<p>Hi again, crazymomster, </p>
<p>Your son sounds amazing as well! But, like my son, he may have a harder time catching scholarship committees’ full attention. I hope I didn’t discourage you too much with my earlier posts. I’m betting your son WILL earn a number of great scholarships! They just won’t be as predictable as some people seem to think they are for kids like ours. My son’s scholarship results were scattered across the board. But they were good overall. </p>
<p>One thing we noticed this year, more than in past years with the other kids … this son got a ton more need-based aid than the other kids. It might have been the economy (decreased value of endowments that pay for merit awards?). He got lots and lots of grant money.</p>
<p>If your son is your oldest, that kind of grant money would probably be really great for you! As long as your financial situation stays roughly the same, his grant aid would continue to be roughly the same for all four years (at least that’s the policy at most schools).</p>
<p>For us, the problem with need-based grants is that this son has older sibs in college. And, I hope to take on more work and build up the retirement savings that I’ve been forgoing while I’ve had kids in college. If I earn more money, his grant aid would likely decrease. When his sibs graduate from college, his grant aid will likely decrease significantly. With need-based aid, awards are usually not firm. Merit-aid awards ARE firm.</p>
<p>I really felt like we needed a financially-sure-thing at this point. But if your son is your oldest, and your financial situation is not likely to change much while he’s in college, then huge amounts of need-based grants can only be good! (I mean he earned HUGE amounts – amounts that FAR exceeded our EFC and approached full-tuition and more from several prestigious schools. It seemed that it might have been their way to attract my son without awarding their full-tuition merit awards. But for us, that was just too unreliable.) I hope that helps!</p>