Understanding the Harvey Mudd Financial Award

My D received her FA award this evening and we are completely confused. Since the FA office is closed for the weekend, I’m hoping someone might be able to shed some light on how to interpret the offer.
She basically received 6k in scholarships, 5500 in combined student loans, and 10k in Plus loans, for a subtotal of $21,500.

Total cost and attendance for the year is not listed, so we don’t know if $21,500 represents the total cost, or how much we need to come up with out of pocket.

Any thoughts?

I’d email the FA office (they MIGHT answer emails over the weekend). I looked back at one of my kid’s old award letters, but it is from a few years ago. There was a section at the top that listed scholarships, federal loans, work study, and plus loans. There was a fall and a spring column.

Then below was a section called “Estimated Cost of Education” that listed the tuition & fees, room, board, etc. In our case, we owed the total amount in that section minus what was shown in the top section.

So the bottom section totaled around $64,000 that year, and if my kid’s total had been around $21,000 on the top, we would have paid around $43,000 that year (assume we took all the loans, accepted the work study award, etc).

Thank you! I think in rushing to give us the offer, they didn’t include the “Estimated Cost Of Attendance” section. We sent an email last night, so hopefully we will hear back soon.

Yes… make sure you are sitting down when you read that number…

Based on info provided they are offering $6k in aid. The loans do not count as aid since it is money you have to pay back. Total COA at Mudd is ~$75k.

Yes, I am guessing that is what it is saying as well.

Thanks. That’s my assumption as well, just strange they didn’t list the estimated costs, and randomly put 10k in Plus.

Estimated COA of $74,428 can be found here:
https://www.hmc.edu/admission/afford/cost-of-attendance/

(Estimated only because things like Personal Expenses, Books & supplies will vary, also board has a couple of choices so that can vary a little too)

COA $74,428 - $6k in scholarships = $68,418

So 68k is how much it will cost you, however, you can get a loan $5500 to bring it down to $62,918 and a parent plus loan (that I believe most of us on CC wouldn’t recommend) of 10k to bring it down to $52,918 out of pocket this year (but obviously you have to pay the loans back later).

So your out of pocket cost during the 1st year is somewhere between $52k and $68k depending on what loans you accept.

@ClaremontMom - thanks! We would need a lot more than 10k in loans to make it work. We will try to figure it out this week but it doesn’t look good. Ugh!

Good luck @gratefulmama.

Are there any siblings currently in college or will be any time that your D is? This will effect FA as well. For example, if you already have another in college, then when he/she graduates your aid will decrease at Mudd and you’ll have to pay more. If you don’t but you will later, then those year(s) your FA will increase and you will pay less.

@ClaremontMom - Our D2 will be in 10th grade next year, so they will over lap one year.

D1 committed to UCLA by the deadline, not expecting to get off the HMC waitlist. I can’t express how excited and surprised we were when she got selected. But now that we are trying to figure out the costs, it’s literally more than twice as much (and we still have another one to put through college in a few years). I understand she would get a lot more out of HMC, the education at both schools is not comparable, but we would be in debt up to our eye balls! As much as she loves HMC (and we love it for her), I don’t know that would be smart.

I love HMC too, but I have to agree that “debt up to our eye balls” does not sound like a smart choice. UCLA is a different experience but it is still a great choice.

I thought HMC doesn’t give scholarship at all, and all aid are need based? I’m surprised that they gave $6K scholarship.

They give some merit aid, but you have to be pretty desirable to them to get it. My D with 2380 SATs (old SAT, out of 2400) and two perfect subject test scores didn’t get any.

@bogeyorpar - The 6k was a need based scholarship. They do have merit scholarships if you look at their website but only a small few of outstanding students get them.

@bogeyorpar - There are some merit scholarships, but they happen to call all need-based aid “scholarships”.

@gratefulmama , which school did your D1 choose in the end?

@bogeyorpar - She chose UCLA due to cost and seems to be doing well, but still has pangs abt HMC. She also got into Berkeley but didn’t like the atmosphere.

I’m at Harvey Mudd attending info session and tour today with DS, and the admission director mentioned that they have 20% students receiving merit aid? Let’s say they have 200 students per year, that means 40 students get merit aid. Does it sound right?

If that’s what they told you, then yes that would be about 40 students per year.

Most of these are probably 10k scholarships. But they do have full tuition scholarships which according to their website they give about 8. “The College strives to enroll approximately eight President’s Scholar Program recipients in each incoming first-year class.”