<p>can anyone tell me what, if any financial aid they received from miami? when do they notify you?</p>
<p>I have the 75% scholarship, plus a few thousand from FL Bright Futures</p>
<p>My son is on a 50 % scholarship, and a 100% Bright futures and a Robert Bryd Schoalrship. UM notified him of his scholarship along with his acceptance letter. He applied last year as regular admission and he was one of the last in the CC group to get his acceptance letter. at first they gave him a 33% schol then out of the blue they upped it to a 50% scholarship. But you should hear about academic scholarships with the acceptance letter. good luck.</p>
<p>in your opinion, is most of the financial aid need based, merit based or just designed to try and entice a person to attend? maybe its a combination of all three.</p>
<p>all of the fin. aid my son got was merit based. we did not receive any need based aid. UM is good at giving merit aid based on GPA, test scores and class rank. I think UM is extremely generous with merit aid;my son got a better package than we expected. I believe they give a lot of merit aid to entice good students to attend. It worked for us.</p>
<p>thanks ndd. we are in the same boat. so hopefully my son can get some merit based scholarship money. 50% sounds awesome. how does your son like um so far?</p>
<p>He has had mixed feelings. It was a big transition for him, as altho we are American, we live overseas, and this is his first time living in USA. But, for the most part he is happy. He loves his classes, had no problem there. He really likes the friends he has made. He doesnt have any severe complaints about the dorm or dorm life. He is BORED of the food and says the staff in the dining hall are very rude. He is not into clubbing at all, and he says that there are many people drinking and partying heavily. He doesnt go to the clubs, but has managed to have a really good time socially with friends of his own ilk. For the most part he is enjoying himself and likes it. He does not like the many many rich spoiled brats, as he is not rich and well, spoiled, but not too badly. He says there are many rich kids that dont have any social conscience, but he eschews these kids and is comfortable with his own little social scene. As far as a parent, i must agree with all the other parents who have positive things to say about the school. I am very happy with the school and all it offers. I have only had positive expereinces with all staff there ranging from medical to financial to dorm life. I am, at this writing, happy he is there and feel, at this writing, that it is worth the money. I think my son went thru the very normal transitional stage of homesickneess coloring his first impressions. he really missed his home, but now realizes that he is on a new path and I think he will, i hope he will be more embracing of all UM offers during his second semester. Oh, he also was part of the miami committment program which is a work study program for kids who dont qualify for work study grants. he worked about 6 hours a week. He liked the peopek he worked with and he worked in the dept he is majoring in , but he said the work was a bit tedious--he is stil lin the program and will be changing jobs, so I do recommmend your son applying for the committment program, it keeps the kids busy as they do have a lot of free time. Hope this helps. let us know what you decide. i was doing just this kind of questioning last year,as my son could have gone to FSU for free and i just needed to ask lots of questions about UM casue it is so expensive. But i dont have any regrets, sometimes a few tinges, cause you never know if you really sent your kid to the best college for his/her needs. right now i feel pretty good about the school and so does my son.</p>
<p>thanks for all that honest input. it helps. we also are not "rich". the high school my son goes to is a large public high school (close to 5,000 students) and very well balanced between all sorts of kids. we will make another visit to the school in the spring. when we went last summer, obviously it was difficult to get a good handle on the campus with so few students there.</p>
<p>my son graduated from a HS that had 500 kids in it. his graduating class had 51.He was number 10 in a class of 51 and he still got a great scholarship at UM. I will let you know how 2nd semester goes for him; i totally understand what you are going thru. What other schools are you considering. I really wanted my kid to go to a small LAC like Bard, which he got accepted to, but all the scholarship money came from Florida schools as we are residents there. Bard gave him a scholarship but very very little compared to UM. We did not have the "privilege" to see schools during the actual school year as we were overseas, and went to visit UM in the summer when few studetns were around. But the summer impression was very similar to the school in full swing. It is a gorgeous campus and easy to get around and people seem friendly enough. My son never complains about not having a car, his friends have cars so maybe that is why, but he never complains about stuff like that. OK, good luck, let us know how it turns out.</p>
<p>The "rich" kids may be very visable, but don't dispare...there are a LOT of kids at UM that are on scholarship's and are not rich. My not-rich son was one. He was from a small rural midwestern high school (300 kids in HS...79 in his graduating class). It was an adjustment, but he loved UM. He was on 1/2 scholarship. His girfriend (class of 06) was also on scholarship and FL bright futures.......</p>
<p>Just because someone has a significant scholarship(s) does NOT mean that they are not rich. In fact, most wealthy people view scholarships as a prestige and not financial aid. So just because you meet someone on campus that is on scholarship does not mean that they are not upper class.</p>
<p>A really good friend of mine at campus has a dad who's a successful ob/gyn in Chicago.... and he obviously has a ton of money to blow, however he's on the 100% scholarship plus additional scholarships that were awarded at his high school........</p>
<p>I haven't heard anything about need based aid here?? Is UM stingy when it comes to need based aid??</p>