I realize I am months late to this thread, but it’s still application season! OP, we are also a donut hole family and my liberal DS ended up at UA on the NMF scholarship. Graduated in 2018 (4 yrs) with a double major and a minor. He actually graduated with money in his pocket, due to the stipend from NM and the additional stipend he was awarded by UA. He is currently working outside of Boston.
While at UA, he was in what is now the Randall Scholars Program (they used to accept around 40 kids each year…not sure if that has changed…but your daughter may be a contender!) and had no problems finding like-minded friends within that program. And, he currently still hangs out with two friends from that program up in MA - one who is earning her MD/PhD at Harvard, and one who is in grad school at MIT, I believe. Just thought maybe it would help your daughter to hear that…
Hi there! Looks like your daughter is like my daughter who is highly motivated in school and has her eyes set to Columbia. Mine applied last year but was not able to get in. She was wait listed at NYU. She never applied out of state and focused here in NY both private and SUNY schools. Let me share a bit of background about her and share with you where she ended up going because this may give you and your daughter an option to look into that LAC.
My daughter graduated with the Highest Honors and a AP National scholar and very active in school and community. She applied to 6 private schools, 2 SUNY schools and her back up is our local cc. With the exception of Columbia and NYU, she got in to all other schools. The private ones gave her the most FA package. SUNY Binghamtoon offered her nothing other than federal loans. SUNY Stony Brook offered her a Presidential and merit scholarships. Our local cc offered her full presidential scholarship as well.
After learning how this college applications work and the financial aspect of it (we didn’t get our degree in the US), I put everything in a spreadsheet and compared everything! It was overwhelming to see the numbers. We do not want our kids to go into so much debt just to get a good education. We offered to help them as much as we could. Our FAFSA EIC is a little high so that means Pell grant is out. Her fa packages ranged from 42K to 61K with a combination of work study and federal loans.
My daughter has her heart set on a smaller LAC even after the packages came in. Colgate University offered the most generous fa packages compared to RIT, RPI and Clarkson). We are only paying her R& B and miscellaneous expenses. We took out a $2500 subsidized loan. Next year as the university roll out their Third Century plan, they will remove all federal loans. My understanding is they are increasing all the grants (no merit from the school) they offer to lessen the burden to parents and students. I mention she’s an AP scholar. The school accepted 6 out of her 9 AP credits.
Colgate has a 3 + 2 or 4 + 1 program for pre-engineering. You start your courses at Colgate and finish it at either Columbia, RPI or Washington University (St. Louis). You may want to check it out.
Right now my daughter is enjoying her freshman at Colgate. She loves the school, the laid back community, her new friends and most of all her professors. She is undecided with her major but leaning towards CS. She has until the end of sophomore year to decide. Good luck to you and your daughter!!
That seems like an overestimate of income and payroll taxes. $150k in California leaves about $113k after about $37k federal and state income and payroll taxes in California, according to https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#Sh2kTgPaqI .
Better would be to tell her before applying that, if the net price is not within $X (whatever the limit of affordability is), then the result must be treated as a rejection. And if the net price calculator shows a too-expensive net price, then it is very likely that applying will be a waste of time and fees.
Ok, so if OP is actually saving 40% of their take home pay of 113K they should be accumulating 45K a year x 7 years = 316K for college (enough to attend any college in the country and does not even include any gains in the account). Again, something is not adding up here? It’s hard to give helpful advice to posters if they don’t give us honest data…
Well, this situation just got interesting…Our daughter did in fact get into Columbia, Harvard, and Vanderbilt. Both Harvard and Vanderbilt have offered the cost of tuition with merit (VU Chancellor’s Scholarship) and Harvard aid. She got a Columbia likely letter yesterday. We had many heated discussions about “what ifs” last semester and we had to acknowledge that these were such longshot scenarios that we stopped discussing it. We have seen no financial estimate from Columbia yet, but this should get real interesting. Waiting on UChicago, Princeton, and Duke, but Duke already announced finalists for their big scholarships and she wasn’t one of them so it’s probably out if she’s admitted. Anyway, we’re proud and interested to see how this goes.
The financial aid package from Columbia will come with the official acceptance during RD (Later this month). The sad thing is that she will most likely not be able to attend admitted students day for long last visit before making a decision.
Worse case scenario, if she chooses Columbia, but Harvard gave a better financial aid package, you can use the Harvard package to request a financial review (for Columbia to meet Harvard’s package).