<p>dstark - thank you for quoting the Columbia policy. I searched in vain for the policy defining “adequate financial aid” on college A where my S went ED. Not in any printed materials nor on website. In fact, that school (below HYPS in status) appeared to feel you were bound regardless of financial package. Made it that much more confusing for us and so we relied on our GC and our GCs discussion with “A.” In sum, apparently not all schools agree with you, me , Columbia and patuxent that “adequate financial aid” is in the eye of the only real beholder, the family.</p>
<p>kirmum - I love your new SAT section idea.</p>
<p>"“If one school says your EFC is $15,000 and another is $19,000, I don’t know how the school that says $19,000 can say they met all your needs”</p>
<p>dstark - You set sybbie up with that one. Remind me never to let you cross examin me."</p>
<p>If have rarely seen a better reason to quote Abraham Lincoln’s words, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.”</p>
<p>No, Patuxent, this “setup” only confirmed the incredible unwillingness by some to acknowledge even the simplest of concepts. How many times does one have to repeat that there are great variances in the determination BY THE SCHOOLS of the demonstrated needs of applicants? Why is this determination BY THE SCHOOLS acceptable? Because it is their OWN money they dole out. Since they are giving the money away, they establish their own rules anc criteria. They decide to follow the Federal Methodology or Institutional Methodology -google the terms since I am quite certain that, in your ears, it rings as foreign as Eastern Swahili. They decide the percentage of assets to use, the amount of unallowable deductions such as business depreciation or personal expenses. </p>
<p>In the end, the results known as Demonstrated Needs and Expected Family Contributions are established by the Financial Aid offices, and regardless of the methodology used, they MEET the need as THEY see it. </p>
<p>Finding out which methodology is used by each school is the responsibility of the applicants. It is no different from finding out about the programs offered by the schools. And, back to the subject at hand, if a candidate cannot ascertain the figures to its satisfaction -before applying- he should not apply ED. </p>
<p>Lastly, comparing the procedures of Columbia and Princeton is impossible, especially if the quotations of Columbia’s website were not exhaustive as the poster conviniently “forgot” to quote the procedures to obtain a release as well as “forgot” to mention that the Office of financial aid does NOT consider a candidate’s offer of merit aid from another school as grounds for review. They only accept to review a change in a family’s financial situation. The granting of releases by Columbia is, as they describe it on their site, very rare -only 2 or 3 families a year- and only PERMITTED to allow the students to attend a lesser and cheaper school. Using this example as an implied authorization to “shop” around at comparable institutions would be foolish. </p>
<p>No matter how one looks at it, Early Decision is not applicable to a candidate who KNOWS he will need to compare financial packages. While I may agree that the procedure is unfair to a great number of candidates, there are few open-ended questions about the intended spirit of the proposal and expected integrity of the candidates.</p>
<p>Owning a home in some states, from what I can see, works against a family in terms of obtaining aid anyway, doesn’t it? If they count the value of your home as your “wealth”, and you live almost anywhere in California, you’re sunk. My H didn’t even bother to look at the financial aid information, because as many here undoubtedly know, you don’t have to be very “wealthy” not to qualify.</p>
<p>In any case, I don’t see how it is the university’s problem to take these things into consideration. Isn’t the whole point of ED that a student so passionately wants to attend that school that he or she is willing to forsake all others, their financial packages included?</p>
<p>When our S’s 7th grade advisor sat us down and told us that if S continued on the path of standardized test scores and love of learning he was then on that we should be prepared to look at “very selective colleges”, we knew that was a euphemism for lots of dollar bills with wings attached flying out the window. We had just finished putting two other kids through college, out-of-state tuition. H’s response to my worries about money: “If any kid of mine gets into one of those schools, I’ll find a way to pay for it.” He has now lived to regret those words, but regardless of our ease or difficulty of paying for it, I don’t see any reason why any school should reconsider their ED policies based on parents’ desire to weigh financial aid packages. That’s what RD is for, isn’t it?</p>
<p>kirmum and patuxent - You also might own a home but already have a mortgage close to its market value, either because you bought relatively recently, have refinance for whatever reason,etc. You also might not qualify for a larger mortgage.</p>
<p>Patuxent~
Thank you for the college management/consultant term “enrollment management.” I wasn’t aware of that precise term. On the other hand, I certainly was aware of the concept and its practice. It amazes me that anybody could seriously believe that a college would cavalierly make these decisions with little or no forethought – let the chips fall where they may. Of course they think about how to allocate their “tuition discounting tools.” Of course they plan on how to use their entire arsenal. LAC’s might have 400-700 incoming students a year; small unis might have 1500-2000. For the sake of easy math, let’s say a typical private school has 1000 entering students a year with incoming tuition, costs, and fees averaging 43,000. That’s 43,000,000 in revenue coming in per year! To turn the famous Groucho Marx line on it’s head, kind-of: I wouldn’t want my child to attend any college that wouldn’t plan these kind of things.</p>
<p>Anyway, my question was really more of a reality-check than anything else and to spur some additional thinking that colleges deal with their ED and RD applicants in very different ways. Leverage, power, and bargaining-chips are very interesting things. Colleges have most of the advantages here, but (depending on the student and the students supposed “desirability”) certainly not all.</p>
<p>The value of your home is only at issue if you have significant equity.</p>
<p>Patuxent, you have a unique vantage point on the world. Yes, my job can be outsourced (if you can find someone in India or China willing to work my hours and show up in CA courts), and the sky might fall. How would this effect the fairness of what I must commit to my children’s education. Actually, should I lose my job, I’ll put my feet up and collect financial aid!!!</p>
<p>Xiggi, how do you get away with your wonderfully terse barbs without moderator attacks? Are you bribing them with your merit money?</p>
<p>Kirmum, I have to assume that the moderators are quite prone to forgive youthful exhuberance … and use the edit magical wand when needed. I also have little doubt that they would not hesitate to hit my hard noggin with the same stick.</p>
<p>xiggi - you and others have pointed out that some (many?) schools will release from ED only if student wants to go to a “lesser cheaper” school. What do posters think of this? I don’t know what to make of it in terms of the ethics issue.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I didn’t conveniently forget to quote anything. I provided the link from Columbia’s web site. I didn’t make it up. It looks very clear to me. Show me your link that contradicts the part of Columbia’s web site I used. Your how many times the incredilble…paragraph, if that relates to me, what are you talking about?
Xiggi don’t put words in my mouth or assume I conveniently forgot. That’s bull.</p>
<p>xiggi - Some years back I lived in an old house that needed painting. I went to Montgomery Wards and bought a couple gallons of paint and was delighted to find out the paint was “On Sale” at half price. The walls soaked the paint up and sure enough I ran out and had to buy more paint in a couple of days. Luckily it was still “On Sale”. I went throught hat routine a couple of more times and each time I went back the paint was still “On Sale”. Finally the fourth or fifth time I had to buy paint the sale was over but I only needed one more can. I’d been seeing the same saleman each time. When I went to buy this last can of paint he told me don’t buy it today come back tomorrow. I asked why and he said because it will be “On Sale” tomorrow. We only sell it full price one day a week. I asked why? He told me that if it was never marked at full price they could get in trouble with the concumer regulatory agencies so they mark it up one day a week when there are almost no paint sales anyway.</p>
<p>What is the real price of that paint? Did Montgomery Ward give me anything when it was “On Sale”? Did they have to dig into their treasury to come up with some cash every time they sold a can of paint? Or was this a marketing ploy to make a consumer believe he was getting a great deal?</p>
<p>In the case of the colleges the real price is not the alleged window sticker price but rather the sum of the tuition they actually collect divided by the number of FTE’s. The college has a financial as well as marketing reason for wanting to post a window sticker price that virtually nobody but an idiot pays. The reason is it makes virtually everyone eligible for whatever federal aid is out there. This way the school gets to collect the real price + the federal student aid money + they can tell smart guys like you how generous they are with their money. The institutional money is as bogus and ephemeral as the the different between the sale price of my paint and the “full price” that nobody pays.</p>
<p>omygawd patuxent - you have created a crisis of confidence here. do I now need to question my beloved alma mater when they gather us together at reunions and such and, once they’ve got all the love going in the room, explain to us potential donors that the real cost of the Wellesley education is far above even the quoted sticker price? They say they subsidize everyone by not charging even the Vanderbilts/Gates the full price. Ergo, they desperately need us to generously open our wallets now and, even better, remember them in our wills. I’ve got my own Education Foundation to fund right now in terms of S and grandS, but you’ve got me thinkg again.</p>
<p>Dstark, here are the two paragraphs that answer the questions “Can I be released from my Early Decision contract because of my financial aid package?” and “May I appeal a financial aid package if admitted?”. I do not think that the answers contradict per se what you posted earlier; the added information paints a fuller picture om how to obtain the release. The decision not to attend Columbia -for financial reasons- rests with the family. The decision to review the financial package and grant a release rests with Columbia. </p>
<p>Allow me also to interject a slight twist. I think that there are various degrees of possible conflicts -not to say abuse. A student such as Valdez who is hesitating to accept the offer of Princeton and wants additional time to review his current financial situation presents a different situation from students who accept the offer in January and do not cancel their submitted RD applications to weigh the packages in April. I believe that it is the second situation that so infuriates CC posters in the past. In the case of Valdez, no real harm is done as Princeton has not started making decisions on the RD pool. Playing games until April or May is the situation that triggers the ire of admission offices and result in retaliation, especially when a candidate tries to cancel his ED for a comparable school. </p>
<p>The source is <a href=“http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/admissions/faq/finaid.php#75[/url]”>http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/admissions/faq/finaid.php#75</a></p>
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<p>kirmum - my point was simply that two families on paper with the same income and resources and thus the same EFC as calculated by FAFSA might be taking substantially different risks when committing to paying that EFC. It is great that you think you have a job that cannot be outsourced. My own employers Westlaw division is hiring legal editors in Bangalore even as we speak.</p>
<p>Indeed despite what the president says we should all be questioning the value of todays education given that knowledge work is a lot easier to export than say an oil refinery. Simple logistics says that a cement factory needs to be in some reasonable proximity to its customers. But as long as knowledge can be reduced to bits and bytes and sent over a wire intellectual work can be done anywhere. Princeton may not want to compete with Harvard and Yale but they will find themselves competing with the University of Pune and a bunch of other institutions nobody on this side of the world has ever heard of.</p>
<p>Dang, am I going to have to read all 630 of these posts before I post? I doubt what I have to say is new. My S was accepted to CMU SCS ED, but after some rounds of how it’s going to affect the family and him financially (we’ve already been told merit aid was not an option and scholarships are rare for EDs), today he tells me he’s reconsidering. </p>
<p>What’s weird is that he’s in a dual enrollment program magnet school, getting high school credit for attending college. He says he is considering, now, suddenly, just continuing his degree at the university he’s attending. No application, no muss, no fuss, he’s already enrolled. He’s a NM semi-finalist (not making finalist would be a major shock), so he would be elible for a full ride in the honors college at his current school. He has two years worth of credit, so he’d finish in two more years. He also is starting to work with the faculty in his major (it’s not part of the high school program) and believes he can get the reseach he was hoping to do. Not a great undergraduate school, but he’d probably be able to get in to a good graduate school. </p>
<p>Said he let me know what he’s decided Sunday. We have a visit scheduled in Pittsburgh in a couple of weeks so we can start discussing how his college credit would transfer and meet some more of the faculty and now this. I hardly know what to think.</p>
<p>Patuxent, I’ll bite and answer. Forgive me to provide direct quotations as I will quote from memory.</p>
<p>Over the years on CC, we have had a consensus that the cost of providing an undergraduate education at the elite schools is about $60,000, and that even full sticker payers get a 30% discount. I have no reason to dispute that figure, except for an artcile I once read about Harvard. The writer claimed that Harvard had little interest in teaching undergraduates, except for the fact that it was so profitable. regarding the true cost of providing an education, it is obvious that Harvard can play all kind of games within its 2.5 billion annual budget, its substantial discretionary treasure chest, not to mention its 21 billion endowment. </p>
<p>Taking a look at Princeton, I believe that Princeton offers grants in an amount that is slightly below 60 million a year while using about 3 million of federal funds for financial aid. On the surface, such disbursement seem pretty generous to me. </p>
<p>Regarding people willing to pay full sticker prices, I could go check the various school sites, determine how many obtain financial aid, and derive a percentage of full-freight parents. However, I would prefer to use a statistic from the University of Virginia. A few years ago, I believe it was in 2000, the head of admission was alarmed by the results of Early Admission. It appeared that, from 2183 early candidates, fewer than 160 were black or hispanic. His biggest surprise was still to come: fewer than 20 students had applied for financial aid. In comparison, 30% of the RD candidates at UVA apply for financial aid. I think that this indicates the willingness of more than a few idiots to pay full fare. </p>
<p>I am not trying to make a point here but rather providing some food for thought.</p>
<p>I hate to add to dstark’s massive thread because he’s looking so unbeatable, but I knew the parents weren’t American. </p>
<p>The American education system is so different from ther rest of the world. I’ve seen brilliant Canadian and English academics get gobsmacked by the nuances of obtaining regular admission–to private American high schools. It is completely understandable that Mexican parents might not fully comprehend the ins and outs of ED. </p>
<p>It does boil down to the decisions of a naive 17 year old. All that bashing for nothing, folks. Shame…</p>
<p>Loved the Columbia quote. Thanks for posting it, Xiggi.</p>
<p>New definition of idiot (per patuxent): 60% of parents at all ivies and most top 25 schools, not to mention all who would give their eye teeth to be in this group. First time I’ve been really happy to consider myself an idiot!</p>
<p>Cheers:
"The American education system is so different from ther rest of the world. I’ve seen brilliant Canadian and English academics get gobsmacked by the nuances of obtaining regular admission–to private American high schools. It is completely understandable that Mexican parents might not fully comprehend the ins and outs of ED. "</p>
<p>That is an unfair assumption, that V’s parents, being Mexican, might not fully comprehend the ins and outs of ED… You are insulting educated intelligent people who have both, husband and wife, been in the U.S. for 20 years, and come here to study in U.S. universities on grants, according to V.</p>
<p>Again xiggi the $60 million is never disbursed anywhere. It is totally ephemeral. If I take a $7 bottle of wine and put a $14 orice sticker on it and then hang a half price sale over it nobody has had to pony up the $7 if the bottle of wine sells. The 43 million dollars on the other hand does come out of the public coffers and into Princeton’s treasury. That is part of the fraud that is driving college costs up several times faster than the CPI.</p>
<p>As for the question could Princeton fill their dormitories with the full pay sons and daughters of the wealthy? Yeah they probably could but the entering class would look more like Syracuse’s than Yale’s and more so with each succeding entering class. People want to hang out with their betters. That is what makes the elite schools attractive in the first place. If people wanted to go somewhere that any Yahoo with a fat wallet could get in then they would go to Rollins.</p>