Right. So very important. Many schools my 2 applied to required FAFSA & base any aid on that too. Daughter visited Bryn Mawr early in our search after she got mailings & maybe a school info session (?). I went to the parents FA session. After hearing all about meeting need, merit $, etc, one Dad there was savvy enough to ask - is your merit aid Need Aware/ need based also?
When the FA speaker hesitated but said - “yes it is” you could hear the collective sigh in the room. That was the sound of a group of middle class families realizing Bryn Mawr was now off the list. Especially after the poor rep was kind of pressured into an estimate of the “need” cutoff threshold. It’s not that we were all foolishly going though it was out of $. When talking in the hall after, we realized most of us had decided to go check it out anyway because of the marketing, info on website, calls to admissions, school visits etc where they really talk up the merit, scholarships, grants & meeting need for good, we’ll rounding students. And they DO offer it. None of us remembered seeing or having anyone mention the need based part of it though. It’s a great school & it’s not like they were being shady. I’m guessing that a lot of those families were like me - first in family to attend college without really knowing the process and now learning as we go with our own kids. NOW, I could be an College Admissions Counselor. Haha
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