<p>Hello all,</p>
<p>I’m inexpert at this and so will post the following question here and in Parents, hoping that the community will help us with suggestions and/or directions to related older threads.</p>
<p>I’m a single parent of a rising sophomore at Columbia who’s receiving full financial aid. She’s planning on finishing the next year but is considering transferring after that for reasons that I feel are good ones. </p>
<p>Columbia was willing to forgo documenting her father’s income (which is unknown to us) but other peer schools were not and as a result she received no financial aid offers from them. However, Columbia was her clear top choice (at the time) anyway. </p>
<p>What a difference a year can make, though, in a student’s maturity, direction, and goals!</p>
<p>She’s doing lots of research on her own, but as a financial partner in this, I need to prepare for the possible second round in the financial aid challenge. Can anyone share their recommendations and experiences with schools that only ask for FAFSA? In the first round, she received nice offers from NYU and Berkeley (even though OOS), but she’s now looking for a smaller university or college. Location less important than: non “pressure cooker” environment, strength in linguistics and languages, healthy women’s community (possibly women’s school?), opportunities to participate in music and drama. </p>
<p>Also. She finished the year with a 4.07 gpa. Should she think about looking for merit aid, or is that not generally available for transfers?</p>
<p>I apologize for the dual forum posting. Thanks for any suggestions.</p>