Unfortunately, this is not true at all. Not sure who said this.
They may have meant that it has the same benefits in terms of giving you the admissions advantages of applying through Questbridge?
But the financial package is not the same at all. The Match package is a no-loan full ride, irrespective of the school. Some of the partner schools may come close to this in RD, but others absolutely will not. We have seen specific examples of QB students here, who have gotten into USC through QB RD and then discovered that the aid package was shockingly unaffordable. What you get, aid-wise, through QB RD should be predicted by the Net Price Calculator for the specific school. Run NPCs for the schools you’re interested in, and compare the results to the QB Match package. USC would be a good one to start with: USC Financial Aid : Net Price Calculator
It truly is worthwhile to apply in the Match cycle, even if you can’t find the full complement of 15 schools that you’re willing to submit a binding app to.
Yes, my twin’s doing Questbridge. I had a discussion with my mom again showing her the financial aid calculators where she’d be paying 9k a year for each twin, and she’s okay with QB but still insists on universities nearby. This would be Pomona College, Scripps, USC, Caltech, and Claremont McKenna.
Make sure you point out not only the out-of-pocket (which is what it sounds like the 9K/year is) but also the amount of debt that’s included in the financial aid package. And be sure you run the calculators for each school individually, not just a general EFC calculation (i.e. from the FAFSA).
Well, start with a ranking-the-local-schools strategy, and then look at the non-local ones and see whether there might be a few you could “sell” as worth adding. (Stanford could be a test case, since it’s still in California and highly-desirable. Although it’s ridiculously competitive to actually get a match offer there.) But even just ranking those four (the ones you said, minus Caltech) would be better than nothing. (There will be a bigger difference between regular financial aid and QB-Match aid at Scripps or USC than at Pomona or Stanford. And UC costs - particularly if you don’t commute to Riverside - will be a different beast altogether, so compare that too.
For UC Irvine, are you within commuting distance since the NPC costs are based on living at home? That is why the costs are different than what I expected since you stated you are within commuting distance for CPP, CSUF and Riverside.
The costs are reasonable if commuting since you can take the Federal student loans and get work study to make up the difference.
I don’t see them giving up at this point. I’ve brought up this topic very often since last year and she only agreed on the condition that I commute. They see it as me abandoning them, and that people will trick me and get me to do horrible things or whatever. I think I could reasonably persuade them to let me apply in-state (especially if housing is covered), but out-of-state is going to be too much of a headache to argue lol.
Is your twin’s situation, and response to the situation, the same? Or are you dealing with different expectations based on gender roles or other differences between you?
Landing a Match offer at one of the 5C’s could really be best-of-all-worlds for you. Because you’d be required to live on campus, and that would be paid for, but you’d also be within your parents’ desired commutable radius.
I’m a bit confused by this, but I think it means that loans aren’t built into these numbers; rather, you can use loans to help cover the 9K. (Which is better than if you had a 9K out-of-pocket obligation and also loans!) When you run the Net Price Calculator for private schools, the results will state a loan amount, if loans are part of the package, and also the amount of your out-of-pocket costs. So when you tell your parents what a school costs, it should be the sum of those two numbers, not just the out-of-pocket at the time.
My twin’s in the same situation. She would like us to be in the same university as well lol which is kind of absurd. What do you mean by 5Cs? Is that CMC?
Check with UC whether IGETC is accepted for frosh. If so, then it will cover general education requirements as described at Campus guidance | UC Admissions . Even if it does not, the individual courses you took as part of completing IGETC can be applied to campus general education categories if they match.
IGETC for CSU is mostly the same except that the version for CSU has an oral communication course but does not have foreign language. However, CSU general education requirements are substantially the same as IGETC, so even if IGETC is not accepted per se, having it means having courses that match up well to CSU general education requirements.
“5C’s” is what the whole consortium is often called. So I was referring to CMC, Scripps, and Pomona collectively. Pitzer too, but they’re not a Questbridge partner - you could run the NPC for regular financial aid, though, as they do meet need. (The fifth school is Harvey Mudd, which is more in the Caltech genre that wouldn’t be a fit, on top of not being a QB partner. But Mudd still offers some great classes that are open to cross-registration.)
Occidental also meets need and could be worth a non-Questbridge application if the NPC is favorable.
