Can I get into Vanderbilt?

Faline2
Tue, 30 Jul 2013 19:50:51 +0000

appforcollege, the decision to do ED is not really only about wanting to wait re financial aid. If your family knows their Cost of Attendance more or less at Vanderbilt, than you can compare to your COA at your state flagship and have that family pow wow regarding what they plan to spend.
It is highly unlikely that any other college besides perhaps a place like Princeton will offer you a better need package loan free. That is the good news when you choose to do ED at a college that has a No Loans financial aid offering.

The rub is if you would consider taking merit offers to other colleges. that takes a great deal of reality based thinking on the odds of merit money. really fine colleges like my alma mater Furman University have merit money for the lucky winners but their need packages include loans.

Vanderbilt’s merit money is quite the challenge considering that all admittees would be meritorious in several respects.

Although we would like to have offered our hard working second son the privilege of a full priced private college, the recession of 2008-9 nixed it. He therefore didn’t consider ED at his favorite private institutions and he was prepared to pay full price to our flagship colleges or to win merit money. He also has long term graduate school plans that are expensive and seldom are reduced for need or merit.

If your COA to Vanderbilt is comparable to your COA to your flagship college…than ED makes sense. Our eldest got into Duke and some little Ivies and had honors admissions to three colleges but the reality was…all Full Price. No merit anywhere, some schools offered perks or little summer research stipends. Happens to the best of students just like that. We just didn’t grasp how these things work till son number 2. Plus we obfuscated and had a hard time facing up to our limitations as parents. If you are the first to go to college, try to get your parents to make a nice chart and to really think about costs.