Great news, congrats to her!!! Either of these schools could be great for her, so she’s in very good shape and may end up with other good options to consider as well.
Will the grandparents be able to fund a round of campus visits to her top contenders, before she makes a final decision?
This is a fantastic update! Congrats to her on the admits that she is excited about. It makes the rest of the process so much lower stakes/stress. Nice to hear she added Scripps to the mix. If admitted there, it will give a different type of option to consider than USD and USF. But, regardless, she already has great options.
So, we are done and I thought I would come back here just because some of the twists and turns may be useful for future students. With the low rigor, I don’t think she had a chance at Pomona or Stanford, or any Ivy and was rejected from all those highly rejectives. Not much of a surprise there.
She was pretty easily admitted to LMU, USF, and USD, as someone referenced in the thread, they played the role of almost like safeties. Her best results was USD which was test blind (Honors program, great merit etc). But the “twist” this year was the NPC. No NPC calculations done last fall actually matched the FA offer (even using the same SAI and numbers from the FAFSA), but was like 30% higher.
Her top choice was USD, so we filed an appeal asking that they match their own numbers from their NPC or come a little closer to them anyway (we had all the screenshots saved etc) and they said no, if we can’t pay for the school at the current offer, they understand and we should let them know so they will close the file. You hear so many schools add another 2k or something with appeals but for future reference that is not USD. I could not find any information on whether USD considered appeals on these grounds, but from the sample size of one, it’s a “hell no.” Which for a “buyer” private school seems foolish.
But maybe they realized by then that she had her heart set on this school, which she did. The only school very comfortably within NPC and 529 was a SLAC she just didn’t want to go to anymore. For a moment, it looked like we may be left with nowhere to attend, and back to community college she goes, except that in the end she was able to commit to another $5,000 per year in savings from summer jobs and that closed the gap with the 529.
I considered adding a few more schools at the end like Whittier, or SoKa, but I just don’t think any of those would have moved the needle either way. It was a bit of a rollercoaster but she will be a Torero!
Did USD say why the NPC didn’t match? Was there something you didn’t enter or were investments (like stocks) higher than when you initially entered?
So the student is committing to $5K a year? Is there help for them if they’re not able to raise that?
Does $5K equal the 30% you mentioned the NPC was off?
I’m glad they are going where she wants - but curious as to the NPC being off - hopefully you can get an explanation.
Best of luck to her in Linda Vista.
Yeah, so the specific numbers were that the NPC said COA would be $20,000. (Pell recipient) That amount was in the 529 (times four years), with some money built in for tuition increases. The financial aid offer came to a COA of $28,000. So that feels like a 30% ish discrepancy to me.
The delta from what was comfortably in 529 then that we were looking at was the $8000. We realized we could save $2-3k from the indirect costs plus from the direct costs we could save by living in a quad, with smaller meal plan. Leaving $5000 for the student to have to pay by working in the summer.
For future years, we can look at working as an RA or other programs to save even more.
I was honestly shocked at how utterly unimportant USD seemed to think their discrepancy with the NPC was. We 100% double and triple checked the assumptions and the numbers. SAI was -1500 so there is not much room for errors (they don’t have much), certainly nothing like investments to speak of at all.
I found several errors in the NPC, with what the NPC said the total tuition was, what the total COA of attendance was, that did not line up with what was on the website at the time (and even further did not line up with the final COA FA letter). Very sloppy, and I would have thought they would fix it with looking at it again in this appeal process but nope. I find it appalling, but my student is thrilled and excited and many people in her extended family have worked to make this happen so we are going with it. But man, USD, get your act together.
8k off vs. the $20K estimate is actually 40% off.
Yes, never look at indirect costs - schools all use differing amounts - nothing is ever standard.
I hope she can make the $5K. it’s not assured - is the issue. And it’s a lot of pressure on the student.
What was the SLAC that would hit cost? Maybe she can revisit?
Personally, I’d not give them a nickel (that’s me) - if they’re that indifferent.
Best of luck to her - i hope there are no hiccups on the $5K. Or that someone can help her if there is one.
Thanks for the explanation.
I hear you. I felt the same, wish I could have said thanks no thanks and revisited the SLAC. But it’s a very wrong SLAC for my student and USD is her home. She vibrates there on their wavelength and it’s a perfect fit. The extended family will come in to make sure she has a safety net if the $5k can’t be done. But I definitely want people to know their NPC is unreliable.
However, indirect costs are certainly more than $0, so students and parents need to estimate their own indirect costs, which may vary by college.
There may also be some savings on food and utilities at home if the student attends college no longer living at home. It will not completely offset dorm or off campus living expenses, but is also not $0.
Yes but don’t use them for comparative purposes, etc.
What you owe the school is what you need to look at.
Our DD was also accepted to USD. She was accepted to Santa Clara with a higher financial aid offer (combo of need and merit…we had two kids in college and that was counted at that time). We made an appointment with financial aid at USD and brought the offer from SCU with us. The finaid officer walked in, and we asked our question. She (and not politely, I will add) told us USD does not do reconsideration of their offers, and she stood up and left the room. USD was immediately dropped from consideration. We thought this person was rude. And we did let the director of financial aid know this.
SCU was our kid’s top choice anyway…but honestly…if this was the way usd treated accepted students, we didn’t want our kid there anyway.
If USD is your student’s top choice, I hope you can work this out.
Were the NPCs at LMU and USF reasonably close to the actual financial aid offers?
USF was what I would say reasonably off the NPC, like 10%. LMU was almost exactly right. USF was less generous than their NPC but their NPC started higher so maybe it wasn’t as much sticker shock?
The other schools were better than the NPC including the SLAC my student has no interest in now.
I think this has to be the same woman who spoke at one of the admitted students events and who sent the email rejecting the appeal. Quite rude (if you can’t pay our price, we can close your file). I don’t think it would cost them that much to keep an extra 2k per kid for those situations and the goodwill would be tremendous. So many other schools do this. Wonder if their yield would be better with a more generous attitude here. It certainly has changed my perspective on the school from love and roses to (needle on record scratch) wanting to drop them like a hot potato. But we also toured Santa Clara and it just didn’t resonate with my student at all. Eliminated from contention early. USD is their place, you can see it. And while home situation is not ideal, extended family has lots of higher education/professional caring people who have rallied here to provide financial backstops so we are going to make it happen. But boy does it make me want to gnash my teeth.
The part that really bugged me here though isn’t how rudely they rejected their appeal (which was annoying) but … that … their … own .. NPC was dead wrong and they had no explanation for it!
Glad you can make USD work financially.
Even IF USD had been my kid’s top choice, after that dealing with the financial aid person…it was gone from consideration. and my kid applied EA, and was attending an accepted student weekend. She was invited to play oboe with the orchestra for a concert because the oboe player became ill. The school supposedly wanted this kid as a student…but the financial aid person didn’t convey that…at.all.
But glad you have it worked out.
USD has had the ‘no appeal of merit offers’ policy for a long time. They make the offer and never reconsider. It would be nice if they were nice about it and explained that it is their policy but I do understand that that is their way of doing it, of treating everyone the same and making no exceptions.
NPCs are often really off. When my daughter was looking, I ran the NPC for her chosen school. I believe it was in Sept of her senior year. The numbers were at least 2 years old, as they always announced their tuition increases in late May or June for the next semester (starting only 2 months away in August!). So I ran it again in Oct, and then again a few times; this was when FAFSA wasn’t open until Jan, and not processed till February or March so the school often didn’t have FA amounts. The numbers were always different! Sometimes the NPC had the state grants, sometimes not. The grid for merit aid was off but I could make a good guess. In February, when she got her FA/merit offer, the merit was off by $5k and she almost turned down the acceptance. After a few calls, we found out they were using the wrong ACT score to calculate merit (it turned out she had 2 admission files and some things were filed in one and sometimes in the other - this error went on through Dec of her freshman year when they wouldn’t let her register for spring semester because they didn’t have her hs transcripts which had been filed THREE times but always put in the ‘wrong’ file). Anyway, the NPCs aren’t all that accurate but the Dept of Ed doesn’t require them to be. Some schools ask for a lot of info while others just ask basics.
The good news is the USD can be generous once the student is on campus. My niece attended and found little pockets of funding. She played on a club sport and got some money for that. She was on student council and got, IMO, a LOT of money for that. Niece was on a lot of committees and got paid for some of them. San Diego is expensive in a lot of ways but i has free things to do, has a high minimum wage, has a high cost of eating out so if you are a waitress or in other tipped position you might make more, etc.
My niece enjoyed her time there very much. She was an IR major and had a wonderful experience on her semester in France where she spent little time in France and more time in Germany, Spain, Africa, England…friends were on Study abroad at the same time and they all met up almost every weekend to go somewhere fun, like Octoberfest, a soccer match in Ireland, riding camels in Africa. And niece was on a budget.
Congrats to your daughter.
I looked around but could not find that information at all, and agree would be nice if that is the policy for them to just say so! Well, this is actually really good to know because I felt that the appeal was compelling and was concerned that the dismissal / rejection of the appeal was somehow personal. Glad to know your niece had such a good experience I am really hoping for similar here! (For clarification I am part of the extended family helping/guiding student, I am not the parent, parent is not capable/able to access resources such as CC)
And FWIW my student feels very confident she can earn what she needs to close the gap, maybe she already is plugged into the on campus opportunities! She is very, very excited and in the end that is what matters, not my gnashing of my teeth at their policy. Lol
Oh, although here (and this is really more for future years for others searching information about appealing a USD financial aid award) the student was appealing need based aid not just merit. She was a Pell recipient who still had a 28k COA. So, maybe USD doesn’t have a policy quite that publicized for need based aid? Though the upshot is that they seem from this sample size of one to have a similar policy for need based aid too.
Some schools give more in merit than in need based FA (except for Pell grants, SEOG). My daughter’s FA was almost all merit and grants from the school, and then Pell, SEOG, state need based aid. Hers was a private school and that’s just how they chose to do their awards (mostly merit based). Other daughter was at an OOS public school and also got Pell, SEOG, and then two school based ‘merit’ awards, although one was clearly given to her because of need. But that was it. There was no extra money when we asked for more.
So I don’t think USD is that different if they are giving most of their money in merit. I do think they should be nicer about it.
I agree—many schools prioritize merit-based aid over need-based aid, especially private institutions. It can definitely feel frustrating when there’s little flexibility or no additional support after asking. Even if their approach isn’t unusual, better communication and transparency from schools would make the process much easier for families.