We were super disappointed to receive $0 in either merit or need based aid at Vandy. Kid was invited to MOSAIC so we flew him there and he loved it. But $74,716 per year is so much money especially considering awards at comparable schools (WashU, Emory). Feel like Vandy markets itself as giving lots of aid - financial aid page on website even says for folks making $200+ per year, the median annual award was $22,062 and was offered to 26% of kids in that category. Think we have to say no to Vandy even though it is his #1 choice. Anyone else in the same situation?
It seems a lot of my daughter’s friends are turning down admissions at their “dream” schools due to finances and instead attending either schools with better aid offers or staying at our local state school which is highly rated and relatively reasonable for in-state tuition. I think once reality sets in and the offers are all on the table it’s hard to justify $75,000 when you have better offers at comparable schools.
@angelaruth0750 While we did receive some need-based aid, we did not receive near the package that Vanderbilt advertised for our income bracket. It was disappointing to say the least. We also did not receive enough aid to bring our cost down to our EFC, which is what Vanderbilt advertises.
Call Vanderbilt and see if they can give you some aid. If you explain the situation they’ll probably do something.
My son was wait-listed, so we never received a financial aid offer. But we all feel that 75k is definitely too much. S19 will be turning down 2 nice acceptances due to cost - we just don’t feel an undergrad education is worth over a quarter million dollars. He has 5 good schools that are at or well under budget to choose from, so he just has to make a decision. Good luck!
Our school had five kids accepted to Vandy. Zero of them will be attending because they received little to nothing in aid even though they qualified for plenty of need. Three of them wasted their ED application here. So disappointing.
@Anisqoyo - ouch. I get the feeling Vandy is fishing for full-pay students this year. But if this is the case, then they need to stop misleading applicants.
Do the NPC for Vanderbilt and see how it comes out. Do the same for Emory and Wash U. It’ll give you an idea of differences in methodology, and if their NPCs are correct. Then talk to the Vanderbilt fin aid counselor and ask why any discrepancies are there. Let them know about the Wash U and Emory awards. They certainly are peer schools.
Please report the NPC results on the Fin Aid section that is asking about the accuracy of NPCs.
@trixy34 Vandy is need-blind. They can’t look for full-pay students.
OP, I know what you are looking at when you were hoping for FA. We have also received that for our DS20. D17 is scholarship winner at Vandy. I do agree with you that piece of paper is misleading. However, income is never the only determining factor in FA. While you might feel Vandy’s methodology hurts your chance of FA, I heard D17 say that it benefits certain families or circumstances. A good example she mentioned was students with divorced parents.
For parents applying FA, run NPC first, as suggested by @cptofthehouse.
@anisqoyo, as ED applicants, they should have done their homework. And they should have reviewed ED contracts before they signed to have their admission chance increased and took away the chance of others who might have been on waitlist now! I am sorry that I don’t have sympathy for rule breakers. Vandy usually is very graceful to let people like that off the hook. But that is besides the point. How do you know that they qualify for plenty of aids?
My understanding from visiting and what I know from D is that Vandy has been very generous with aids and various scholarships! But you can NOT depend on something when you know it is only 26% of chance. That is why we have lottery. Sorry if I am too blunt. But don’t blame the school!
Are you saying that students shouldn’t apply ED to any school unless they are prepared to pay full boat? That seems more than a little unreasonable. It’s pretty hard to do your homework when you don’t know what your FA is going to be. Demonstrated need for all accepted students was significant. You’ll just have to take my word for it. At least three of them (all ED) would have committed to Vandy if they have provided more FA. They were led to believe that more aid was possible when they visited and interviewed. We had five admits from a class with just 170 kids. Last year, we had nine students accepted to Vandy. We know them fairly well and all agree that Vandy could do a much better job of managing expectations, especially since students who end up being unable to afford it can lose the opportunity to apply elsewhere. It will be interesting to read the experience of others on this board when comparing expectations with actual offers.
When you say they were “led to believe that more aid was possible when they visited and interviewed”, I’m wondering how the aid compared with what the NPC suggested before they applied. I know that NPCs are not very accurate for divorced parents and those who have their own businesses, but it is surprising that all of those students would receive aid much different from what the NPC indicated. In our situation, we knew we couldn’t count on the NPC for the above reasons so my son could not take a chance on ED and only did RD applications for his reach schools. The Vanderbilt aid was generous and significantly more than that offered by Emory and Brown.
@angelaruth0750 thanks for your info.
Would you mind sharing a ballpark EFC so we can understand how bad the $0 aid really is?
(My D is on the waitlist and we would need big aid if ever called.)
“They were led to believe that more aid was possible when they visited and interviewed.”
When students or parents visit, they don’t fill out FA forms. When they interview, they interview with alumni for the most part. FA is one of those comprehensive processes where qualified people need to review the confidential financial information which the families submitted in order to make a decision. I don’t suppose they would even ask the questions in the informational session. How did they lead to believe?? No one in admission nor alumni would guarantee the students or parents on FA or even comment on that. Matter of fact, I tried to judge our FA situation and called several schools’s FA office where D was admitted (we don’t qualify for FA, but I still like to think we might, just like those parents), none of the schools would even entertain my questions. Again, you need to fill out the forms and every situation is different. I don’t understand how they can be led to believe anything from those two interactions.
Vandy is a great institution with support of its parents, alumni, students communities. On the 2019 Giving Day early this week, 7800 donors donated $8.6 millions in 24 hours. To say that Vandy only wants full pay students can’t be further from the truth.
At my visit, Vandy presented a brochure that provides a rough FA amount depending on family income (assuming typical assets) as a guide for the regular folk/price sensitive peeps.
@albertsax - not true. Many, if not all, need-blind schools are need aware with regard to the wait-list. Vandy states explicitly either on their website or in the admissions blog that they do consider ability to pay when evaluating students on the wait-list. Combine hefty use of the wait-list (10% of the class) with ED applications from students willing to commit no matter what the cost, then they are doing a pretty good job of pre-selecting full-pay students, aren’t they?
@trixy34 I see now that you’re right about the wait list, but not about ED. Students who are admitted early are not necessarily “willing to commit no matter what the cost,” and there are plenty of students each year at all colleges with ED who turn down early acceptances due to cost. Students who applied early receive the same consideration for financial aid and merit scholarships as those who applied RD.
@albertsax - I understand that. I guess what I meant by “willing to commit no matter what the cost” which wasn’t expressed clearly because I wrote late at night, is that a lot of people do apply to ED because cost is not an issue. I realize that you are always able to back out of the financial aid isn’t adequate, but it’s my sense that families that are perhaps in the “donut hole” or feel the need to compare offers for whatever reason, generally don’t feel that ED is an option for them. Further, even at need-blind schools, AO’s have ways of knowing which students are more likely to be full pay.
You should always consider the COA when making a choice. Sometimes school A beats school B and other times it is the other way around. In general follow the money when selecting between similar universities unless there is a particular reason to not do so.
I am a cynic of most needs blind U’s. They often don’t count waitlist or international students. It is not difficult to know where the well funded kids are: legacy, private/magnet high schools, public high school in affluent suburb of large metro area, or golf, squash, sailing, equestrian, fencing, crew, tennis, piano, violin, or obo musicians. On the other hand someone must pay to keep the lights on and no one can “expect” someone else to pay their COA.
As long as it’s easy to get loans U’s have little reason to keep costs low. VU is better than most with assistance.
Even worse than privates seeking well funded students are state flagships filling > 50% of their seats with OOS and IS who pay 2-3 times the tuition.
@albertsax There is no such thing as need blind at Vandy or anywhere that is a Common App school. By asking on the Common App if the student will be applying for an application fee waiver, schools automatically identify low income students.