Current Barnard Student: Ask Me Anything!

calmom
Wed, 20 Sep 2017 23:02:47 +0000

I don’t know what your finances are or what your DD’s other stats are, so I don’t know what will be affordable to you. Fordham may very well give enough aid to make things manageable – my daughter did get what I thought was a surprisingly generous offer from Fordham, given her stats – and I know that Fordham did take her true need into account because of communications received from the financial aid office. It wasn’t meeting full need, but it was significantly more than NYU offered and on par with the offer she had from another highly selective school that purported to meet full need. So my comment was addressed to NYU only.

NYU simply doesn’t care what actual need is. They take need into account to determine whether an applicant qualifies for aid but not to determine amount of aid. Rather, they have a tiered system of awarding aid. The very top applicants may be offered their most generous scholarships, including full tuition - but test scores are important for that – so my daughter and I assume yours was out of the running. The year my daughter applied her FAFSA EFC was under $5000 – NYU offered a $7000 grant and, after an “appeal” raised it to $8000. That was typical – a small 4-figure grant, increased by a sum of $1000-$2000 when the student “appealed.” (I put appeal in quotes because no one was really interested in the facts) As tuition has gone up over the years, I think the base-line, lower tier financial aid award has also increased, but it is still doesn’t come close to meeting need. So given lower-range test scores, your DD is likely to end up in that lower-category tier with NYU that my daughter was in – or potentially worse, in the bottom category of students who are offered no grant funds whatsoever.

As I posted, as long as you are happy with in-state options, it doesn’t matter – but you do need to be clear with your daughter now what your own limits are on financing. Because every spring on CC there are kids who get into schools their parents can’t possibly afford, and anger and disappointment all around. And all too often the parent has previously said or implied something along the lines of, “if you get in, we’ll make it work”. So the time for the financial discussion is now. Because high school kids don’t really understand loans and borrowing either.

Luckily we have Chapel Hill and NCState.

I hope your daugher feels the same way.

I know that we won’t be able to afford it but she should try and not second guess 20 years later.

But does your daughter know that?

It’s just that down the line the thing she may be second guessing will be the choice early on to forego applying to private colleges with more generous aid policies – for example, a college like Bryn Mawr.

I’m not telling you to push your daughter into changing her application list – I just am saying that you need to make sure that she fully understands your financial limitations now, before she sends in applications.

I mean, if you are planning on buying a car and know that you have only $10K to spend, then you aren’t even going to step foot on a luxury car dealership – you’ll revise your expectations and focus on used cars, and do some research to figure out which makes and model years will fit your budget.