<p>mdh, Barnard will probably not give you a “full ride” as that term is commonly used.</p>
<p>People use the term “full ride” to refer to merit scholarships where the student is left with -0- obligation – tuition and room and board fully paid for. </p>
<p>Even if your EFC is -0-, Barnard’s need based packages expect students to take subsidized loans and also a student contribution from earnings – each year they will attribute an expected amount of summer earnings and your package will include work study. It’s not a huge amount of money – I think around $1500-$1800 your first year for expected student contribution … but my point is that even in the best of circumstances you are not going to get a “free” education from Barnard.</p>
<p>Now it is possible that you could earn some sort of outside scholarships that would be enough to meet that part of your expense – and end up attending Barnard without the loans or the need to earn a couple of thousand… except that life in NYC can be kind of pricey.</p>
<p>You wrote, that you "do not want to think about having to pay for college". If that’s the case, I am sorry, but you don’t want Barnard. Every year you will have to “think about” having to pay. It may be that the amount of contribution you have to think about is only $2000 … but you will also face the reality that if you earn substantially more than the student expected amount in one year, it will show up in the form of a somewhat increased EFC the following year. </p>
<p>And if you aren’t thinking about it going in, you will think about it coming out when you’ve got roughly $20K in subsidized loans coming due. </p>
<p>The whole idea that you can “get out” of an ED offer if the financial aid isn’t good enough is kind of stupid, in my eyes. Actually, I think its very stupid. The reason is that you won’t have a basis of comparison, and if you get in and turn down an offer because you think it isn’t good enough, and then you don’t get anything better in the spring – you can’t come back to reclaim the offer you turned down. I mean – supposed a student from a low income family gets into Barnard and is told that they have to pay $8000/year-- lets say hypothetically that even though the FAFSA EFC is 0 there is something on the Profile that pushes the EFC somewhat somewhat higher. The family thinks that is way too much and turns Barnard down. But in spring, there are no better offers - the student has only been accepted to colleges that do not meet full need the best alternative offer available would require the student to pay $11K. Now that Barnard offer looked pretty good in comparison … but its long gone. Now what’s worse? Not getting into a school at all, or turning down a school you wanted because you don’t think you can afford it, only to find out later that no one else has offered you anything better.</p>