Keep in mind that any scholarship awards used for room, board and living expenses are taxable (at the parents’ rate for undergrad and student’s rate for grad school).
@musicdm I apologize for taking so long to respond. I’ve been traveling a lot and haven’t logged in for awhile. He was offered close to full tuition but he applied for the contemporary music program (graduate program) which may operate differently.
@dbandmom sent you a PM. Help, please.
“vistajay but you do have to tell us after it’s over if you were right”
@NYsaxmom , of course I was right.
@vistajay, LOL!
For those interested in the west coast, Arizona State University was pretty generous. My daughter barely squeezed iin under their academic requirements (music classes weren’t part of the GPA, sigh) and they still offered her a small merit scholarship that stacked with a talent scholarship. This brought the overall cost for the out of state school to around the cost of our in-state UCs. I suspect they know what they are doing with aid and trying to lure CA residents to Arizona with just enough aid to make it competitive. However, for a student with stronger academics, I suspect they would become a very good financial bargain.
I also thought it was one of the stronger and more comprehensive programs that she toured. We all came away very impressed. However, she was just not ready to move that far away from home.
The New School came through at the 11th hour after we appealed D’s initial appeal. She ended up with a scholarship worth 75% tuition so we are very happy.
That’s amazing @spartandrew! See you around the city next year! 
Wow @SpartanDrew ! That’s fantastic! I love watching these stories unfold. Congratulations!
Yes!!!
In reading the threads about awards, it appears the results are all over the place and depend on the program applied to; the specific academic and musical talents of your kid and the award policies of each school (which are subject to change). So, I would be reluctant to advise anyone to steer their kid away from schools which look like a good fit for them except for the money.
I would advise them to suggest their kid develop a list of schools which included good fit schools in the affordable range (as safety schools), let them apply and see what happens. Kids do that all the time. They apply hoping they get enough aid to make it work. If they don’t, they strike the school off the list and move on. The only cost to find out is the application fee and your kid’s time to complete it.
Good advice, with one caveat: the audition process is much more arduous than filling out an application, but no money is awarded without an audition (and in many cases, a prescreen as well).
If that were only true! My son only applied to six schools and I can honestly say that we spent more money on the application process – that’s application fees, pre-screen expenses, sample lessons, traveling for auditions – than what his first year tuition ended up costing.
Still, I don’t think that the message is to not apply to financial reaches. I think, though, that despite SpartanDrew’s experience, it’s unwise to count on your child getting a merit scholarship award that far exceeds the school’s “average” that is indicated in their cost-of-attendance calculator tools. If finances are going to limit where your child can accept, I think you really need to encourage and help your children search for and apply to schools where they would be happy to attend that you’re confident in being able to afford.
IMO, it’s heartbreaking to see kids facing the reality that the only place they can afford are the schools they applied only as a financial safety without any interest in attending. I’m convinced that there’s an affordable music school that’s a good match for everyone, and it may not be your local state school.
I agree with @ScreenName48105. D applied to 8 schools, 3 of which were giant financial reaches but one of which (Frost) we had a pretty good feeling she would get good money and we were right. NEC and New School were also giant financial reaches and both notoriously stingy with merit aid. Had someone told me last fall that D would be getting merit money to the tune of 75% tuition at TNS and she would end up there I would never have believed it. And D’s very very talented jazz guitarist friend was offered one third of what D got so you really can’t base merit money on anything other than that individual kid and what the school needs at that particular time. NEC was very true to what we expected with merit money, even less so in fact. But that was for D, I know of other jazz kids (instrumentalists) who were offered quite a bit more there so you never know. It’s a gamble in every possible sense in that you have to spend the money on prescreens, audition travel, etc to get the end result. Oddly enough, some schools gave far more generous merit awards to jazz vocalists than instrumentalists on average and then other schools were the complete opposite.
The appeal process was a brand new concept to us. We only heard about it towards the end of audition season and I’m glad we did because New School wouldn’t even have been an option for D without the appeals. We really weighed out the gamble of appealing different schools and at first we thought we would appeal to NEC but in conversations with admissions we discovered that the max they would likely increase was 5K which wouldn’t be enough. So D declined that offer. D spent some time with another jazz vocalist at New School who told her that she went back and appealed 3 times to increase her award there! We had no idea that “appealing an appeal” was a thing but when we met with admissions they guided us through the process and the end result made it happen. I also know of JV kids that appealed at Frost successfully too so you just never know. And TNS suggests to the kids to appeal every year to try to increase their merit awards again so D certainly will.
Frost was solidly D’s second choice (since NEC was off the table) and we felt that if the appeal hadn’t come through at New School she would have declined there and tried for more money at Frost. If more money didn’t happen, she was offered enough to go so would have committed anyway. The rest of the choices were ranked and affordable with good merit money down to low merit money. The offers were all over the place, again depending on the school, what they needed and what their funds were like.
So the bottom line is, cast the net wide if you can. We were very happy to have one early decision admission in the bag by December so D had a safety net with a school where she would have been very happy to attend. But it all worked out in the end, which ironically everyone who has walked this path before us said it would. LOL. D is ecstatic about heading to New York at a price we can afford. That would never have happened had she not taken the gamble and applied.
Best of luck to all of you embarking on this crazy ride next year!