<p>D was admitted to her ED school, but no aid was awarded. In our FA letter, it is stated that because no aid was given upon admission, the school may not evaluate for aid in future years. This is a school that guarantees to meet 100% of need. We have a second child entering college in a couple years, and family income is on the decline due to job being slowly phased out. Also quickly nearing retirement age. Is this pretty standard that if no aid is awarded upon admission, there is no chance for future aid when circumstances change? This is a school that is known for generous aid.</p>
<p>I have two in college and we are full pay. My dd has tried for 3 years to get aid at her school and she’s already there, so why would they need to continue to fund her? Son did receive aid for his school because they were competing for a National Merit winner.</p>
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<p>@acemom You need to contact the school and ask them about this particular situation.</p>
<p>D is highly recruited athlete, 4.0, 4.6W GPA and ACT OF 35. So once they snag a high stats kid, they don’t care about keeping them?</p>
<p>I think that one of the challenges is that there was a lack of due diligence before having your recruited athlete commit to the schools. </p>
<p>Most of the questions you have know should have been asked at the beginning to admissions, financial aid and the coach. File you file the FAFSA, your child will always be eligible for any federal aid that they are entitled to. It seems that the caveat is how the school deals with doling out their own monies (which they can set any conditions that they want).</p>
<p>The thing that you must ask yourself that if they told you this upfront, would you have still allowed your child to apply?</p>
<p>If you feel that in the worse case this is not going to be a financially feasible for 4 years, then bite the bullet, decline the ED to see if your daughter can still get some merit $$.</p>
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<p>???
she’s a highly recruited athlete that wasn’t offered any athletic scholarship money? If so, that doesn’t sound “highly recruited” to me. That sounds like, “we’ll help you get accepted to a top school,” and that’s it. </p>
<p>As for worry about keeping these athletes…schools know that if one leaves, they often have to sit out a year of eligibility…that alone often keeps athletes where they are.</p>
<p>You do need to talk to a financial aid officer. The issue here is NEED, not MERIT at this point. It doesn’t matter how great your kid is at many schools when it comes down to financial aid. It comes down to the numbers. What do you get when you run the NPC for that school? For that matter, what is the NPC for your family at a number of schools? Also run your numbers through a FAFSA EFC estimator. If you are coming up as full pay with those calculators, you aren’t going to get financial aid from any of those schools because you are coming up with no need. As a general rule in these situations, you are not going to get a dime in aid until you pay your FAFSA EFC. You say that the school guarantees to meet full need, Apparently their NPC calculator has you coming up as not qualifying for any aid because you have no need as THEY define it. Which is the way it works with financial aid. The schools themselves define NEED, not you.</p>
<p>As far as getting money for an athlete, if this is a division 3 school, there is no money for athletics. They are not permitted to give any money for sports. My guess is that this is a highly selective school that uses the athletic card as a hook for acceptance. That’s what the student gets for being an athletic recruit, but no money. IMO, many athletes are at a disadvantage at getting merit, because there is a strict stipulation that forbids an merit money be given to recruited athlete and it a hassle dealing with accusations that athletes are getting scholarships due to sports, not academic prowess. So athletes get accepted with consideration, but no money.</p>
<p>As for future years, you do need to talk to the school financial aid office and ask about that comment about not getting future consideration for aid. A lot of these schools require PROFILE and FAFSA upon entry year and then when you get aid, just FAFSA to keep it. What they are likely saying is that you are so far from getting any aid, that it’s highly unlikely you will qualify in future years. But you need to get that straight and on paper as to what the school will do when things like a second child in college or husband retires, or other financial downgrade occurs. </p>
<p>So a phone session with a fin aid officer is crucial. You also need to check out with NPCs how other schools will view your situation because you well might not qualify for any aid. You are considered full pay, is what I think they are telling you, and if this is a school that guarantees to meet 100% of need, you may not get any better anywhere else. But with ED, the extra consideration you got makes it difficult or impossible to compare actual offers which is the major drawback of ED. It is possible that some other school will give your DD a great merit award, for example. I truly don’t think (my opinion here only) that you are going to qualify for much financial aid, getting zilch from this school and such a letter. You can ask for an appeal but do run the numbers. FOrget the athlete part–no athletic scholarships here. Forget the 4.6 gpa, 35 ACT==we are not talking merit it. Here are town to the brass tacks of what your 1040 AGI was and the value of your assets, simply stated> If you own a business, then it’s more complicated, and they do assess those differently than you do for tax purposes both as income and assets. </p>
<p>All this is ideally done BEFORE you apply ED. This is why I hate ED when people don’t understand how it works and the work needed to avoid this sort of thing. If your NPCs are not matching up with what this school is offering you, there may be some glitch in there or unusual factor (owning a business, NCP, etc) but you should know what the school and FAFSA calculators expect you to pay. Cuz you gotta pay that before getting a dime of aid.</p>
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<p>This is VERY possible. The Ivy League schools do not give athletic scholarships, and Division 3 schools that meet full need like Amherst, Williams, etc. do not give athletic scholarships at all. They give need based aid only. So, if this student was recruited by one of these top schools, and the family had no financial need, the student would not have gotten aid from those schools. Period.</p>
<p>I agree. Contact the school for clarification of the clause about aid in the future. If you find out that your income will not be evaluated in subsequent years, then you will need to decide if this school is truly affordable for all four years. If not, decline the ED offer.</p>
<p>ETA…the OP knew there were no athletic scholarships.</p>
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<p>@acemom, did you do a finaid pre-read before your child committed to this school? Do you have pre-reads from other peer schools that recruited her? It seems you did not expect to get aid this year but the statement that aid will never be awarded was quite unexpected. Call the coach and discuss the situation with him/her first then call the finaid office. Try to get to the finaid officer who will be handling your daughter’s aid going forward (they may assign students to counselors alphabetically). Usually aid is reconsidered every year based on family finances, see what their web site says in this regard. Use email in addition to phone calls to have some paper trail. You probably have a few days left to try to get your answers.
If you do not get a resolution this year your daughter may have to drop some RD applications to some other schools before January 1st deadline just in case. It may be a painful holiday season.</p>
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<p>To answer your original question, no, this is not pretty standard. Some schools, as you have found out with your daughter’s ED school, do have this policy, but my experience is that most schools will either reevaluate financial need on a yearly basis, or, at the very least, will reevaluate financial need if there has been a change in circumstances. To have a policy that there is no chance for future aid, even when there has been a change in circumstances, is not the norm.</p>
<p>My nephew was recruited at Tufts and his parents knew that they would be full-pay and no athletic money. They were fine with that. That wanted the admissions boost that he got instead from his sport. Simultaneously, they were full-pay for their other child at Vandy. The boys were ED at both schools…with parents knowing that they’d be paying over $100k per year.</p>
<p>However, if money had been an issue at all (another sibling to pay for, a future reduction in income), they would have directed their son to another very good school where his talents would have gotten athletic scholarship money. </p>
<p>Right now…all you can do is contact the school ASAP to get answers about aid when Child #2 goes to college and if/when there is an income reduction. </p>
<p>If this school is need-aware, that may also be an issue. Your D may have gotten an add’l nudge because she was full-pay. </p>
<p>If the ED school will not put in writing that aid will be considered when Child #2 goes to college and/or there is a serious reduction in income, then it’s time to contact your D’s coach to find out where else she can land. You may need to get that addressed immediately while waiting a response from the college.</p>
<p>BTW…it is common knowledge that even at schools that don’t give athletic awards if they TRULY want an athlete and the affluent family can’t pay full freight, the school can still use its discretion to determine “need” that really isn’t there. It’s the school’s own formula after all. They can always get the outcome that they want.</p>
<p>The only time I have seen this stipulation has been at colleges that are need aware in admissions. But at such school, it does not generally apply to those who have submitted their financial aid forms, but to target those who apply without so doing and then hit the school up for aid in subsequent years. </p>
<p>Also, there are schools that do not make any guarantee to meet need, so that your aid package is pretty much set from your first year on. Another kid in college can get you no more in aid. Only reductions in aid, no increases, or very little. </p>
<p>But the OP states this is a school that guarantees to meet need, OP filled out fin aid forms. It doesn’t make sense that there is a blanket statement that there is no chance for future aid when circumstances change. I’ve never seen that one before from any schools, though a lot of schools do practice this sort of thing, again ,these are schools that do not guarantee to meet need anyways. Do let us know what the college fin aid office has to say about this stipulation. I’m curious…</p>
<p>Re-reading the original post, it says that the FA letter states “that because no aid was given upon admission, the school may not evaluate for aid in future years.” OP then goes on to ask is “this pretty standard that if no aid is awarded upon admission, there is no chance for future aid when circumstances change?”</p>
<p>OP, I’m not sure how you are getting from “may not evaluate for aid in future years” (which is fairly common) to “no chance for future aid when circumstances change” (which is uncommon).</p>
<p>Umm, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that either. Why would a school say they MAY NOT evaluate for aid in future years? How can anyone know if a family is entitled to financial aid until an evaluation is done, just because the family does not qualify at the present time? I could understand that the school might say that they may not give financial aid in future years, but not evaluate for need which is needed to see if one qualifies for aid, makes no sense to me. But what the actual wording is, what the intent is, what the school’s policies are need to be clarified in writing. The school can point to this letter in a couple of years when there is a second student going to college and reduced circumstances and say they won’t evaluate as they said might not do so. It really makes no sense to me. I hope the OP gets clarification from the fin aid office and lets us know the outcome. </p>
<p>The OP needs to CLEARLY find out if a change in circumstances (2nd child in college, reduced income) will permit the family to be reevaluated for aid and also QUALIFY for aid using the same formula used for incoming frosh. Just getting evaluated isn’t enough if the school will then use a different formula than what it uses on its NPC and for incoming frosh.</p>
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<p>Why wouldn’t they? I mean, it sounds like pretty boilerplate language to me.</p>
<p>Are we reading it the same way though? I read “may not” as meaning, “might not”, as in, “We might not change our institutional assessment of financial need for your family in the future if in the first year we determine that you don’t qualify for aid,” That sounds like institution-speak to cover themselves by giving themselves full discretion on this issue rather than committing to any given course of action. </p>
<p>I would want clarification of this. </p>
<p>DmitriR, exactly. I believe when someone gives themselves an out, they often use it. We need a commitment that we will be evaluated the same as other (incoming) students are. It is not right to say “we meet full need” and then not honor that because someone didn’t have need the prior year. I can’t believe there is a paragraph addressing this in the award letter if it doesn’t have merit. </p>
<p>At any rate, I have requested in writing that we will be reevaluated for aid if our finances change or when second child goes to college. Until I receive that, we will not be accepting the offer. Thank you all for your input. You have helped me tremendously.</p>
<p>As far as I see it, if this ends up being an issue for the OP, that is, a financial issue, there is GOOD reason to turn down the ED offer. So, great response to the school.</p>
<p>Look around for other options in the mean time. Financial reasons are valid to not take an ED offer, we are considering that now as merit aid was a lot less than expected.</p>
<p>You might want to ask fin aid offices of other schools on your DD’s list what their polices are for when there are changes in financial circumstances; whether full need met guarantee is still in place if they say they are such schools. For those schools that make no such guarantee,… well, there is none that aid will be increased later. But those that say they do meet full need, IMO, should re evaluate each year for this and give aid if circumstances are such that the family now qualifies.</p>