. :)</p>
<p>My experience with Swarthmore's financial aid (had a daughter graduate in 2004 and also have a S who was able to compare their offer to others this spring) has been very good. They do look at a lot of factors, ask for a lot more data than other colleges, but it is to your benefit to provide all they ask. An example is that unlike any other college I know of, they ask for the parent's last pay stub(s) from the previous year. They require the FAFSA, the Profile, and their institutional form. The effect of all that paperwork is that they were more generous than any other school we heard from, including Pomona (which is known to give very good aid,) Wash U, and Brown.</p>
<p>Another piece of good news is that they remain generous through the four years, though the actual amount of aid may change if your financial status changes. Very fair and consistent.</p>
<p>Out of the 9 schools I applied to, Swarthmore offered me the best aid package. I really wanted to go to Williams (I applied there ED) but they did not give me a managable aid offer and so I had to get out of my agreement and scramble to apply to other schools (LONG story). Anyhow, Swarthmore gave me an aid offer that was better than Williams' by about $30,000 over the four years (thats a lot of money!) (and it turned out that I LOVE Swarthmore much more than Williams). Part of this is that I got a "Swarthmore Scholar" award which means that I don't have to take out any student loans (this is worth about $18,000 over the four years). But the remaining sum ($12,000 over the four years) was "just plain better" than Williams' offer...Williams was unable/(unwilling?) to consider specific details of our family's situation (a substantial portion of my parents' income goes to our house...much higher than the nation average....well I won't get into the details but that's just it---Swarthmore was WILLING to look closely at the details and determine, based on that, what we could realistically pay). They were also much more polite about the process...my dad was wholly unavailable to fill out the non-custodial parent form and Williams had a cow...they made us fill out special forms and get letters from our neighbors and then it had to go to a special committee (I guess to determine if we were lying? I didn't really get it)...all this while Swarthmore didn't make a fuss about it...I think that was a much more professional approach.</p>
<p>I'm sure I have more to say, but I've got to run...the point is Swarthmore is VERY fair when it comes to aid...I say fair because I think what sets them apart is that they really go out of their way to understand your situation and make their calculations accordingly.</p>
<p>Hope this helps!</p>