<p>I know they cover tuition, but can they be used to cover other fees in college? Like room and board, activities fees, meal plans, etc? I'm kinda worried about what to do if they don't...</p>
<p>Loans can cover anything, scholarship are all different. D1 has full tuition (no $ number which is good cause covers it even when tuition goes up), D2 has several scholarships that end up giving full ride with money back to her as overage. D2 was offered a $24,000 at one school but that didn’t fully cover even tuition…so it varies. Mostly they can be used for anything included in the schools COA (cost of attending).</p>
<p>While loans and scholarships can cover those additional expenses, most students do not get enough awards or loans to cover all those costs. Many students are “gapped.”</p>
<p>Are you a junior who will be applying next year? Where will you be applying? Are you low income? What are your stats? What is your home state?</p>
<p>Yes, I’m applying this fall. I’m applying to Barnard College, NYU, and Pace which are all in NYC. I’m also applying to Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts, and I’m apply to UNH and SNHU in New Hampshire as backups. I currently live in New Hampshire. I don’t think I’ll get any merit scholarships because while my academics are good, they aren’t amazing. So I’ll be relying on scholarships for other stuff like writing contests (a few I’ve already applied for) and need-based aid. My financial situation is pretty bad. My mom makes about $29,000 per year.</p>
<p>NYU and Pace do not “meet need”, so you may not get enough money to attend if you’re accepted. </p>
<p>Don’t know if those NH schools meet need; most publics do not…so those may not be safeties for you. You need to have safeties. A safety has to be affordable. </p>
<p>MHC does give “good aid,” but if it doesn’t meet need, you could get gapped there as well.</p>
<p>Don’t know if Barnard meets need.</p>
<p>you need financial safeties.</p>
<p>those scholarships are probably only for freshmen year, so that’s not really going to help. You need to apply to the SCHOOLS that give huge merit for stats…those are for all four years.</p>
<p>The schools in NH are pretty good about meeting the financial need of residents, but I’ll look for another school that’s more affordable just in case. I believe Barnard has the same policy as Columbia (since they’re both in the same university) which is that any family making less than $60,000 per year will not have to pay anything toward tuition. I’m pretty confident that if I get into Barnard, my financial issues should be covered. The website I found the writing scholarships on has some for freshman and some for upperclassmen, so I can apply for those again. Whether or not I get them is another story. </p>
<p>But yes, I’ll look around for another school. I don’t believe my mom will pay for any of it, so I need something affordable.</p>
<p>Do you have a father? If so, some schools (probably Barnard) will expect your dad to contribute. His income (and any new spouse’s income) will also count towards the $60k rule.</p>
<p>My father is not in the picture and I’d already contacted Barnard about their financial aid requirements for that. They said if I include a letter from my mother that explains the situation in detail that I won’t have to worry about my dad’s portion of the CSS Profile because there is no possibility of even getting into contact with him.</p>
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<p>This is flat out untrue! New Hampshire does NOT provide need-based aid for state residents. The most you can hope for is a small merit-based scholarship, which will not come close to covering the cost of attendance. </p>
<p>SNHU is no better. A small merit scholarship is possible, but the balance of the cost of attendance will not be covered. It is a private university and it will not provide funding for you. You’ll be expected to borrow the money needed to pay your tuition . . . and you cannot afford to do that.</p>
<p>Your best bet, if you end up having to attend school in NH, would be to commute, depending on where you live, either to Durham or to UNH-Manchester.</p>
<p>You need to get yourself over to Princeton Review and start looking for schools that DO meet full need . . . and you need to look for schools that you have a good chance of being admitted to. Schools that do not meet full need CANNOT be on your list unless (1) they offer good merit aid and (2) you would be so high up at the tippy top of their applicants that you’d have a good chance of receiving that aid. Find schools where your GPA and SAT scores are well above the average for that school.</p>
<p>If you don’t do some really good research now, you’re going to find yourself next year with no way to pay for school!</p>
<p>New Hampshire spends the least per capita on higher education of all the 50 states . . . and it’s so far behind #49 (Arizona) that there’s almost no comparison. If you want to go to a state school in New Hampshire, you’d better be prepared to pay your own way!</p>
<p>what are your HS resources? Ours had a separate college person to help look at colleges and she actually kept up with scholarships at various schools. At the very least your guidance counselor should have information to point you to appropriate choices.</p>
<p>Try to get a list together and start contacting admissions officers. I think most will be pretty upfront about what you can expect.</p>
<p>@dodgersmom I’ve been on the College Board since my sophomore year, and both UNH and SNHU list that they meet need. And I don’t understand why you brought up merit-based aid. As I said in my earlier posts, I won’t get any. If I do, it won’t be much at all. I’m looking for need-based aid. SNHU is among the cheapest of all the schools I’m applying to, actually. Either way, it’s my last-resort school. Regardless of aid offered, I don’t want to go there. At all.</p>
<p>@scmom12 I’m part of the TRIO/Upward Bound program at my school, so I meet with a special college counselor every other week during the school year. However, the original counselor (the one with good judgement) started sticking to just one school somewhere further up north in NH. The new counselor isn’t much help. She acts like I’m so much dumber than I am, and keeps bringing up how she went to an Ivy League school, and how they have good financial aid but I couldn’t get in there if I tried. She legitimately told me that UNH was a reach school for me. UNH is far from a reach school for me. There is not a doubt in my mind that I’ll be accepted. It’s Barnard and NYU that are my reach schools. I can’t even tell her about those or she’d laugh at me. She really knows nothing about college outside of the Ivies. If you don’t have a 4.0 average, she thinks you’ll go to a community college. She’s super condescending.</p>
<p>Killer Ana…</p>
<p>What are you looking at on Collegeboard??? Collegeboard indicates that UNH only meets the need of 12% of students. This is NOT good.</p>
<p>@mom2collegekids when I had looked with my college counselor it said it met needs. I checked again and the stats HAVE changed, but not to 12%! What I’m seeing right now is that it meets 82% of need to 79% of students. College stats keep changing and every website has different information. It’s really confusing.</p>
<p>I’ve read that both Mount Holyoke and Smith College will cover 100% of a student’s financial need if they can demonstrate that need. I also know a few people who went to Bryn Mawr College in PA and have had a great academic & social experience. Pretty sure that BMC will provide a financial aid package to cover 100% of a student’s need.</p>
<p>NYU is notorious for giving horrible financial aid. If you are applying to Mount Holyoke and Barnard, why not consider Smith, Wellesley, and Bryn Mawr? This chart is a few years out of date, but might be helpful: [Project</a> on Student Debt: What’s the Bottom Line?](<a href=“http://www.projectonstudentdebt.org/ncoa_chart.php?sort=b.range_1]Project”>http://www.projectonstudentdebt.org/ncoa_chart.php?sort=b.range_1)</p>
<p>By the way, it can be more difficult to be “low income” at urban schools than suburban/ rural ones. City living is expensive. The costs of public transport, eating out, and paying for events adds up, and the closer the city is to one’s “backyard”, the more it happens. On the other hand, rural or suburban schools know that frequently going to a city is not possible, and will have free or low cost entertainment for students on campus, especially on weekends. </p>
<p>Back to answering your question…A college that meets full need would expect a dependent student from a low income family to contribute summer earnings, work during the school year, and perhaps take out a small federal loan. Colleges expect that the earnings from student work to cover textbooks, supplies, transportation costs, and other incidentals. After federal (and possibly state) grant money is applied to your bill, a meets full need school will give you the rest* of the cost of attendance in grants.</p>
<p>One advantage of a school like Wellesley (where I attend) is that all housing costs “the same” and all students are require to be on an unlimited meal plan. So if you applied and were accepted to Wellesley, then you would definitely have room and board covered (plus tuition and fees).</p>
<p>*possible exception: health insurance</p>
<p>(I suppose disclaimer #2 is that a college that meets full need, gets to define meeting need how it sees fit).</p>
<p>Killer Anna…</p>
<p>You need to go back and look at Collegeboard. It says on the same page, that only 12% had their need met.</p>
<p>and it does NOT say what you wrote. It says that 79% had need. It says that 82% of need was met. That does NOT mean that each of those needy students had 82% of their need met. It means that some students had little need, and 100% of their need was met with a loan, and it means some students with LOTS of need got a SMALLER percent of their need met…bigger gap.</p>
<p>And, only 12% had their need met. Very likely, those 12% had very little need. Their EFCs were probably about $25k, so a student loan met their need.</p>
<p>The fact that that page indicates that most of their aid is LOANS (not free money), means that this school will give large gaps to those with low EFCs.</p>
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<p>This is not true. While Barnard is an affiliated college of Columbia University, they have totally different financial aid policies. Barnard currently does not have any policies in place where students making under a certain amount pay nothing toward tuition.</p>
<p>Anna - </p>
<p>You need to stop and really look at the financial aid policies at the schools you’re considering. You cannot assume that a schools that covers “most” of a student’s need will end up working out for you . . . it is highly likely that it will not.</p>
<p>Go back to both the UNH and SNHU sites and run the “Net Price Calculator” for yourself. See what numbers you come up with. Unless your net cost is ZERO - or very close to it - then what you’ve got is a school you’re going to have to PAY for, and perhaps pay quite a lot for.</p>
<p>But perhaps the school is “giving” you loans . . . then you don’t have to pay anything, right? Wrong!</p>
<p>No one “gives” you loans. What the school is actually giving you is the opportunity to put yourself so deep in debt that you might never be able to climb out! The debt doesn’t go away by itself and it doesn’t wait politely in the background while you try to figure out how to earn enough to make the monthly payments. If a student loan isn’t paid off immediately after you graduate, the interest on the loan will quickly add up until it’s more than the original loan amount. For example, if you start by borrowing $4,000, and you don’t pay it off, it will eventually turn into $40,000 and, I am not kidding, over the course of a life time, could grow to $400,000! (Live a long life, don’t make payments, and that’s where you’ll be!) Student loan debt DOES NOT GO AWAY. Even if you’re broke, lose everything, file for bankruptcy . . . the student loan debt still has to be paid, interest and all.</p>
<p>So you have to find schools that not only meet need, but do it without loans. Again, if you look on the Princeton Review site, you can see the “financial aid rating” that PR gives the schools. You can also see what percentage of need the school meets. If it’s not 100%, you’re going to have a problem. You can also look [url=<a href=“http://projectonstudentdebt.org/pc_institution.php]here[/url”>http://projectonstudentdebt.org/pc_institution.php]here[/url</a>] to find a list of schools that have guaranteed to meet at least some students’ need without loans. (Some of them do it for all students; others just do it for lower income students.)</p>
<p>The problem is that the “meet full need,” “no loan” schools are HARD to get into. Which is why I said that you should also look at schools that give merit aid. Your statement that you won’t qualify for merit aid is nonsense. Of course there are schools where you won’t qualify. But, unless your stat’s are ridiculously low (in which case you don’t need to bother applying to Smith, Barnard, Mt. Holyoke), there are other schools where you might well qualify for aid. No, you’re right, they might not be schools you’ve ever heard of before. And they might be in parts of the country where you can’t even imagine living. But if the average GPA and test scores of their incoming students are significantly lower than yours, then these are schools that might be delighted to have you as a student . . . and would be willing to pay for the privilege!</p>
<p>Right now you have three types of schools on your list:</p>
<p>(1) schools with great financial aid policies that are damned hard to get into;
(2) schools with crappy financial aid policies that are relatively easy to get into (UNH & SNHU); and
(3) schools with crappy financial aid policies that are also damned hard to get into (NYU).</p>
<p>That list will NOT guarantee you a place in college!</p>
<p>And I am sorry that you’re having problems with your school guidance counselor. That sucks, and that’s why we all are taking the time here to try and help you. But you need to listen to us, and really think about some of the problems we’ve outlined. Your situation is not impossible, but it’s going to take some work to find a list of schools that you can really depend on.</p>
<p>Dodgersmom makes some great points. If you do not mind sharing your stats, perhaps we can direct you to some schools that maybe financially feasible options for your family.</p>
<p>Another point with need based aid is that schools often have a definitive pool of money to give out. If you want need based aid, fill out the FAFSA/CSS as soon as possible, some schools give it out on a rolling basis and it you are near the end of the line you may be out of luck, even it your financial situation is worst than some others.</p>