^ The whole point of this post is that anything can happen! Have hope! UMD is my top choice so I will probably be going there next fall!
@UMDtwins I feel for the financial burden, college education is not affordable anymore. I also got $2000 per year, that does not offset costs much. It’s a lot of burden for me and my parents!
@wavyerx Congratulations on your admission! And kudos to you for successfully appealing the EA decision.
@UMDtwins As a public state institution funded in part by the taxpayers of Maryland I would expect that out of state students would not be a priority for need based financial aid. UMd’s financial aid page indicates that you must be a Maryland resident to be eligible for institutional grants.
Other than that your aid options are institutional scholarships (which your children were awarded) and Federal aid which consists of Pell grants for those with very low incomes and the federal student loan.
Did the net price calculator on the UMd website provide different results than what you actually received?
Accepted EA Into the Honors College
In-State
SAT: 1300
GPA: 3.98UW/4.56W
Course-load: 5 APs (Human Geography, Environmental Science, US Gov/Pol, Art History, Psychology; all 3s or 4s), Full IB Diploma Candidate (HL English A, HL Spanish B, HL World History, SL Math, SL World Religions, SL Environmental Systems and Societies)
Strong essays
President of the county student union
Summer Abroad in Madrid to learn Spanish
Strong ECs
@fanofthemcu – Curious–why would students try to switch out of Honors? Is the same true of Scholars?
@hdysaplm nope, i don’t want to leave the honors college, i just wanted to switch from a more selective program to a less selective program in order to graduate earlier idk if that makes sense. i don’t know anything about scholars, sorry!
@adlgel…Yes I used the UMD net cost calculator. It comes up with Estimated Net Price After Grants and Scholarships is $41,112. But they are using academic year 2116-2117. It showed a total grant of $1,680. So, I was not expecting $50,000 for my daughter and $40,000 for my son, especially since my daughter received $2,000 and my son $12,000 Presidential Scholarships. Did costs rise so much since 2016? If so, UMD should update its calculator.
So it sounds like their estimate was pretty spot-on for your son but off by a factor of 25% for your daughter. It might be worth an email to the Office of Financial Aid to ask or an explanation.
Maryland has the worst NPC I’ve seen. If you have 4 people in your household and an income over $99,999, you get an estimate of $1,680. It doesn’t ask for GPA/scores or ask for enough financial information to be useful.
There is also an obvious error since the NPC lists room AND board in total to be $6944 for a year, which looks more like a semester charge. Tuition for OOS has gone up by about $4K since 2016-17.
So yes, UMD should definitely update and probably completely revamp its NPC.
for anyone that’s wondering, 3 of my friends got the full BK scholarships!
@fanofthemcu In state or OOS?
@SpecialK in state
@UMDtwins I feel your pain. We are OOS also. D19 was accepted into the Honors program and received a $2,000 Scholarship offer also. She was a little bummed because UMD was one of her favorites.
She is a NMF, 4.0 UW, 36-ACT and a ton of ECs. D19 has other options and we are waiting on a few decisions that come out at the end of the month.
I’m confused… how has everyone heard about financial offers already? The website says "For admitted students who applied by the November 1 priority deadline, financial aid decisions will be released electronically by April 1. Student awarded a merit scholarship will receive an email notification April 1.
Scholarship award letters from the Clark School will go out in early April. The Admissions Office will send out award letters for campus merit scholarships and the Financial Aid Office will send out notices for other financial aid including need-based aid." We haven’t heard anything yet and he has been checking his financial aid portal, nothing there. Are we alone in this?
Admission office announced scholarships for many. I understood that individual schools might offer something more by April
Hi, I have tried to take the UMD math placement test, but it says that there is a password required to be able to start the test. Does anyone know where we can get the password? Was it sent in an email or do we have to email someone? I’m an incoming freshman and know that I have to finish the test before orientation, but I can’t find any information about the password anywhere.
@redandblack92 you have to make a UMD email and ID before. You will make your own log in and use that for the math exam
I’ve done both of those things and I’m able to go through the whole tutorial of the math test, but when I try to start the test it says password required and when I use my directory ID password it says invalid.
Originally I had heard that the math test would be active in April. Do you think that may be the case?