Oh really?? When they said shows financial need, I thought they meant that this was their gift to help with that financial need.
No, for HC at least (dont know for Oberlin) that page listing Magis and Faber is specifically about merit scholarships.
Faber recognizes special merit that lower income students have demonstrated.
Financial aid (need-based) is on top of that though Iâm not sure how much you will get. Presumably youâll get $7,395 from Pell plus 5.5k federal loans plus 3k work study and about 40k in financial aid/institutional grants.
Run the NPC.
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I hope so, too! I will run the NPC in the coming days. Iâm currently out of town on vacation (grandparent-funded, lol), so I donât have all the numbers with me. I ideally want to avoid taking out 200k in student loans.
Either your parents would need to co-sign or they would need to hake these loans in this amount.
I hope the need based aid awards work for you!
You canât take 200k in student loans.
You can take 5.5k for freshman year. Thatâs it.
(No bank will loan thousands of $$ to an 18 year old with no steady income and no credit record - not just you, anyone.)
Everything else would be on your parents and since they have 2 mortgages Iâm guessing their credit is all tapped out.
Basically you need at least a full tuition scholarship but preferably a full ride (which may be close to what HC or Oberlin may offer in the end.)
Is it possible to have another family member co-sign? Just curious in case it was a necessity.
You would need a qualified cosigner. Yes, it can be another family member
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If youâre thinking of your grandparents, theyâd be better off loaning you the money directly if they have it so as to avoid spiralling interests and it should only be small amounts (2-5k per year).
Hopefully once you have all your FA packages you can return here with the results of this calculation
(Tuition fees room board) - (scholarships, grants)= $
For each college
And weâll estimate best value (with explanations).
Of course if you get a full ride to HC or Oberlin you have it made 
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Well, Iâm almost sure they have it. My main concern is that my grandparents wouldnât; they only seem interested in paying for places they like if they were even going to pay, and they donât seem high on any liberal arts school. I have a feeling theyâd rather co-sign.
I think these two are my only chance since thereâs no way we could pay out-of-state tuition at a public university (without the support of grandparents).
Wouldnât they like Holy Cross, one of the top4 Catholic universities in the country along with Georgetown and Notre Dame? The idea of a Jesuit education generally pleases grandparents, because the system is well-respected and the alumni network is full of high-level, respectable people.
You can pick a couple points from there that they would most appreciate/find convincing.
Or would your grandparents help pay for a ChemE degree from UMN (likely to be more expensive than a meet-need college)?
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Thatâs what I thought, too. But they say, âWell, if itâs not Williams or Amherst, then itâs not worth it for a liberal arts school.â Also, they are pushing for me to go to UCD (they live in California), but they donât want to understand we canât afford it, and they arenât making any offers to pay for it, soâŠ
They would be more likely to pay for UCD or UMN, but they havenât offered to at all.
Then you can tell them how much each costs and that the only way you could attend is if theyâd pay. But OOS UC costs are enormous even if your grandparents make good money and they donât offer FA OOS so itâd be totally legitimate if they canât pay.
But all in all, if they donât pay they canât have any say. You must go where best fit meets best value.
UMN does offer merit and you should already have heard.
But your best bet may be the âmeet needâ colleges.
For what itâs worth, I just ran the MyIntuition NPC for HC and they indicate you&your parents would be on the hock for $3,000 (all in) and youâd get a 65k financial aid grant (combining Pell and institutional aid).
That would be nice! Yes, I understand how expensive UCs are. UMN is giving 15k a year merit aid. I told my grandparents today that weâll be on the hook for a bare minimum of 50k at UCD, and they didnât have much to say. They brush it off and say weâll see how everything turns out. And I kind of hate being at their mercy. As much as I recognize UCD is a great school, itâs not my first choice.
Yes, indeed.
And in the end, you DO have choices and like all students must look at fit&value.
Are you waiting on more decisions ?
DO send the emails to HC and Oberlin (and any âmeet needâ college).
The HC numbers are probably a best case scenario but you&your parents should be able to contribute about 10k if push comes to shove (with the 529 and a bit from income+perhaps a summer job?) So 3k would be ideal and 10k probably the most you can pay and everything above that is impossible (unless your grandparents step in.)
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Iâm just waiting on a few high reaches (UCB, Emory, NYU), so I think Iâve maxed out my admissions. I will email them and clarify if this is merit + need based aid or only merit.
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Use the template upthread.
UCB will be unaffordable so itâll just be for the glory of it all.
NYU has an odd sense of financial need and is need aware.
Emory may be your best financial bet but obviously a very high reach.
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Letâs see where you stand.
Honestly, youâd be better off with a job at Target or Wal Mart than attending a college with $50K+ a year in loans - especially because you are in at colleges that cost less than $50K - and have your major - which neither Oberlin nor Holy Cross have.
But letâs see where you stand financially - before you take other steps.
But it would not be worth going to college if you had to take $50K a year in loans. There are alternative ways to get an education.
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So, I checked my Oberlin scholarship letter, and the two scholarships I received were Merit-based (33k a year). They did give a separate letter for financial aid, and all it entailed was around 5000 total in work-study and federal loans, no Pell or institutional grant. So, for Oberlin, their offer is 0 dollars in institutional need-based aid. Not quite sure what to do from here.