ED Financial Aid Barnard?

marama
Wed, 08 Dec 2010 15:38:53 +0000

Hi. I wanted to suggest you look at the list of partner schools on the questbridge.org website. These are schools which ACTIVELY recruit low-income, high-achieving students.

Even if you don’t go through the QB application process, you can still apply directly to these schools and get great financial aid awards at most of them. Even if the school is a QB partner institution, however, it is still important to examine the financial aid webpage to see how they TALK about aid (for example, Scripps College versus Wellesley or Vassar). You will immediately notice suggestive phrases if you look for them: “It is primarily the family’s responsibility to fund their children’s education.” “A typical student’s f.a. package consists of x, x, and loans.” “We expect all our students to apply to outside scholarships to help fund their education.” Schools with more generous financial aid programs for low-income students will not usually say these things.

You can also do a web search for “financial aid honor roll,” “no-loan colleges,” and “lowest average student debt” for lists of colleges with especially good f.a. policies. My daughter did not do the QB College Match process for a variety of reasons, but she did apply to Wellesley ED, and we are confident we’ll be able to work with the school to get an aid package we can live with.