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jocelynDAD
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Posted: Wed Apr 2nd, 2008 04:40 pm |
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Our D3 had submitted 16 applications for the Class of 2012. This was a bit of 'overkill', but her stats while fine were not particularly noteworthy in the context of college admissions - especially in this year of high anticipated student competition.
She was accepted at all 16! 
Nine gave her a Merit Scholarship with their acceptance. A tenth school gave her an award for Diversity.
Her stats are: ACT 24, SAT M - 520, V - 560, GPA 3.75 Unweighted. Ec's minor.
She lives in New Jersey and were ancestors are Irish and Japanese.
As the Acceptances came in (most of her schools were EA), she quickly declined six of the schools, as she had acceptances from schools she clearly preferred.
The six she declined had offered her Merit awards as follows:
$12,500 (two schools); $11, 500; $11,000; $8,000 (two schools).
Fourteen of her schools were LAC's located in Maryland (2), Penna (3), Indiana (1), Ohio (1), Minnesota (2), Wisconsin (1), Kentucky (1) and Illinois (3). The other two were small universities in Ohio and Indiana.
She received Financial Aid packages from the other ten schools. I would be happy to answer any direct question about any individual school via PM and will not mention names of the schools on this forum.
Direct Cost Indirect cost Total cost - Grants/Scholarship Work study Sub/loans
$37,000 $2,000 $39,000 $18,000 0 0
$39,000 $2,000 $41,000 $13,595 0 0
$40,500 $2,000 $42,500 $14,700 0 $3,500
$38,600 $2,000 $40,600 $16,000 $2,000 $5,000
$38,000 $2,000 $40,000 $10,875 $1,500 $1,298
$36,000 $2,000 $38,000 $18,500 $2,000 $3,500
$39,000 $2,000 $41,000 $13,300 $1,500 $4,000
$40,000 $2,000 $42,000 $10,300 $2,300 $3,500
$40,000 $2,000 $42,000 $15,063 0 $2,000
$42,000 $2,000 $44,000 $23,000 $1,800 0
Note: All of these ten schools are LAC's. The Indirect costs are arbitiary (books, travel, etc and might vary as to the place, but for our analysis - I keep it steady. Most of these schools estimated (for aid purposes) the indirect costs as being around $1,800.
As you can read, each school gave D3 a different FA package. All loans noted are one where the interest would be deferred until after our D3 graduated.
The FA packages (as viewed by the colleges ranged from $16,100 to $24, 800. The true aid (Grants/scholarships) ranged from $10,300 to $23,000.
Someone might want to know the EFC, but frankly it does not matter what the EFC number is, because they all had the same number to work from. Two of these school used the Profile as well and the variance was from $13, 673 to $24,800 overall and in Grants/scholarships from $10,875 to $23,000.
Some of these schools asked for Income tax records, had their own FA form etc.
So to those looking at the Class of 2013, if you are comtemplating receiving Financial Aid for your child - be aware that in this area, nothing should be taken for granted IMO. You cannot predict and should not depend on receiving any certain amount of aid, particularly in the areas of Grants/Scholarships or that your "Need" would be met at the level of your EFC. 
Last edited on Wed Apr 2nd, 2008 04:41 pm by jocelynDAD
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hummingbird
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Posted: Wed Apr 2nd, 2008 04:51 pm |
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| Wow, DAD, that's impressive! How did you and/or your daughter go about putting together an initial list of schools? Did she plug her stats into a matchmaker (like College Board)? Was climate or distance from home a factor?
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jocelynDAD
Member
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Posted: Wed Apr 2nd, 2008 05:03 pm |
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D3 is our 7th and youngest child going off to college. The genesis of her list of schools started back in 1979 when her oldest brother was a Junior in college. Many a school has been visited over those years. SOme schools, particularly those in the Midwest were suggested by her older brothers and sister who all now live in Chicago. Efforts by a brother who lived in Houston for about 10 years to include Rice (an excellent school) fell on deaf ears. 
Obviously Loren Pope books (which I first read in the mid-80ths) and the CACI sessions were a source, having older siblings who went to school in Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, Penna, Texas, and Utah gave our youngest a broader spectrum to apply in her quest. All were New Jerseyans, but none wanted to stay in-state for college and only one returned to New Jersey after college.
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Northeastmom
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Posted: Thu Apr 3rd, 2008 02:34 am |
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| Jocelyndad, Wow! Thank you for posting. I know that it was time consuming to get all of this typed out. Congratulations to you and to your D! She did very nicely and has oodles of choices!
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RMmom
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Posted: Thu Apr 3rd, 2008 02:34 pm |
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JD, you seem pretty savvy about the whole process (after 7 kids I probably would be too). Without revealing too much personal info, I'm trying to figure out the family income threshhold for financial aid. While H's job is stable and salaried, I work almost completely on commission. After doing our taxes this year, I realized that my earnings may push us over some artificial income threshhold for financial aid. Only I can't figure out what that number is.
D is a sophomore, so I assume our earnings for 2008 and 2009 will be the primary determinant of FA. I can cut back my work somewhat if it will keep our income under the necessary threshhold.
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DesperateDad
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Posted: Thu Apr 3rd, 2008 03:24 pm |
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RMmom:
Leftcoast is extremely knowledgeable about finaid, so you might send her a pm. But, as far as I know, a good rule of thumb is that approx. 46 cents of every additional dollar earned by parental units goes to reduce efc, at least for Profile schools.
Each college is different on how they account for personal businesses (Schedule C), but I found the calculator on Collegeboard a pretty good tool to play 'what-ifs'.
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outwest
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Posted: Fri Apr 4th, 2008 12:29 am |
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Last edited on Fri Apr 4th, 2008 07:10 am by outwest
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Sat Apr 5th, 2008 09:54 pm |
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| So, JD, which school is your daughter leaning towards?
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jocelynDAD
Member
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Posted: Thu Apr 17th, 2008 04:46 pm |
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Carolyn:
After narrowing it down to St Olaf and Illinois Wesleyan, we visited both over last weekend. She loved both for different and similar reasons, but the social scene at Illinois Wesleyan tipped the scales and she will be a Titan. 
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Consolation
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Posted: Fri Apr 18th, 2008 07:36 pm |
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I thought I would offer our experience with FA also, in case it is helpful to others. S was accepted at 6 schools, 5 of which claim to meet 100% of need. I'm lumping the tuition/room&board costs together with books, misc, and travel, but I'm listing the gap between FA and cost, and the school's stated expectation of who will fill it.
In evaluating the figures below, note that the FAFSA EFC was under $5,000.
[Edit:The Amherst calculator came out at about the same figure. The wild card appears to be how the school treats assets, including home equity and assets in the child's name. The latter is the reason why the student's contribution is so high in one case, and probably contributes at least $4K or so to the apparent "gap" in other cases. Most of these funds aren't available to the student until after he graduates, but some schools expect him to find a way to borrow against the trust. (I'm not saying that this is unreasonable, just reporting. Something else you sould be aware of is that if the funds are invested in an irrevocable trust, the school may value it once at the beginning. If the market tanks, you are still on the hook for the $$. If the market shoots upward, you are lucky.) For anyone looking for really good FA, the school that offered the most money was Pomona. I'll let you know how our appeals do.  ]
[Edit after appeals: the top two show the results of the appeals. The first school gave us approximately $900 more. The second added work study plus some federal grants that resulted in a combined increase of non-loan aid of about $7K. SInce this was the school he had decided to attend, we are very happy! I'm also not displeased with their shifting more of the expected contribution to S!  He needs to feel more financial responsibility, IMHO.)
Total - Grants/Scholarship Work study Sub/loans Gap Parent/Student
$53,910 $31,625 $2,200 0 $20,085 $12,510/7,595
$50,808 $41,421 $2,097 0 $7,290 $200/7,090
$50,595 $42,797 $1,700 0 $6,098 not specified
$50,570 $28,370** $2,000 0 $20,200 not specified
50,139 $25,925 $2,225 0 $21,989 not specified
$50,550 $4,900 need/ $2,500 0 $33,150 not specified
$10,000 merit
** There is also a merit award of a $3,000 stipend to be used for special study/research/travel at any time during the 4 years, but it is not applied to regular costs.
Last edited on Thu May 1st, 2008 04:08 pm by Consolation
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Mon Apr 21st, 2008 05:07 am |
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| Just a caveat for anyone reading these comparisons -- do not assume that your child's financial aid package will match those of others. Due to a wide range of individual family situations and institutional priorities, even two seemingly "identical" students may end up with different packages from the same college. So, consider this information as just a peak, not a guarantee of what your family may ultimately be offered. It's a useful datapoint, but try not to read too much into it.
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Consolation
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Posted: Mon Apr 21st, 2008 02:11 pm |
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That's very true.
The most valuable thing that people can get from looking at my figures is a sense of how widely variable the FA resuts may be based on a single set of financial facts--and a sense of how far from the EFC they may be, even for someone with a low income and a school that claims to meet 100% of need.
Theoretically, based on several online calculators and with all of the hype about "no loans" and places expecting no contribution from students with incomes under $60K, we should have received offers that required only our S to pay a few thousand per year in earnings and/or work study. That isn't what happened. Perhaps if he had gotten into one of the "no cost below $60K" schools, it would have. But he didin't win that lottery.
When they say they have replaced loans at the U of C, for example, they seem to mean that they have replaced Stafford Loans and other federally-backed loans. They don't mean that they have replaced the expectation that even low income parents will borrow heavily against home equity, with no hope of ever paying it back unless they sell their house.
On the other hand, when you look at the last school on the list, you see the result at a school that doesn't have tremendously deep pockets. Their offer was simply ridiculous, even with a substantial renewing merit scholarship. (And a student way up in the top 25% of their stats.) This shows that dipping down in the rankings does not necessarily result in huge increases in $$. Even if the merit scholarship had been triple the mount--and some kids do get that from that school-- it would have simply put them in the same ballpark as the rest. So if nothing else, I think that our strategy of aiming for 100% need schools was the right one for us and our S.
As Carolyn points out, it might not be for someone else.
Last edited on Mon Apr 21st, 2008 02:28 pm by Consolation
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Lupine
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Posted: Mon Apr 21st, 2008 03:49 pm |
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Consolation and JocelynDad -- thank you so much for posting this information. It was really eye-opening.
I'm worried about the home equity issue because house prices in our area appreciated a tremendous amount, but we can't afford the repayment of any amount of debt close to our home's value -- and I suspect that in the current market, the bank wouldn't let us get anywhere close to that.
I know that a set of schools promises to cap home equity, but it seems that a lot of the strong but not hyper-selective colleges aren't on that list. (I know when we visited Wheaton last fall and I had a chance to speak with the financial aid officer I asked about this directly and was given a very lukewarm answer amounting to "we don't have a policy on that." She made it sound like I was the first parent to have ever even raised the question.)
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outwest
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Posted: Sat Apr 26th, 2008 12:17 am |
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My daughters financial aid packages varied tremendously.
Our efc was 22K, profile 26K. All but one school was in the 40-48K range (Smith was 54K a year -gulp-). All the schools offered a work study and all offered a loan if she wanted it. I have not mentioned those here since they were comparable. She is planning to take the work study for her spending money. Those varied between 2,000 and 3,000 a year.
school one: costs 54K, but offered just 8K grant and loans. This was a top level, supposedly 100% need school, by the way. With an efc of 22/26K they expected us to pay 46K a year? I guess they didn't want her too much. 
school two: offered her a 26K grant making their offer more then our need all in grant plus a plane ticket to visit. This was her best financial offer, but it is subject to change every year.
school three: offered her an 8K renewable merit and an 8K grant - total of 16K which was about right for our efc, if she took the work study, since it was the least expensive school she applied to.
school four: offered a $17,500 4 year renewable merit plus a 5K grant. This was a tremendous deal and a merit school. This was the best offer she recieved and she could have gone with no loans all four years, so I must kindly disagree with Consolation about the merit vs. need schools. The trick is to choose a merit school with a healthy endowment. I was sad when she didn't choose this wonderful school.
school five: offered $18,000 grant. This school also offered a no interest institutional loan, which was different then the others and worth a mention as an option.
As you can see her offers varied widely. I did not include the loans because I do not want her to take any for at least the first two years. If she had chosen school four, even if she had never gotten another grant at all, she could have attended without loans. The school she chose offered such a great package we are going to try to save some of this years saved allotment for future years. We can only cross our fingers that the rest of the years will be good, but their financial aid department assured us they do not offer great packages the first year and so so one te following years. Lets hope that proves true!
All but one school came out less then our instate public universities, but that may be a reflection of where our efc is in comparison to their costs.
Consolation,
I still don't quite understand why Consolationson applied to Pomona, they gave him a tremendous offer and he didn't even bother to look?! Please 'splain. It is just as good a school (some say better) as his final choice two hours from home. I would think going to another part of the country at their expense would be a pretty cool deal to a young person, but maybe I am missing something? Last edited on Sat Apr 26th, 2008 03:28 am by outwest
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Consolation
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Posted: Sat Apr 26th, 2008 11:45 pm |
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outwest wrote: Consolation,
I still don't quite understand why Consolationson applied to Pomona, they gave him a tremendous offer and he didn't even bother to look?! Please 'splain. It is just as good a school (some say better) as his final choice two hours from home. I would think going to another part of the country at their expense would be a pretty cool deal to a young person, but maybe I am missing something? Well, I should explain that applying to Pomona was his parents' idea, not his. He was willing to apply, but he wasn't charged up about it. We wanted him to apply because it is such a great school and we thought he would be geographically desirable, and we thought that he should give something on the West Coast a shot to keep that option open. At that point everything looked like a crap shoot and we were in semi-panic mode after he sent the wrong essay to Bowdoin and all that.
If he has not gotten into two schools that he preferred, I'm sure that he would have been willing to go check it out. He doesn't have anything against it: it has just not captured his imagination. I've pointed out to him that lots of people would give their eyeteeth to go to southern California, to no avail. He is very stubborn. I'm as amazed as you are that he wouldn't even go visit, although he did go to an accepted students event in Massachusetts, which didn't change his mind.
Dartmouth is at least 3 hours from here, btw.
Oh, and we received the results of our appeal at the U of C: an increase in aid of about $900.
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outwest
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Posted: Sun Apr 27th, 2008 04:15 am |
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Well, now he can work fulltime this summer and save it all since he chose the more expensive school.
Pomona is a gem and very intellectual. Pomona's acceptance rate rivals all the Ivy's and kids kill to get in there. By the way you have described him, it seemed perfect. Dartmouth seems very BMOC and preprofessional? Maybe that's just the rep. out here. Southern California is not the NE, though, that's for sure.
I wish him all the happiness at his new college. Now, we can forget this whole stressful year and move on, thank goodness!
Last edited on Sun Apr 27th, 2008 04:16 am by outwest
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Consolation
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Posted: Thu May 1st, 2008 04:09 pm |
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For those interested, I have updated the FA table I posted earlier to show the results of our appeals.
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outwest
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Posted: Fri May 2nd, 2008 01:28 am |
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I never considered appealing because the one that came up short came up almost 20K short and that seemed pretty insurmountable. She just discounted that school (pun intended). Also, I was worried if we appealed and they did meet the other schools that next year might be another short aid situation we would have to fight about again.
I am glad they redid your sons aid in is favor, but it seems odd that they would expect him to come up with that much money when he doesn't even work yet. Do they propose he take that much in loans? As a Freshman he is only eligible for $3,500 in federal low interest loans. That means any additional loan would be a personal loan with high interest. That doesn't seem right to me. I have never seen the aid broken up between parent and student portion before. My older girls didn't show that either, as I recall.
The bottom line is that he won't have to come up with as much money this year, Yay! Maybe by next year your situation will change. I hope for all of you that it does.
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Consolation
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Posted: Fri May 2nd, 2008 02:01 am |
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I would venture to guess that they think he should be able to combine working with a portion of his assets (gifts from us and others, most of which is in a very modest irrevocable trust).
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Fri May 2nd, 2008 03:02 am |
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outwest wrote: IAs a Freshman he is only eligible for $3,500 in federal low interest loans.
Just want to point out that freshmen are only eligible for $3500 in Stafford Loans, but very low income students also qualify for up to $2500 in Perkins loans. Many of the low income kids I work with have both included in their loan packages. Additionally, I have seen quite a few schools include "private loans" in addition to those two in the package, which makes it look to these kids like their full need is met, yet they actually are being offered $10,000+ in loans. I have had to break some hearts when I explain that, yes, they're meeting your EFC of $0, but they're expecting you to take a massive amount of loans to do so. Of course, in their sophomore, junior and senior years, they can up the ante a bit on the Stafford loans, but I have to wonder at colleges that tell kids, LOOK your EFC has been met! and then load in loans.Last edited on Fri May 2nd, 2008 03:02 am by CarolynLawrence
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