<li><p>apply to schools you dont think you can afford. I was very suprised by how much aid I actually got from schools. Many schools, including Tufts and UNC were initially way out of what my family could afford but I have ended up at both due to generous financial aid. You never know until you try</p></li>
<li><p>keep your grades up freshman and sophomore year. transferring to a “dream school” or anywhere for that matter is generally easier than getting in the first time, and college gives you a fresh start on your GPA.</p></li>
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<p>ps- i just proofread that after posting it and i promise I am a lot more intelligent than my capitalization and punctuation make me look</p>
<p>Yes, Apply to the expensive schools. USC, which is amazingly expensive, ended up being cheeper than Ohio State, Boston University, Purdue, and far cheeper than Illinois. Need-blind are beautiful words.</p>
<p>Among almost all of the top 15 private schools, average financial aid is between 15 to 20 G's!</p>
<p>The more you apply to, the better the chance you can afford less.</p>
<p>One friend of mine ended up having it cheaper to Dartmouth, Upenn, Duke, and Georgetown than PSU and he is an instate resident in Pennslyvania, which meant his total cost per year was about 19G a year (his family earns less than 100K per year, two siblings already attending PSU, and another sibling coming into college within the next two years).</p>
<ol>
<li>apply to schools you dont think you can afford. I was very suprised by how much aid I actually got from schools.</li>
</ol>
<p>Crazy as it seems, it does work. Also, there are about 15 schools that are completely need-blind, and Tufts and Georgetown (I believe) are planning to go need-blind within the next few years.</p>
<p>"his family earns less than 100K per year"</p>
<p>I'm not getting into you anything, but I do have a question for the community as a whole. Do most people here live in a famly that makes more than 100K/year? Afther all, the American average is about 39K.</p>
<p>The American average is 39K, yes, but students from higher-income families are more likely to go to college, and even more likely to go to competitive colleges, so I imagine that tips the average for CCers a bit. 100K is a big chunk of money, but especially for families with multiple kids in college or other extenuating circumstances, financial aid is still available (and often necessary).</p>
<p>Well, I'm under the national average, so I must be way under the CC average.</p>
<p>well then bmanbs if you arent in college yet, you should expect a lot of financial aid from whatever college you choose.</p>
<p>Your system only works if the colleges have financial aid policies or merit scholarship policies that would give you the aid that you need.</p>
<p>Consequently, it's wise to use the financial aid calculators on CC and other sites, and to discuss those results with your parents (who may not wish to pay what the calculators say they would be expected to pay).</p>
<p>Then, check the colleges' web sites to find out their policies and whether you'd qualify. If you have questions, contact their financial aid offices directly. Remember that, for instance, out of state public universities tend to reserve their financial aid for in-state students, and may not be able to fully fund the most needy of them.</p>
<p>There are many colleges -- public and private -- that do not have the funds to provide full funding to people with high financial need and/or may offer such people financial aid that is very loan-heavy, requiring as much as $30,000 a year in loans.</p>
<p>Bother to do this kind of research before applying so you don't waste your time and pin your dreams on colleges that won't give you what you need.</p>
<p>Also apply to outside scholarships and put careful applications to any merit scholarships that the colleges you're applying to offer. Some require applications months in advance of the admission deadlines, so start researching now.</p>
<p>
[quote]
2. keep your grades up freshman and sophomore year. transferring to a "dream school" or anywhere for that matter is generally easier than getting in the first time, and college gives you a fresh start on your GPA.
[/quote]
This is totally inacurate.</p>
<p>Stanford's website says for fall 2005 they admitted 12% of those applying as frosh, but only 4.5% of those applying as transfers. For the class of 2009 Penn admitted 21% applying as frosh but their website says they takes 200 students out of about 1600 that apply as transfers each year (12.5%). The numbers are similar for other top/"dream" schools. And some highly desired schools (Princeton, for example) don't even offer transfer admissions because they consider the entire 4-year experience crucial to what they offer.</p>
<p>I don't know how you do math, but in my book "generally easier" means the admission percentage should be higher than that for frosh ;)</p>
<p>Some schools are easier (the publics like Michigan, UCLA, UNC) for transfers while other schools (Yale, Columbia) are even harder.</p>
<p>Yeah, transferring to most of the top privates is harder than entering as a freshman.</p>
<p>mikemac, you're wrong. the raw numbers--admissions percentages--dont tell the whole story. the characteristics of the transfer applicant pool are different from those of the regular first-year applicant pool. it's safe to assume that a lot of transfer applicants are those who were rejected the first time around--meaning it's a weaker pool because it's got a higher concentration of past rejects.</p>
<p>As for the financial aid deal, all I was saying is that i was suprised with how much I got. Somehow Tufts gave me about 4X what other private schools gave me, much more than expected, or calculated on these websites. You never know until you try.</p>
<p>As for transferring, of the thousands of colleges and universities in the US, there are only a select few that are more difficult or impossible to transfer in to. If your grades were not so hot in high school, college is a good time to start over and then be accepted somewhere as a transfer that you wouldn't have had a shot at out of high school.</p>
<p>
[quote]
mikemac, you're wrong. the raw numbers--admissions percentages--dont tell the whole story. the characteristics of the transfer applicant pool are different from those of the regular first-year applicant pool.
[/quote]
I'm giving published statistics. If someone out there wants to base their college choices on the unverifiable musings of an anonymous poster, they're welcome to do so (at their own peril, of course).</p>
<p>sometimes i feel like this board is a little too intense.</p>
<p>"sometimes i feel like this board is a little too intense."</p>
<p>true.</p>
<p>thanks for the advice anyways.</p>