Throughout last year, I was one of the many who got to experience both the good and the bad of the college search process. For me, financial aid was an extremely important factor, as I know it is for many, and I just happened to have a lot of free time and have accumulated some experience in it (the majority of which unfortunately came post-application, so I couldn’t really apply it). Anyways, I decided to give a general listing of colleges that, according to my data collecting, are the best choices for financial aid. Most of the following meet 100% of aid (a few that I included may meet as little as 95%), and passed a variety of tests that incorporated data from both their latest CDS documents and MY PERSONAL RUNNINGS OF EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THESE COLLEGES’ NPCS (it took a while) to spot outliers and really wonky data. Having run all of these, I have eliminated stark outliers (and bolded some relative ones), and included relevant data that may help in picking them. The acceptance stats come from several sources, but are as accurate as I could get them, with some being this year’s and others being the last. The objective stats are just estimations and are not rigid indicators of who will get accepted (please do not argue over them; they’re not that important).
*I was going to post this in August closer to the major questions and actual start times, but I have seen quite a few students who could probably benefit from this even now and thought that I might as well post it now and update it with new acceptance rates when more become available. Hopefully, this thread is still relevant throughout the year and can help a lot of students in maybe finding out which universities they should look for. *
Notes to consider: **
** > Be sure to consider in-state options and even some other public schools; there are many great options for a variety of students that I did not include for a variety of reasons; for example, I did not include UNC Chapel Hill and UVA because their acceptance rates are heavily skewed in favor of in-state students and their final calculations would have exceeded the others’ (UVA might have been either eliminated or bolded, and UNC would have been bolded).
** > Do not apply to a bunch of reaches exclusively!** I would recommend applying to 2-4 reaches, 4-7 matches, and true 2-3 safeties that you would be willing to attend.
** > Remember: if you can prove that your ED acceptance is not financially feasible, you can reject.** Also remember: with ED, you will not be able to compare and find the best prices. Plus . . . if you can’t prove . . .
** > Go ahead; apply to your top choice or 2** even if you don’t think you’ll get in and everybody else tells you not to; you will greatly regret it if you don’t. Psychology 101.
** > The NPCs are NOT 100% accurate, but estimations.** Some actual values are higher; some are lower. Be sure to factor this in and do not apply exclusively to the ones that give you the cheapest price; instead, apply to those that are in a good general range w/o forgetting about which ones would be good fits for you as a student, feasable, have good programs, etc. In my case, I was dumb and applied mostly to schools I now see as high reaches for me, but I got into two great ones: Richmond and Macalester. Both had NPC calculations that overestimated my required contributions (Richmond, btw, was lower in both NPC and actual).
** > Remember that LACs usually have great Pre-Engineering programs/b that allow you to transfer to great engineering schools. In my case, Richmond offers auto-admission to either Columbia or UVA after 3 or 4 years (UC for 3-2 and 4-2 programs and UVA for 3-1-1 program) if your academic performance is good enough. Many other ones here offer programs like this with other schools. This will allow you to get a more rounded education and might let you get into a dream school that may otherwise be impossible. Research the option. This is not engineering-exclusive.
**Good luck and have fun. If you have any questions, ask. Again, I know it’s a bit early, but oh well. **
The results will be posted below in a few secs (b/c post length limit). Please do not post before I do this.
As discussed in many other threads, few students intending to do 3+2 actually make the transfer to the “2” school. Sometimes, it is due to non-admission to the “2” school (e.g. Columbia has strict grade and GPA requirements). Sometimes, it is due to the extra year of cost and uncertain or worse financial aid at the “2” school (e.g. Columbia does not promise to “meet full need” for 3+2 transfers as it does for frosh and regular transfers).
Thank you for posting this information! I know that your post is about financial aid, but I was wondering if you have any information about schools that offer merit scholarships?
@undecidedd2018 Unfortunately, I do not. Merit aid was never a consideration for me during the admission process, nor was it one during my data compilation. Sorry about that
Forgot to mention: if anybody has any more constructive information for those seeking financial aid, or need to correct/clarify something (speaking of, thanks @ucbalumnus; I overlooked that and probably should have mentioned it), I would love to have it here.
On top of that, I’m sure I left a few good ones off; I did leave a few off intentionally as mentioned, notably Tulane (for financial aid), but didn’t know about Trinity University until recently. If anybody else has some they know are great for this list, please note them!
@dragonmom3 For financial aid, not according to my research.
They apparently meet close to full determined need (94% to 96%), but their stats were very wonky. First off, my net price calculation was a huge outlier, which is not a definitive breaker but a good hint. So I went to the common data set. Despite full-time freshmen getting averaging 96% need met and full-time students including freshmen getting 94%, their average need-based grant (not including loans) was for those was only $26,439 and $27,550, respectively. For comparison, Richmond’s (my school) was $40,204 and $39,874, Caltech (major cheap outlier in my calculations for some reason) was $40,060 and $37,557, and USC (relatively expensive outlier; bolded) was $34,948 and $32,291.
@lookingforward Completely understand and noted. I encourage everybody to run the estimators. I was using this to try and narrow down some of the options for people to give a relatively concise list and not having them go through necessarily all of them (plus giving some objective estimations and which majors each of them are popular).
I removed around 3 or 4 outliers, but I did leave most of them in. For me, the NPC for the cheapest school (Caltech) was $16.5K less than the most expensive estimate FOR ME that I included, because I see that Sewanee (which was the most expensive for me and that I bolded) does give some ok aid for quite a few people (and is also not killer to get into). Thereby, I felt it justifiable to leave in.
I would still encourage everybody to consider all of them, but I just gave some shortcuts. It’s like with stock trackers; you should consider more than are just picked up by the software based off of simulations and past performances, plus they’re not certain and could realistically go either way, but they do help draw some attention to some trends, compile some data, and cut down on a significant amount of time.
EDIT: To add some detail,
I am referring to lists of private schools that meet close to 100% of determined need.
EDIT 2: Actually, my apologies. University of Rochester was actually my biggest outlier that I included, with $17,772 difference from Caltech. Notice also that I did not specify that Caltech was my cheapest nor gave it any recognition besides not bolding it.
MIT has regular EA, not ED or REA/SCEA. The only restriction is that you abide by the rules of other schools that you apply to, according to http://mitadmissions.org/apply/freshman/cycles . Note that they explicitly also say “There is no positive or negative prejudice associated with or conferred by applying during either cycle.”
Suggest changing the table to be something like:
Princeton (*REA*)
MIT (EA)
Brown (*ED*)
(and perhaps other variants, such as schools which over both ED and EA, or ED and ED2)
Also, remember that ACT and SAT scores are only one component of admissions, even though it is heavily used for comparisons because it is convenient. High school record / GPA / rank is usually the larger academic component. The super-selective schools also more heavily use other criteria to differentiate between numerous applicants with top end academic credentials. However, most of the other criteria are difficult for applicants and other outsiders to observe and compare across the whole applicant pool, or know what any given college is most impressed by. So applicants and other outsiders tend to treat them as “random” or “lottery” even though they really are (mostly) not.
To the first one, I will consider putting in a note acknowledging EA applications in (insert several schools) and might try and find some data to support further clarification. I did, however, intentionally underline MIT for now because you cannot apply to any binding early decision programs if you do that, which would force students to miss out on a great selection of very selective schools that would actually really give them an edge. I’d consider it a detriment.
Still, I do see the point of mentioning that, as it is important to know for some. And yes; I’ll probably incorporate that REA/ED1/EA/SCEA note (with clarifying legend and recommendations) when I make what I anticipate to be an August revision.
http://mitadmissions.org/apply/freshman/cycles indicates that MIT does not restrict applying ED elsewhere if you apply EA to MIT. From what I can tell, colleges with ED do not care whether you apply EA (that is not REA/SCEA) elsewhere.
First of all, I want to commend you on the effort taken to compile this list and sharing this information – I am sure it will be helpful to many:
A few pointers- for those who read your list to consider:
Meeting 100% need means need as the college determines. As you have already discovered from running NPC’s, that “need” determination can be quite variable. A major wild card is the way various colleges weigh in home equity, but there are many other factors that can create significant variations.
If the CDS shows that a college on average meets something less than 100% of need - say, 95% of need – that does not mean that all students have 95% of their need met. Rather it means that the college prioritizes financial aid and will grant favorable packages to the students it most desires, and less favorable aid (and perhaps a complete denial of grant-based aid) to others. The percentages can be deceptive as well because some admitted students have more need than others, so it is mathematically easy for a college with a need-aware admissions policy to pump up the figures by admitting a lot of students with relatively low need. A $10K grant may be enough to meet full need for a high EFC student, whereas it would be a nonstarter for many – and many high-EFC students may also have full need met by packages consisting of loans and work-study only-- which also tends to run up the averages.
You were right to actually look at the figures for average amount of grants, but prospective students should also look at average amount of student loans. Lower loan numbers, good; higher loan numbers, not-so-good.
Especially as you go down the list, some colleges combine merit money with need based money, and the merit money will have the effect of reducing need. That could be why you found Tulane to be an outlier – Tulane does offer merit money, and the students who qualify for college merit are also more likely to be the ones that Tulane will give favorable need-based aid to. (As you noted, Tulane doesn’t meet 100% need of all students, but averages 96% for first-year students). The CDS is reporting need-based grants only, so it might be that many entering students are also getting merit grants – that would account for the discrepancy you saw in grant amounts. To a student it doesn’t make much difference - money is money – but the fall off from 96% among first years to 94% overall could reflect that some students who come in with merit money lose that part of their financial aid later on, due to poor grades- thus increasing their need, and reducing the overall percentage of need met. (I really don’t know - this is just a possible explanation for numbers that seemed off to you).
Families don’t have to “prove” that they can’t afford a school to turn down an ED offer. All they have to do is say it’s unaffordable and reject the offer.
@MON824 and @calmom the “most recent common data set” for Tulane that mon824 included as a link in his or her thread yesterday is from 2012-13 and outdated. For the most recent data set google Tulane University Office of Assessment and Institutional Research–the 2016-17 common data set was recently posted and prior years common data sets are also posted.
@calmom Thank you for all of your points. I will be sure to look into it and try to figure out how I can best present all of the information. Also, with Tulane, I will look into it and probably will include it in the list (with some special notes) when I make a revision. I’ll be sure to do some research on it.
