Got it. Thank you especially for the detailed info on Central Michigan. It fits our budget and the cost could come down even more if they get the MAC scholarships. Will be looking at it further.
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Thank you for mentioning the National Student Exchange; I wasn’t aware of such a program.
UPS & Willamette don’t fit our budget unfortunately but will be looking at some CSUs. I understand your concern. My kid says they’re open but it may be difficult to really know. I don’t think it’ll sink in until it’s more real, in my kid’s case. If they want to stay here, they’ll have the local CSU.
It’s not $24k but Ogelthorpe and Hendrix are LACs that could mean California tuition. Could they go lower ?
A 30 ACT gets you $16608 - UCB cost at Ogelthorpe.
Hendrix is in AR but a fine school. They have a similar Tuition Advantage but can go deeper with merit but wrong state.
It sounds like you’ll be covered with Cal schools and UNR. So maybe worth trying only for the W&L and other privates with full rides ??
The data science addition seems very interesting. Always great to hear personal experiences! Hearing that the Greek system is low key, we’ll probably add Denison back on the list. However, Denison’s acceptance rate is getting lower every year and is almost in the <20% category. Not sure how need aware they are.
I do wonder about possible real merit scholarships from schools that are borderline for us, budget wise. It’s just difficult to get info on what kind of students are actually selected for those scholarships (some schools showcase their scholarship winners, but it seems like most do not). And @aquapt , great point, depending on whether they adjust the need aid part, may end up similar in the net price.
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A few colleges have stated policies on the matter; most of those apply merit scholarships first to replace expected student work earnings or work-study and expected student loans, but then reduce their own financial aid grants before reducing expected parent contribution.
But check each college to be sure.
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I’m a huge fan of finding schools that meet cost up front - if someone is on need aid and has an income spike, then what…
This way you avoid it.
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Wow, thank you so much! It’s very interesting. Not sure how much of it reflects the schools being need aware vs. the advantages a student got (good counseling from a private school, test prep tutors, essay help, certain extracurriculars, etc) from being raised in a wealthier household. Nevertheless, it seems as though the graph shows which schools are likely to be the most need aware on the list (for example: Conn College, Kenyon, Bates, Hamilton).
Denison has historically used its large endowment and generous merit awards to attract the kind of student body it wants. We are a few years out now, but I would think your student would be very attractive to the school.
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This is probably the one you are referring to:
http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/papers/coll_mrc_paper.pdf
Regarding the NYT data, it is for students who attended college from 1999-2015. So a minimum of a decade old at this point. All the typical caveats that go along with the Chetty data. Most notably, many of these 139 colleges have increased their proportion of Pell grant recipients in the last decade.
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By explicit policy, Hamilton, does not consider the level of applicant financial need in admission decisions.
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Thank you for those suggestions! In case it may help others, looks like Hendrix no longer has tuition match (was not able to find?) and the net price was estimated to be $34k for us. Oglethorpe, with student’s GPA will get tuition match, but net price came out to $35k for us (that included the Oxford Scholarship - I don’t know what the actual minimum requirements were for that).
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There are those who question whether need-blind schools are really need-blind as they always seem to have a very consistent percentage of full-pay students year after year after year, when if there was true blindness at play, it would seem as though that percentage of full-pay would fluctuate a bit (or a lot) from year to year. For some, it seems as though need-blind schools are more somewhat-aware whereas need-aware schools are very-aware.
Almost any college admission criterion has some correlation to financial aid need, so a college can be need blind in a strict sense (admission readers do not see and financial aid information) while setting its admission criteria to target a specific mix of financial aid need over the entire admission class.
If they keep the admission criteria the same from year to year, the mix of financial aid need is unlikely to change.
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Exactly. I expect most highly selective schools use CollegeBoard’s Landscape tool, which shows certain SES and SES adjacent factors for both the applicant’s high school and neighborhood census tract. Not to mention many AOs see parent education and job info, and whether the applicant applied for FA.
So, no need for an AO to know how much need an applicant has, they have plenty of ways/tools to approximate it. Whether or not that makes a school really need blind? That’s above my pay grade lol.
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