In this article, Dave Berry breaks down the top five most affordable colleges for low-income students. Which private schools have offered generous packages to you or your students? https://www.collegeconfidential.com/articles/most-affordable-private-colleges-for-low-income-families/
Really? Come on! Four of the five colleges are extremely competitive for admissions…so it’s not like any low income student is going to apply, get accepted and be able to get their generous financial aid.
The fifth school is Berea, which has a very small enrollment and is a work college. Yes, if accepted it will be affordable, but it’s not exactly a traditional college in terms of enrollment…and you must be low income to be considered for admission.
Frankly, I think this article is…well…not particularly good. It doesn’t give REALISTIC affordable options for low income students…and that is what many need.
@thumper1 I am not arguing for the article, but I will say that the most selective schools are the best option for low income students. Realistically, if they’re an average student there are likely no affordable options outside of community college- or a state school they’re close enough to commute to (and not always even then).
I don’t agree. Unless the student has a $0 family contribution, a low income family will be out of luck even at these very generous schools. You can be low income at some of these schools and still be expected to contribute something…and some low income families can’t contribute…at all. They have family expenses that come first.
The SUNY and CUNY schools can be affordable for instate students who are low income AND can continue to live at home!
The selective schools are good reaches for low income students but you have to get in to get the financial aid. Yeah, Harvard FinnAid is very generous, but look at the accept rates.
The real challenge for every applicant who wants to go away for school and has financial constraints is finding that safety school that will accept-the applicant and cost no more than the student and family can afford. Sometimes there is no such school, and college means taking courses on line or at local college, maybe community college, sometimes one course at a time. If test scores and grades are not high, those are the only options for someone who can’t afford the cost of college.
My state, NY, has managed to come up with an award to cover most of state tuition for kids from family’s under a certain income. Still doesn’t cover kids who have to work— and part time is all, and certainly does not pay for the pricey room and board most SUNYs charge. Also, kids whose parents won’t give financial info , or who can but won’t pay are stuck. But it’s better than what a lot of states have to offer.
That list would make me despair…
Northeastern offered my daughter 31k per year as a National Hispanic Scholar.
@LMK5 but that $31k award would still leave you with an almost $40,000 a year balance at NEU…and that is not affordable for low income students.
The contribution my daughter has to come up with is work study and summer work. There is a very minimal family contribution that we actually can not afford, but it is under the subsidized loan amount so my D will go that route (there were no loans in her package, only grants). Her selective school was far and away the most affordable even with very generous merit from less selective schools.
deleted because misread the topic.
You should look at colleges with big endowments, usually they offer generous financial aid programs.
My daughter will attend Amherst College, in large part due to its extremely generous financial aid policy. For her freshman year, at least, her financial aid portal bill is =$1,000.
She applied to one state public school, one state private school, and then highly selective out-of-state private schools who pledged to meet demonstrated need without loans. At these schools she would need to provide student contributions like summer work or work study (or take out loans to offset her contribution.)
She is attending the cheapest school that admitted her that offers her major.
@thumper1 that’s true. I just thought the OP was asking who got a generous private school aid offer. With Northeastern’s package it still would have been about 6k per year more than UCs, so my daughter will be attending Berkeley.
The five schools discussed in the article are: Duke, Harvard, Stanford, Berea & Princeton.
Interesting that the schools with the most generous financial aid, such as Harvard, Princeton, Stanford & Duke, are also the schools for which many would be most willing to borrow funds in order to attend.
Emory offers amazing financial aid. The best schools for FA are the most competitive and low income, very smart kids can get great packages.
Pet peeve: discussions about average net price that don’t bother to mention the much more important next step, running the Net Price Calculator on each college’s website before making assumptions about financial aid. I didn’t see the NPC mentioned in the article or in the cited report. It may seem amazing to those in the college consulting industry, but kids (of all income levels) are often unaware that NPCs exist. Those who wish to be informative would do well to spread the word when discussing the topic of costs and financial aid.
This article seems to be the equivalent of saying that the best way for lower-income individuals to improve their financial status is to win a lottery.
Even the highest performing students have, at best, a small chance of admissions to these ultra-selective schools – and students coming from lower or moderate income families have the odds stacked against them to even qualify for admission in the first place. (They are likely to be attending poorer performing public high schools with fewer resources, less likely to have funds or resources to participate in the sort of EC’s that colleges value, less likely to have meaningful support and advice early that would lead them to develop the sorts of profiles that the mega-selective colleges are looking for.).
A realistic option for affording college needs to be target schools where admission is highly likely. It’s nice to know that if a student does get admitted, a particular college will likely be affordable – but not much help to the vast majority of students who don’t get admitted — particularly the many who don’t even show up in the admissions stats because they recognize they don’t stand a reasonable chance of admission and don’t apply in the first place.