<p>My daughter and I are having a discussion about schools that are "no loan" and award grants based on need only. I say that they will give better grants for students that they want. For example, a student with stats at the very top of the admitted class may get a better financial aid package than a student with stats toward the bottom. Of course, they can use financial aid for other categories depending on the goals of the institution. She says that they use the same financial aid formula for all admitted students. Who is right?</p>
<p>As you’ll find in a lot of cases, there is no universal rule. Some schools do give fewer loans to the students they like more; some schools don’t consider anything at all but demonstrated financial need.</p>
<p>In many cases, schools in this category will fund the students that they really want, and admit but not fund those students that are nearer the bottom of those admitted. So yes, you can get into this kind of place on your merits, but not receive any aid at all even though you have demonstrated need. And, normally if there is no aid the first year, there won’t be any in following years. This practice is called “Admit-Deny”.</p>
<p>If money is an issue for your family, and your daughter has good stats, she needs to “cast a wide net” in order to optimize her possibilities next spring.</p>
<p>Wishing you all the best.</p>
<p>Read this article. It talks about how one college makes decisions. As others have pointed out, it depends. Two students with the same EFC can get very different aid packages. Some may have grants guaranteed for 4 years, others may have scholarships that you need to reapply every year.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/cracking-the-financial-aid-code.html]Kiplinger.com[/url”>Cracking the Financial Aid Code | Kiplinger]Kiplinger.com[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Thanks happymom, she has already applied, casted a wide net, and been accepted to several LACs that promise to meet full financial need without loans. Just trying to figure out why the financial aid packages vary by as much as 18K for the first year. Her stats are generally at the top for all the schools she applied, more so at the schools giving her less favorable packages.</p>
<p>If a school (like Harvard) promises to meet 100% of need without loans, then the stats won’t matter. However, high stats are needed to get accepted, right? </p>
<p>Simply the promise of meeting 100% need without loans means that they can’t “short” a student whose stats are a bit lower than another child’s. I guess the only way a school <em>could</em> do that would be for such a school to dishonestly claim that the student has less need and then only meet that “less need.” I don’t think that schools like Harvard do THAT. It would be hard to claim that a student with lower Harvard stats and an income of - say - $50k doesn’t have full need according to Harvard’s formula. </p>
<p>However, at a school that says it meets need (but includes loans), or a school that doesn’t meet need, then having high stats is a very good thing. Modest or lower stats kids will likely get the worst FA packages unless they offer something else to the school - URM status, from an unusual state, etc. </p>
<p>Most schools fall under the categories of not meeting need or meeting need with big loans. So, for most schools, you are right. But, for schools that promise to meet 100% of need without loans, then your D is more right.</p>
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Uh. I know of ZERO schools that are both no-loans and do not meet full need. That would be an absurd reversal of priorities. I think you misunderstood the “category” referred to by the OP.</p>
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We’re talking about schools like Swarthmore, Williams, Haverford, right? All promise (at least for this year’s admits) to meet full need with no loans. The only reason I can see for such a huge gap is a family financial circumstance that is interpreted differently by different formulas, or an extenuating circumstance that was accepted for “professional judgment” by some schools but not others. Common triggers of such: self-employment, high home equity, significant non-cash assets other than primary home, medical expenses, mid-year income change, basic support of extended family members, divorced/separated parents/stepparents, significant outside scholarships. Do any of these circumstances apply to you?</p>
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<p>I think there could be 2 things involved. The first is what you talked about when a school offers more FA to a student they really want to attend, commonly referred to as “preferred packaging”. This can be due to academics, sports, URM, etc., anything that a school deems desirable. But like you say, this doesn’t seem to explain your Ds situation since she’s at about the same level for all of the schools.</p>
<p>The second factor is that although Profile schools all get the same financial numbers for a student, their FA policies are different. Some may cap home equity or assets, or have other policies that affect their financial calculations used to determine your need. Since my D1 was a transfer student, we have gone through the FA process twice when we have been able to compare offers from different schools. We had differences of up to about 15-20k/yr between schools. Even between the most selective schools in the country, there can be a steep difference in FA offers, particularly for families in the 100-200k/yr range where a handfull of colleges launched new initiatives a few years ago.</p>
<p>Yes Keil, those are the schools I’m referring to. I am self-employed and “income” in that situation is often up to interpretation. In our situation, it seems that half interpreted income one way and half the other way.</p>
<p>^That would be the issue then–self-employment income is notoriously complicated to predict when it comes to FA.</p>
<p>There is indeed a huge difference between how Profile schools calculate need. In our case, there was a difference of over $20K in the need-based offers my son received from the schools that accepted him (one Ivy and a few top LACs). And I am not self-employed. The lesson I have taken from this, is to take with a grain of salt any claims of “no loan” and “we meet 100% of demonstrated need” and simply cast a wide net and see what comes in. I don’t think there’s any way of predicting which school will give you the best offer.</p>
<p>Keilexandra - thanks for catching me on that one. I was focused on the title of the thread more than on the specific “no loans” point.</p>
<p>OP - A couple of years ago, I saw what one parent wrote about the financial aid officers from eight or ten colleges/universities on a different website. Each school’s package was different from the next, and the difference between the least favorable package and the most favorable one (all admits and with some kind of aid) was well over 20k. Even “peer” institutions produced aid that was that different from each other. I’ve lost the link or I would post it here. What I learned from that was that there is no perfectly reliable way to predict the aid you might get.</p>