academics for accepted MT students

soozievt
Mon, 18 Jun 2007 09:19:41 +0000

I certainly agree with Sarahsmom42 that part of creating a college list is to be realistic with your child as to which schools you can afford because a very uncomfortable situation is to have your child be accepted at a school and then have to say you can’t afford to send him/her. By the same token, you can be very upfront and realistic and say that certain schools are OK to apply to but that they can only attend if the Financial Aid comes in at a certain amount. Make sure to be very upfront from the get go before applying.

That said, I feel that some families assume that more expensive colleges (ticket price) are going to be the most expensive to attend but this is NOT always the case at all. Sometimes, a more expensive college either has more endowment and money to give to need based aid or else is a college that gives merit aid (or both). My family is also middle class. Both my children receive substantial financial aid at two of the most expensive colleges, NYU and Brown University. These schools cost way less for us than you might think by their price tags. For my BFA child, the merit and need based aid she received at NYU was greater than at all her other BFA schools, even though many of them gave substantial aid as well. The bottom line is the FINAL price tag, not the ticket price. Avoiding applying to schools because of the price tag might not be accurate because it can be that these more expensive schools can come in as less expensive once the aid is figured in. Each case is different. I am simply explaining our own situation of a middle class family where the bill to my kids’ expensive colleges is way less than the ticket price. Sometimes, one can attend the more expensive schools and have the final price come out lower than the cheaper schools, and shouldn’t be avoided out right before figuring in the aid.

Going by the examples in the post above…my kid got what we feel was very good merit and need based aid at NYU, Syracuse, and CMU. She did not apply to Northwestern. We are middle class.