<p>tokenadult, I'd be happy to post specifics without the school names, but that probably wouldn't be helpful to you then would it?</p>
<p>goonymom, I agree with your entire post. If something does not change we will have less educated citizens, IMO. I think that everyone but the rich will be squeezed out.</p>
<p>goonymom: My feelings exactly about what you posted! My D has received 2 FA packages (still waiting on 1). One from a small, private out of state college, one from one of our state schools. The bottom line, counting the same loan (Subsidized Stafford) was the same! Then I added in trasnportation costs, so the out of state looks to be $1000 more. The state school met our need, but with 2 more loans. The bottom line figures for both schools are still 2 1/2 times our EFC as calculated by FAFSA. Fortunately, we have a grandparent owned 529 fund that will cover hopefully 2 years! </p>
<p>My oldest D is in her second year of college, we have not gotten her package for next year. I currently supplement her workstudy job with food money (she uses the job for books). I have noticed that with the increase in food, heating oil and gas prices that it is increasingly harder to have the extra money to send her. I really think that the economy is having a major effect on people's ability to pay for everyday things, so when we see these huge gaps between EFC and what we are expected to pay, we choke!</p>
<p>Well, going back to a list I saw online,</p>
<p>1 Harvard University (MA)
2 Princeton University (NJ)
3 Yale University (CT)
4 California Institute of Technology
5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6 Stanford University (CA)
7 Dartmouth College (NH)
8 Columbia University (NY)
9 University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill *
10 Duke University (NC)
11 Vanderbilt University (TN)
12 University of Chicago
13 Rice University (TX)
14 University of Pennsylvania
15 Brown University (RI)
16 University of Virginia *
17 Emory University (GA)
18 Washington University in St. Louis
19 Cornell University (NY)
20 University of Notre Dame (IN)
21 Northwestern University (IL)
22 Case Western Reserve University (OH)
23 Texas A and M University--College Station *
24 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (NY)
25 Johns Hopkins University (MD)</p>
<p>can we count on all these colleges meeting the full financial need of an admitted student? In other words, this year, in the real world, does a family with an EFC of X have to pay X + $5000 or 2(X) or even X + $20000 just to attend a college on this list? If you have an offer from one of those colleges that "gaps" you substantially, it would help to know that the specific case can be like that even though the college is on a list of colleges with good financial aid. </p>
<p>Best wishes to all of you figuring out which set of trade-offs makes sense this year among the offers you have received from various colleges.</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins
EFC: 44,000
COA: 53,278
Offers: 6000 loans</p>
<p>UCSD
nada</p>
<p>How does CSS do their calculations? I'm upset because we have been saving for our child. We have a 529 college savings account for our daughter that didn't really go anywhere, and have saved a grand total of $7306. There is no way we can afford the expected family contribution. </p>
<p>We live in San Diego. 17 years ago we lived on rice and beans for 2 years to purchase our home for $250K in middle class neighborhood. </p>
<p>Our house is now worth $500k, market value.
My dh has 154K income before taxes, but our prop. taxes and cost of living are ridiculous.<br>
Until 2 weeks ago, I drove a 12 year old van with 200K miles. Van just died. My husband drove a 1999 car. Now we're sharing car.
I don't wear or have expensive jewelry or clothing.<br>
My mom lives in the Barrio and her small house is worth $250k.<br>
I know you can hear violins in the background but we have 2 more children coming up, with useless 529 plans.<br>
Did I mention we're Mexican-American? DD is top 10% of class. Doesn't qualify for most Hispanic scholarships because of our income. Has applied for 15 scholarships, but no rewards. What else do you have to do. My blood doesn't sell well around here-diabetic and hypertensive.</p>
<p>Token..the schools you list all use institutional methodology and THEY compute your family contribution and sometimes in different ways. As stated before, colleges using their own funds (institutional funds) can use the info on the FAFSA and Profile ANY WAY THEY CHOOSE...it's their money they are dispersing. Folks here will tell you that even at "full need met" schools, financial aid awards can very by thousands of dollars. Plus you then factor in that some schools have loans and some don't. Some schools count home equity and some don't (and they all use different %ages of home equity). Some schools consider other assets too (look at the supplemental questions on the Profile). Bottom line is the SCHOOL determines your financial need for institutional money. And what they determine varies.</p>
<p>Second bottom line...even if you receive the maximum amount of federal money...(your EFC is 0), the amount you receive will NOT fully fund a year of college except at a community college with you living at home.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>How does CSS do their calculations?>></p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>CSS Profile does NOT do the calculations. It gathers the information and sends it off to the colleges. The colleges do the calculations.</p>
<p>When I first got on CC, I was one of those naive people that thought merit and need awards were independent. However, after pouring over the posts of Thumper, Sybbie, NEMom, Cheva, and rest of the frequent FA contributors, I knew what to expect coming in. Schools take all aid into account when putting together the package. It some cases the merit award didn't make that much difference, because it would be close to the amount of the need based award if there was no merit. If you think about it, this makes sense. They still calculate what THEY think you should be able to afford and whether that is met by merit or need is not that important to them. I've love to be able to say DD your hard work paid off and we got a steep discount due to academics and need, but you typically don't get to double dip and the schools allocate the cash to the next person in line. </p>
<p>The real issue is the continuing escalating costs that don't make it "uncomfortable" to afford but rather "impossible". I have potentially six to get through college. I can take out loans and survive the first two, but I fear that there will be nothing left for the third and after and they will have less choices. No savings left, paying off loans for the first two, and an income too high to receive much if any need. The process is really a snap shot of where you are at that point of time, but we as parents have to predict where we will be financially years from now. It is a tricky proposition.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I've also seen posts saying if you don't have enough money to get into the 'top tier' schools, apply to your state school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No, I have never said that because I can tell you first hand that it was and is less expensive for my child to attend an Ivy that it was for her to attend our state university. I did use the cost of paying full freight at our State U as a benchmark for what I was willing to pay for college, because had she attended our state U, we would have been full freight payers.</p>
<p>However, this does not negate the fact that when we are talking to our children about taking a bottoms up approach in making sure that they have a combination of reach, match and sure bet/ safety schools, that they include a true safety; a school that if accepted they will be happy to attend that is also a financially feasible option for their family.</p>
<p>I have also noticed that there is also so much more FA information now available (and there was a pretty good amount available then) than it was why I was going through the process with my child (now a senior), In addition almost evrey elite school has kicked in a low/middle income initiative and has reduced loans over the past 4 years. I can also tell you that it takes time to wade through the information, so the sooner you do it the better (IMHO, senior year is too late to try to absorb it all).</p>
<p>I think sometimes we fall down because we know that our kids have worked hard, gotten great grades and have done everything "right" and we think that when the process plays it self out that they will be accepted to some amazing schools and the money will also come. I know it has to be very hurtful to have to tell your child that your family cannot afford to take on the cost of this school. </p>
<p>For those of you who have not gone through the process, yet, I would recommend searching the parents forum for post by curmudgeon, who has a very smart scholar athlete kid but knew that he was caught between a rock and a hard place; "too rich" for need based aid but "too poor" to pay full freight. Curm for 2 years searched every opportunity to find a school where his child would be in the running for great merit aid (in the end his D turned down Amherst & Yale for full freight and other perks at Rhodes and is doing beautifully).</p>
<p>Best FA packages:
Dickinson
Gettysburg
Wash U
Case (provisional award)
U Rochester</p>
<p>Disappointing packages:
Miami Ohio
UVM
Marquette
expecting U Delaware to be bad too</p>
<p>Sybbie, I didn't mean to imply that I thought YOU had posted about applying to the state schools, but I have seen that type of comment posted a number of times.</p>
<p>In my personal experience, it was MUCH cheaper to go to the private school than it would have been to go to the local state school. That has proved true for my child as well, except not the <em>much</em> part. My child has known right along that finances will play a huge part, and she's definitely weeding out colleges that are LEAST affordable. However, all of them are going to stretch our resources, and that's where <em>I</em> have to really make some decisions about how much debt I'm willing to take on for my children, and how much they will have to take on. </p>
<p>I have found your posts very informative, and I read the link someone posted to the long paper on the college board website, but again, I think until you have firm numbers to apply to your own individual situation, it's very hard to wrap your head around the calculators and theories and statistics.</p>
<p>MY EFC is 13k and BU offered me 16,500....how do they expect me to pay more than double my EFC??</p>
<p>I am one of those parents who started researching financial aid options early. Like Curmudgeon was, I am afraid of my high-achieving D falling through the cracks when it comes to financial aid. Together we have come up with a few good options, but I'm still working on it (D is a hs sophomore, so I have a little more time). She really isn't excited about any of our state schools which would be the financial safeties (although as Sybbie pointed out, it may cost less to send her to a private since our state schools are not generous with their aid packages). </p>
<p>Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks to everybody for posting their information - I'm finding it all very helpful. Realistically, I do not want to saddle either my D or myself with too many loans - I just can't see the sense in that, even for a dream school. At least now I know that schools may include loans when they say they meet 100% of a student's demonstrated need and I can look into which schools are less likely to include loans as part of the package - at least when it comes to crazy loan amounts.</p>
<p>
[quote]
MY EFC is 13k and BU offered me 16,500....how do they expect me to pay more than double my EFC??
[/quote]
</p>
<p>BU is pretty straight up regarding their financial aid policy.</p>
<p>they state:</p>
<p>
[quote]
</p>
<p>Boston University recognizes academic excellence. We consider academic performance when awarding University need-based grant, and offer a wide variety of merit awards, some of which cover full tuition.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>In addition they tell you the probability of receiving scholarships/need based grants (click on the link)</p>
<p>Boston</a> University - Office of Financial Assistance - Applying for Financial Aid</p>
<p>when looking at the table, do you think that your grades GPA were aligned with the amount of $$ you received from BU?</p>
<p>I have a 3.27 UW, hardest course load (7 APs and the rest Honors), and a 33 ACT score...and since my EFC is 13,000 and cost to attend BU is 49,000...Estimated need is 49-13 = 36,000...and according to that table I should get at least 30,000 in aid if not more...I don't know what went wrong...</p>
<p>Even though I expected it Rose Hulman's package was disappointing. Our EFC is $11,000. They expected us to pay $15,000 and gave our D $10,000 worth of loans. We received other packages that have more grants and less loans for our D. I had hoped that RHIT would be more in line with other schools but it's too heavy on loans and she will accept another offer.</p>
<p>Tokenadult asks: "What I'm especially looking for are colleges that "gap" in their need-based financial aid, or that imply they have lots of "merit" scholarships but don't always award those even to very high-academic students."</p>
<p>We don't have all the data in at my house, but I suspect this year for merit money is very different than years past, because of the demographics and heavy competition. And I suspect the overall picture on this thread won't emerge for awhile. Some of the schools getting hated right now might not be the worst -- they just might be the earliest.</p>
<p>I think -- and hope -- the merit money will remain quite fluid, with multiple offers in hand for some top top students. Many schools imply they have lots of "merit" scholarships and use them to increase cultural and geographic diversity and compete at the moment for the top 1-percenter students. When those students turn down some offers, what will happen to that merit money? Have the accountants already figured out that "actuarial nightmare?"</p>
<p>The process is not over, and won't be until those top 1-percent students make their commitments. Will there be "trickle down" then? We'll see.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I suspect the overall picture on this thread won't emerge for awhile.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think that's right. This discussion will have to continue for a while to take into account the colleges that haven't announced any offers yet this year.</p>
<p>Question dear moderator:
I haven't seen a thread yet that explores the admit and merit award successes based on gender. I know it's off-topic for this thread, and I don't mean to be divisive, but the kids (especially the girls) are talking about it at school when they compare results.
Would a separate thread exploring that question be fruitful in terms of trying to determine facts? Or does it just have to wait until statistics are released by the schools later?</p>
<p>I will weigh in on the public instate university issue. IF your EFC is in excess of the cost of attendance at most private schools, and you do not receive merit aid (from those privates that DO offer it), your in state public university will be your best bet financially. The reality is that if your EFC is in the $40,000 range (and with two parents working in professional jobs, that is not an unrealistic amount), you aren't going to get huge aid at the private schools either. For families with more modest incomes and lower EFC's, it is very possible that the need based aid provided by the privates will bring their cost down to the same amount or less than these folks would be paying out of pocket to attend the public U. Public U's don't have a lot of their own institutional money (in most cases). </p>
<p>So...if your EFC is very high, and your instate U costs in the $18K-$20K range, it might well turn out to be your financial safety.</p>
<p>If your EFC is lower, and your income and assets are also in a lower range, the private universities that meet a high percentage of need could cost you less than a public university.</p>
<p>The key here is you need to know the %age of aid the private school will meet. If it's less than 100%, all bets are off...or as they say YMMV.</p>