Moot
Iâm glad youâre excited about your options. Congratulations on all you have achieved.
$136,000 for UCB is still not worth it compared to free for Wellesley.
These are just my opinions, and I know there will be users who disagree, but here is a conversation I had with another student who has a choice between excellent LACs and UCB:
"Huge lecture halls with 1000 students are not unheard of at UCB. Cal is a research institution. So unless youâre doing research, you will be grinding. Professors spend all their time researching and arenât really interested in undergrad teaching.
You will rarely see your professor until youâre an upperclassmen, and maybe not much even then. You will be taught by TAâs and grad students for at least the first two years, primarily in large classes. So anyone who thinks they will go to Cal and rub shoulders with famous professors is sorely mistaken. That is extremely unlikely to happen.
You can, of course, get a good education at Cal, but understand that itâs not necessarily the BEST education. My opinion is that unless students are quite proactive, itâs harder to stand out at a research uni. There are simply too many other upperclassmen and grad students to compete with.
You are going to get much more professor interaction at the smaller schools. You will develop great critical thinking skills. If you want a more balanced perspective, here are some stats that illustrate this. Iâll use medical school entry as an example, which is notoriously difficult and relies on grades, MCAT scores, recommendations and interviews. UCBâs percentage of applicants who get into Med school is 51%, not bad when the national average is 40%. Wellesley gets 70% of its students into med school. Barnard gets 62% into med school. Wellesley grads also have an average higher starting salary than UCB."
With all the money youâll save by attending Wellesley, you could rent an Airbnb in Malibu for the summer and get your California fix. Edit: Youâre in CA. So rent your Airbnb and spend the summer in Paris. You can buy flights for you and your family and still have left over change from $136,000.
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Wellesley gives only need based awardsâŠread this:
Is there any reason to think your financial situation will dramatically change? Will you have a sibling who is currently in college graduate while you are at Wellesley? Will your family income increase? Is your family inheriting money?
Absolutely call the financial aid office. They wonât be able to make promises, but as stated in the above linkâŠif your finances donât change, your aid should not change eitherâŠbut get the info from a Wellesley finaid officer.
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This seems to be the generic pro-LAC statement criticizing any non-LAC college or university. It is not really accurate, despite it being the apparent conventional wisdom (at least among pro-LAC posters) on these forums.
The actual reality of big research universities is that large classes will typically have a faculty lead instructor doing the main lecture, which can be very large, with discussion sections and labs (if applicable) run by PhD student TAs. So, of course the student sees the professor in the lecture. Seeing either the professor or any of the TAs outside of class can be done at their office hours (most accessible at times other than right before or right after an exam).
A student may still prefer the LAC model of instruction over the actual research university model, but it is important to compare with the actual research university model rather than an imagined one.
Medical school admission rates are not really comparable across schools. Wellesley and Barnard both have pre-med committees which write committee letters for pre-meds whom they have pre-screened (those whom they believe have low chance of medical school admission will be advised to take alternate career paths). UCB pre-med is basically a free-for-all.
Attending a college with a pre-med committee can be advantageous to some students â being âweeded outâ by the pre-med committee means that you can switch career directions earlier rather than wasting lots of time and money on futile medical school applications that you might do in a free-for-all environment. But it is important to note that pre-med committees do make medical school admission rates look better because of this âweeding outâ.
Pay levels after graduation for students who received federal financial aid vary by major, and are mostly not that different between Wellesley and UCB, although Wellesley has more majors with insufficient data (presumably due to its smaller size).
That said, a free ride to Wellesley is hard to pass up compared to spending $130k at your other choices.
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All accurate and excellent points. Thanks for clarifying.
ETA: your post also illustrates something LACs are good at, which is academic advising.
Thanks everyone for all the information!
I just got my Barnard acceptance and financial aid letter; it would cost 45k per year for me to attend Barnard. Thatâs about $15,000 higher than my FAFSA EFC! A friend suggested I write an email to their financial aid department, but Iâm not sure what to say or how to phrase it.
I donât have a huge emotional attachment to Barnard so Iâm not very disappointed, but it has definitely moved down the list in both my parentsâ and my opinion.
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So if I understand your previous posts, your choices are:
$0 Wellesley
$30k âlocal state schoolâ
$34k UCB
$45k Barnard
If money does matter, and there is nothing that is a major deal breaker (academically or otherwise) about Wellesley, it seem like the full ride there is hard to pass up.
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If you arenât in love with Barnard, let it go. There are so many who are on the waitlist who are praying to get in.
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I really liked my time at Wellesley. Iâm more a suburb gal than city. I liked the pond and the ducks, and the ice cream shop.
There must be something special about you that Wellesley wants you so much.
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You mentioned earlier you planned to email your Wellesley financial aid counselor; have you done that?
Iâm very concerned that your generous aid from Wellesley was calculated incorrectly. Wellesley does not give merit scholarships, nor would they give lots of aid just to entice you to attend. They meet all admitted studentsâ full financial need as they calculate it using their institutional formula.
Barnard also meets full financial need, using their own institutional formula. Sure, the formulas will be different, but I canât fathom Wellesley calculating you canât afford to pay anything AND including a Pell grant, while Barnardâs formula calculates you being able to afford over $40K a year.
Wellesley is a fabulous school (my D is an alum) but Iâm concerned they made an error. Based on your FAFSA EFC (which I understand is a different formula) Wellesleyâs offer doesnât make sense, especially the inclusion of a Pell grant.
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If your FAFSA EFC was in the $30,000 a year range, you absolutely would not be eligible for a Pell Grant. At all.
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That was my concern as well (cf. post 35).
Pell at that income level doesnât make sense, and I worry the student may have forgotten a 0 somewhere (or might have got it wrong here!)
I hope the student called or email Wellesley to know for sure.
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If this student had a $3000 income, they would have gotten more substantial aid from Barnard, I think.
I agree, this student needs to have a talk with financial aid at wellesley to make sure this is accurate.
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By any chance did you have some special circumstance that was conveyed to Wellesley and considered, but was not conveyed or considered to your other colleges?
OrâŠdid you get one of these at Wellesley?
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There is not a single college in the world that could trump a full ride at Wellesley. That said- please verify the award! The gap between Wellesley and Barnard shouldnât have been quite so high if all the numbers are accurateâŠ
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This is great advice.
Weâve been lucky to have several acceptances at fine colleges. While we donât get financial aid, it turns out that all of the merit aid puts all of these fine colleges at close to the same cost (within 10%) even though the posted âcost of attendanceâ varies widely.
I echo the sentiment to please verify the Wellesley award! Hope it works out because itâs a remarkable opportunity.
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Hi all-
I spoke to my financial aid counselor and he said that they found an error on their part. Apparently, the staff member who inputted my parentâs tax returns forgot a 0, which was what made my EFC drop so low. He told me that the school would honor the financial aid package the sent because the mistake was on their behalf, and that for the following 3 years I would pay 32k to attend. This puts my average annual tuition at 25k per year.
Yesterday, I got into Yale University! This was completely, completely unexpected. They met all of my demonstrated need, so it would cost 32k per year for me to attend. I still need to discuss it with my parents, but I am pretty sure I will be committing to the Yale Class of 2025. Thank you everyone for all of the advice and help!
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WOW!!! Ups and downs.
Congratulations on getting into three fabulous schools⊠at an affordable price 
I must add that Iâm very impressed with Wellesleyâs class act in admitting their mistake and offering to honor their FA package, thatâs really rare.
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P.S.
For the record, I visited the Boston/Wellesley area this week, and it was very, very lovely. I really enjoyed the area, and was ready to commit to Wellesley over UC Berkeley. As everyone pointed out, the suburb-city transit was very short and would give me the benefit of being close to a major city while allowing me to live in a safer, more enclosed campus. Wellesley also had many more academic programs that excited me, and also wouldâve given me access to more personal and tailored academic and career guidance as others had mentioned.
Yes, there have been so many ups and downs, but l am feeling very grateful that everything has worked out in the end 
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Glad to hear the update! Congratulations!
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