Our EFC is something around 14k, although, my parents say they are willing to do whatever to pay more if they must as we really value education over any other expensives (but for now I’m only being realistic if its around 15k). Haven’t ran the calculators yet but I definitely plan on doing so soon. I also might add that even though Santa Clara would be a dream school, I have always realized that the cost is a lot and I probably would have never even had it on my list had my counselor not said that they should meet my parents aid and since we tend to send a lot of kids out there it’s hard for me not to believe him, but at the same time, everything else points to my parents having to pay a lot more so I’m not going to get my hopes up for the school. Also do you think I would almost be guaranteed that Jesuit merit award? I had always thought that was just for a select group of people, but perhaps that is just another mistake of mine, but it’s so hard not to make them when it seems like I’m looking at thousands of colleges.
Perhaps my list isn’t the best it could be as I got a lot of private schools that aren’t good with aid and public schools that are also known to barely give any aid. (Thank God I don’t have those California ones anymore though). I am one of those people where weather is almost the number 1 factor and I really just want to go down south or to the west and go to a decent sized school with a decent computer program, but maybe that’s too much to ask for. So do you have any ideas on schools (private or public) that either give great merit aid, or simply good financial aid? From my understanding it seems like absolutely no schools are ever going to meet my aid. I realize that not all schools are guaranteed to meet all your need, but my god, I was hoping that one of my 30 schools would at least come close. It really seems like the Arizona schools are the only ones that do, but I need more backups for sure. And then for all I know I’m going to run the calculator on Arizona and rule those schools out. Is it really only possible for someone with my kind of money and decent grades to go out of state if its Alabama?