<p>besides ivys, state schools, etc. Which universities provide the best aid amongst the "top CCs"? <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/cc-top-universities/%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/cc-top-universities/</a></p>
<p>YYMV. </p>
<p>Just search CC and you’ll find hundreds of opinions – usually contradictory – on this issue. Financial aid depends on variable factors such as your own stats relative to the entire applicant pool (i.e., How much does the school love you?), your family’s financial situation (What can your family contribute?), and the policies of the individual schools (Is any merit aid available or is it all need-based?).</p>
<p>There’s hundreds of answers to that question. Try narrowing it down. Where (state or part of the country) do you want to go to school for starters.</p>
<p>well I mean in general for the list of CC schools which ones are known for giving more money to the upper middle class?</p>
<p>I don’t think there are many on that list that give merit money. Maybe the state schools if you are exceptionally attractive.</p>
<p>If you mean upper middle class as in high EFC, then I wouldn’t anticipate any money out of those schools to speak of.</p>
<p>Upper-middle class families are the ones most often caught in the pinch between aid policies that benefit especially needy students and the price-insensitivity of upper-income families. HYP have great programs to provide need based aid to families with incomes up to $180K / year, but I don’t know of any other schools who do likewise.</p>
<p>^^^I’d add S to HYP; in my experience, after that there’s a drop-off in FA to upper-middle income families.</p>
<p>Schools provide the most generous need-based aid:
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Williams, Amherst, Wellesley</p>
<p>FA = (COA - EFC) * % of need met</p>
<p>To determine “best” 3 components need to be considered: cost of attendance, expected family contribution, and percentage of need met by the school.</p>
<p>There’s about a 50-way tie for best in terms of percentage of need met: 100%. So it comes down to what the school includes in the COA and how they determine EFC. </p>
<p>For COA, does the school include books, travel, incidentals? These can be considerable expenses. I don’t know which school is the most comprehensive in terms of stating their COA.</p>
<p>And then there’s EFC. There are hundreds of ways to determine EFC. In fact, colleges can configure their FA software to tweak EFC calculations however they want. It is not just a question of FAFSA vs. Profile. There are some pretty big factors that can enter in to the calculation such as how home equity is figured in and what happens when more than one child is in college at the same time.</p>
<p>Once financial aid is determined the schools can meet your need through grant, work-study, and loan. A school that is generous with their FA calculation but loads you up with loans may not be anywhere near the best.</p>
<p>Finally, if you have outside scholarships, how does the school treat these. Do they reduce grant or loan or both?</p>
<p>In short, there are too many variables to know for sure in every situation. The only way to really tell is by getting accepted and seeing what FA is offered. Once that is settled you start wondering what will happen in years 2-4. You can get a fairly good idea in advance, but I have experienced a few surprises.</p>
<p>
don’t foget Rice - the fact that it costs ~$10k less/year is like a guaranteed $10k grant to all applicants - that’s especially important to the upper middle class which is squeezed by the EFC formulas</p>
<p>It’s also worth noting that some schools have “preferential” financial aid packaging, so two applicants with very similar FAFSA and institutional EFCs may in fact receive very different “financial” aid packages, determined by the applicant’s desirability to the school. There was a recent article in which Boston University was shown to employ this practice, and Notre Dame does as well.</p>
<p>i was wondering the same thing, most of the ones i looked at seemed to have threads on people complaining about FA like JHU and Emory, two colleges i relaly liked :/</p>
<p>hi everyone,
I’m tatia,from georgia,tbilisi,have joined you today:).I’m on third cource in Caucasusu School Of business in tbilisi and seeking for making master’s degree in management field in USA by getting financial aid for international graduate students.Please,give me any information if you can about full sponsorship of master’s degree and thanks in advance.</p>
<p>I posted this information a couple of years ago, I think it is still accurate.</p>
<p>We had a rather lengthy discussion of merit aid at Top 20 Univ. and Top 20 LAC’s on another thread the results of which are as follows. </p>
<p>Amoung top 20 National Universities 8 offer it: Caltech, Duke, Chicago, Wash StL, JHU, Rice, Emory, and Vanderbilt. </p>
<p>Among top 20 LAC’s 5 offer it: Davidson, Harvey Mudd and Claremont McKenna, Smith, and Grinnell.</p>
<p>Rice is great for EFC = 0 students. If your EFC = 0, the school doesn’t require a student income contribution. You do get about $1800 per year in work study. However, Rice includes non-billable expenses in its COA, like personal expenses and books. So, the money to be contributed from work study does not actually go toward the billed expenses (tuition, fees, room, and board) of the school. This means that the yearly contribution to the school in loans or otherwise for a student with an EFC of 0 is $0. In fact, students could get some money toward personal expenses and books, since those expenses built into the COA total more than the required $1800 of work study.</p>
<p>Dartmouth and Vandy are both no-loan…</p>
<p>And I know from personal experience that Vandy’s good with upper middle class. I think my parents make between $140k and 160k (can’t remember my dad’s exact salary, but whatever), and they still offered me $34k in grants this year (plus $2k work study if I choose to accept).</p>
<p>The best financial aid: (not in order)</p>
<p>Harvard
Dartmouth
Yale
Princeton
MIT
Amherst
Williams</p>
<p>Dartmouth is no better than Vandy…</p>